Between Two Points is an ongoing joint exhibit by Yajyu Manandhar and Michael Gordon at Gallery Mcube in the Capital. The exhibit explores themes of impermanence, abstraction, and the potential for spontaneity.  Most works on display are composed of found materials making the city both the subject of the works and the medium for expressing them.

Upon entering the gallery space it is hard to miss the cluster of shoes in the corner that were picked up and collected by the artists while walking the city. Found objects come with their own history and bare the mark of time and use from before they were repurposed as a work of art. As such, they are replete with meaning that can be manipulated according to the context of the show, which is why a heap of discarded shoes can refer to untold journeys and inevitable loss.

Similarly, a sofa frame with no upholstery, only some springs and strings for decoration makes for a curious work. The sofa frame is put up on the wall as you would a painting and the object’s reconfiguration within a gallery space makes it so it avoids easy recognition. Upon recognition you tend to wonder where it comes from—perhaps a living room, maybe an office or a hotel?— who had been on it and what might they have done there? Impelling these meandering thoughts is really the purpose of the work because such thoughts always wind back to you, the viewer. The sofa frame is a skeleton for situations and how you build on it [what you find in it or don’t] is up to you.    

There is also the story of the ‘instrument’ Manandhar had built from scrap. He had taken the xylophone looking thing around Kathmandu like it were an ice cream trolley, playing it for or with interested passerbys. Unfortunately, the thing was stolen on its very first excursion. Fortunately, the story of this instrument, from conception till theft is documented in a series of photographs included in the show, which make for a comical testament to the transience of things.

Gordon had described his medium, found objects, as “morsels of reality” and the works he created with Manandhar as “offerings to impermanence.” He likened the works to photographs in that they do not represent an objective reality and are instead subjective framings of moments as well as invitations into them. According to Gordon, framing the concept of impermanence itself and creating a conversation around it is a form of resistance to rampant consumerism and the materialist ethos that drives it. Thus, the thought of ephemeral art works facilitating enduring conversations is what underpins the hopes of both Manandhar and Gordon. 

Manandhar is a Kathmandu based artist and an alumnus of KU where he is presently an artist in residence. Gordon is an American artist, currently a Fulbright Student Researcher in Nepal examining the socio-economic, cultural, and artistic landscape of contemporary Buddhist art. Gordon is also an artist in residence at the Kathmandu University Center for Art and Design.

The exhibition will run until May 3.