Bako Exists. Imagine: Atul Dodiya

Bako exists. Imagine is a text-based work which consists of twelve paintings and an installation with nine wooden cabinets. These poetic episodes are based on a fiction, written in Gujarati by a major contemporary Gujarati poet Labhshanker Thaker.

Bako is a young boy who meets Bapu - Mahatma Gandhi, in his sleep. In fact, they both meet each other in their sleep and talk.

A kind of fantasy, which allows and evokes childhood memories. There is no fence of age between this old man and the young boy. They joke, they laugh, they talk abstract.
In these twelve blackboard paintings, along with the cabinet installation, autobiographical references gradually mingle into a larger creative journey. The intention is – the viewer no more remains an outsider but subconsciously, becomes an invisible character involved along with Baka and Bapu in this hilarious fantasy.

-Atul Dodiya, August 2011