LAYOUT 2, a location based collaborative construction

Swiss artist Navid Tschopp collaborates once again with Indian artists Sayantan Maitra Boka, Susanta Mandal and M. Pravat to present LAYOUT 2, a location based collaborative construction as part of the Kochi Biennale.

Swiss artist Navid Tschopp collaborates once again with Indian artists Sayantan Maitra Boka, Susanta Mandal and M. Pravat to present LAYOUT 2, a location based collaborative construction as part of the Kochi Biennale. The project aims to create spatial voids deliberately rather than incidentally during the process of construction.

“Layout02 ” is a location based 'aesthetic construction' , that interrogates the standard engineered urban space, in this case an urban Kochi landscape . Four artists make a partnership seeking to transform and mutate the typical architectural process using four distinct approaches. The resulting convergence of these four unique eccentricities is seen to function as one self-contained artwork and the product of the interaction is a source of discovery for both the artists and the audience.

Within the dynamic morphology of cityscapes, any attempt at forming representational models to reflect that dynamism poses a number of challenges, more so because any city itself is largely constituted by innumerable layers of images and imaginations. Whereas many images find a picture-plane, there are imaginations, desires, and resentments that gradually seep into fissures and cracks to form a different substrata. With excavation and archival retrieving as the most commonly spoken-about tropes today, could there be other ways to illuminate that which is beneath? This initiative aims to delve into that substrata, albeit not with a mind to excavate but to 'project onto' through the diverse approaches of 4 creative practitioners from India and Switzerland. Such a process of discovery aims to unravel the various layers defining the semantics.

Layout is an artist collective which was born in November 2010, at an artist studio space in New Delhi, India. All were interested in making site specific art installation working mostly with construction material, partially influenced by the DIY culture . The artists are concerned with a specific cultural landscape whose character is influenced by the geological structure , history and culture into which they integrate their work. The group draws inspiration from technology in order to create a new reality that is solely expressed through hypothetical projects. The members are M Pravat , Navid Tschopp , Sayantan Maitra Boka and Susanta Mandal.

M.Pravat is a prolific painter who studied from Baroda and participated in innumerable shows in India and abroad. Currently he has been meditating on the notion of flexibility of the designed space, and his prior works dealt it by creating 'fake' architectural blueprints.
Navid Tschopp , is a Swiss artist and his artistic approach is in the field between orient and occident and contains the many layers between image and action ,his research is about identity in the field of transcultural images and in context art. He has studied architecture and art.
Sayantan Maitra Boka is an architect and scenographer by qualification, and a career in art by choice. He heads an interactive design firm , Illusion In Motion and is an active member of the NGO, Shelter Promotion Council (India) , through which he has started producing and curating Public Art Festivals in different parts of North East India to identify issues and questioning them through the medium of contemporary and new media art.

Susanta Mandal's recent art practice is involved with the issue of energy; whether it’s pipeline politics or other form of mechanism involved with energy. His mixed media installations, which often utilize spotlights and kinetic mechanisms seem playful, but are actually uncanny and ultimately disconcerting constructions.

The collective is currently working on the Sarai Reader Show 09 in Devi Art Foundation , Gurgaon and Kiran Nadar Museum , Noida .