Week 31: The Toilet Door Exhibition

Type of Writing: An interview with Kit about his art, the kind of thing that would be in the Culture section of The Daily Telegraph or the like.

THE INFANT MASTER

By P. Retencious

Kit James Raj Theivamanoharan has become something of a big deal. Ever since his painting Flower set the art world ablaze, the cognoscenti has been waiting to see what he’ll do next. The answer is The Toilet Door Exhibition. Rejecting traditional gallery space, Kit has taken a punk approach and hung his paintings at home.

I’m meeting him at his home to ask him why. I can do this because I’ve bubbled with Kit’s family; an opportunity that arouse since my own father disowned me following an argument over Rothko’s 1953 Rust and Blue. He said the work was derivative and I responded by saying “You’re derivative!” We haven’t talked in a month and he tells me he intends to spend Christmas with is new child from his new marriage. Just a few weeks old, he tells me, “he knows more about art than you.”

So I’m here in Dunstable, the only guest allowed in, to view his work up close. I find the experience of having an audience with him quite overwhelming. Flower, his first work, pointed to a boy that had the world at his hands. The action painting, an expression of thumb and fist, was seen as the best calling card since Jeff Koons set tongues wagging with 1992’s Puppy

Flower

I start by asking Kit: Why turn your back on prestigious spaces in favour of your toilet door? He smiles back. An arch smile that seems to say, “The art world is a place of bullshit and hot air – much like a toilet.” He throws his head back and giggles, evidence that he doesn’t take himself too seriously, despite a ferocious work-rate that suggests he takes creating very seriously indeed.

And what about Flower, I ask? Do you still rate that now you have this exhibit? His bottom lip goes and soon he cries. It’s clear he’s embarrassed by his debut work, not because it’s passé, but because it isn’t genius like his current output. I try to console him by singing a lullaby, yet I’m aware that artist’s have a right to be temperamental; after all art is half talent, half character. When we consider the medieval humours, it is the excess in yellow bile that gives the artist the passion to create.

I ask him about his pieces: the spider to start. Why does your jumping spider have seven eyes when they actually have eight? He gives me a cold hard stare. I realise immediately that I’ve asked a stupid question. Of course, it’s a comment on the world at large. With Trump on the way out and environmental talks on the way in, there’s a feeling that we’re slowly regaining our sight. Yet one eye is missing to indicate that we’re not there yet; that our year of giving the environment a breather can’t be strangled by future abuse.

And what about the butterfly? Its tissue paper wings and lolly stick abdomen. Is that a comment on how fragile the world is, on how we need to entrust sticky fingered enfants to preserve it? He laughs at me as though I am an imbecile, as though I am Damien Hirst. His chuckle reminds me of what Picasso said, “It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.” Of course, this particular painting has no worldview or political comment, sometimes it is what it is: a baby being interested in butterflies and using the resources available to them. Art for art’s sake. Fun, enjoyment, sensory pleasure. Art doesn’t have to be chin stroking; it can be belly rubbing too.

With Zoom calls with family to fulfil, I daren’t keep Kit too long; I don’t want to be on the receiving end of his bloodcurdling scream. I do have time for one last question: Are the winter trees a metaphor for your outlook on the world? Do you feel that we’re at world’s end or is there to be the spring of new beginnings? At this, he looks deeply into my eyes with the penetration of a psychoanalyst; it’s a look that uncovers my soul, excavates it, raising it for study – and with that he lets rip. A fart that tells me our time is up and I must now leave.

To receive a fart from a genius is something I never dreamt possible. To be chosen, anointed and bestowed with such a privilege is akin to being asked to sit for Van Gogh. I’ve been touched by greatness. The perfect way to end an imperfect year.

The Toilet Door Exhibition is available on a Facebook picture. The exhibit may be open in 2021 depending on whether Kit rips the art off the wall or not.