Painting By Logo

"Logo Alphabet" (2003-2011) by Vandana Jain.

Vandana Jain’s show at Lakeeren Gallery is titled somewhat inscrutably “The Invisible Hand Guides Us All To Our Gainful End”. A somewhat better name would have been “versteckte bedeutungen”, a reference sure to delight 30 Rock fans (see episode 10 of season 2), who will know that those German words translate to “hidden meaning”. Ferreting out the agenda, both perceived and real, in Jain’s corporate logo-festooned works poses the viewer with a visual conundrum. In “Dazzle Unicorn”, for instance, the logo of a pharma company is hidden in a grid of neon stripes, a camouflage technique used by ships in World War I to throw off enemies. In “Logo Alphabet” (see image), Jain, a textile artist from New York, displays an alphabet made up of logos of some of the world’s biggest companies like AT&T, McDonald’s, Pepsi, Quaker and Sony in a sort of folksy cross stitch that effectively saps them of their corporate heft. The viewer is then presented with two works strung together from logo letters, and left to decipher their meaning. In “Menagerie”, a collage of niftily rendered tea stains features animal-themed logos used by some familiar companies. All of it is soundtracked to a buzzing audio track of Coca Cola jingles set to Chopin’s death march. It’s admittedly a bit of a blustery anti-globalisation rant, but there’s some fun to be had in seeing how many logos you can identify when they’re stripped of their surrounding context.

Lakeeren Gallery

Location6/18 Grants Building
Second Floor
Opposite Basilico Restaurant
Arthur Bunder Road
Colaba

Phone022 6522 4179

Relevant DatesUntil Saturday, October 13

HoursTuesday to Saturday, 11am to 7pm; Sunday-Monday, closed

Ticketing & Price InfoFree

Websitewww.lakeerengallery.com