Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Gallery Espace presents Moving Beyond the Frame


Gallery Espace Explores Alternative Feminism Through The Diversity of

Five Women Artists in ‘Moving Beyond the Frame’

New Delhi: Cutting across boundaries and cultures by exhibiting the works of five renowned women artists from India, USA, and UK, Gallery Espace presents Moving Beyond the Frame: A Space for Alternative Readings..., a five-woman show exhibiting alternative concerns with femininity and feminism. The exhibition is on view from December 19, 2008 to January 13, 2009 at Gallery Espace, (Level 0-1), 16, Community Centre, New Friends Colony.


The participating artists include Maxine Henryson, Catherine Mosley and Jaishri Abichandani from USA, Sutapa Biswas from UK and Paula Sengupta from India. The five artists have explored a variety of mediums including collages and printmaking, sculpture and installations, photography and drawings.


Says Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace
: “Through their work, each artist deals with issues related to the fact that one’s identity is in a constant flux, be it their sexual or gender-related identity, be it how one deals with the self in society having migrated to a different country or in just attempting to decode another culture.”

Kolkata-based artist Paula Sengupta, who largely works in the genre of the autobiographical narrative, addresses issues of feminist concern through her work. Explains Paula Sengupta: “The present body of work addresses the lump in my throat, the numbness in my veins, and the loss in my heart for a land long lost.” Her usage of everyday objects like cloth, lacework, crochet and furniture transforms the exhibited area into an intimate domestic space.

Paula Sengupta recreates a delicate yet surreal space from the past where the viewer discovers reminiscences of women who led seemingly idyllic lives, yet had complex emotional uncertainties and secret desires to break free from social conditioning and the claustrophobia of the male gaze. For instance, in her diary-shaped installations titled Bay of Bengal & Hugli and Karnaphuli, she narrates her family stories to showcase miseries faced by her family during the Bengal partition and Hindu- Muslim rioting in 1947. She says: “In 1947, my family witnessed Hindu-Muslim rioting and a village that was predominantly Hindu, turned suddenly Muslim. My family fled its home in Bangladesh and I lost my roots forever. When destinies were drawn and history was rewritten, how is it that my mother’s tears were never mentioned? And yet, more than sixty years later, they continue to flow.”

The female protagonist in Paula’s work assumes a bigger dimension in USA’s Catherine Mosley’s six collages paintings that employ human images and animal forms to convey the stressed notions of the victim and the predator. Her interpretation of ‘wild’, ranges from the natural to the supernatural in subject matter, from the figurative to the abstract in style and from the dreamlike to the gritty in theme. Her works Tree Storm and Goodbye give the impression of surroundings being swept away in a dreamlike structure. Her collages move, shapes tangle and colours whirl in strong currents of abstraction. In yet another work titled Falling Girl, the nude, inverted, and falling female form is symbolic of vague memories of a time gone by. The collage is a woodcut that appears to be embedded in a well-worn piece of cloth.

Says Catherine Mosley: “I first print my collage material using stencil, mono-printing, transfer processes and woodcut and then aim towards the close merging of the paint and paper materials to bring out a display of opacity and translucency.”


While Paula Sengupta’s and Catherine Mosley’s works highlight their extensive background in printmaking, USA’s Maxine Henryson captures simple and archetypal images in her camera’s viewfinder. A freelance photographer who keeps roving between the cultural landscapes of New York City, Vermont, Europe and South Asia , she creates an impeccable balance of figuration and abstraction in her photographs that furnish a narrative that naturally unfolds itself. Her subject matter revolves around using simple and archetypal characters like trees, rivers, clotheslines, women, children, temples, seasons, courtyards, flowers, gardens, curtains, vessels, fences, bedspreads and many more everyday objects.

In one of her series titled Red leaves and Gold Curtains, she explores her perception of the feminine in the world, examining the differences and similarities among cultures. She also traces evidence of divinity, rituals, place, memory and history in the West and East. She says: “These images are my response to the present while mirroring the past. The abstraction of the photographs reflects distance and proximity. The photographs represent intimate moments and bestow a new form of painting that uses photography as a medium.”

Feminism in a bolder form is what marks artist, social worker and founder of the South Asian Women's Creative Collective, USA-based Jaishri Abichandani’s works who breaks the shackles of predictability by presenting bold display of fetishized objects like leather whips, dildos, plastic breasts, wire with swarovski crystals. Her works, often called as lingam sculptures are highly ambiguous objects and hover between irony and sincerity, as they are both subversive while being celebratory. Combining certain sex toys (banned in India) with fabricated leather whips and high-Swarovski crystals, the sculptures interrogate patriarchal power centers and the use of religious fundamentalism to mask capitalist and patriarchal strategies. She upsets the notion of male dominance by placing the phallic objects within a larger triangle or Yoni – making the female shape as important and dominant as the male. Other sculptures using many of the same materials interrogate other complex power dynamics, such as a piece titled Roe Vs Wade, named after the US law allowing women to have abortions or the installation made of whips titled Allahu Akbar using the Kufic script from the Iraqi flag of 2008.

Finally, UK’s Sutapa Biswas explores the themes of time, history, gender, race and human condition through her works. Her strongly poetic and visually resonant works derive influences from a wide range of sources including film, art history, literature, and psychoanalytic theory. Her drawings are evocative of her enquiry into the psyche of the feminine subject, and the daily rituals of domestic life. She works in the medium of drawing, painting, film and video that have an uncanny ability to halt the viewer in their tracks.

Says Sutapa Biswas: “Though much time has passed since my journey from the country of my birth to a country that is now my home, the complex relationship that has existed between these two places for centuries now, has given way to a certain poetry that belongs to both of them, which inevitably has consequently entered my psyche. I would also point out that if we as human beings are to be read only as the sum total of the places we inhabit with rigid linearity then the richness of thought and the poetics of space, time, and experience cannot be fully appreciated. In short, we would either presume too much or too little.”

Indeed, a must-visit show with alternating and alternative sensibilities as seen through the eyes of women far apart in space yet connected through their art!



Gallery Espace Brings International Artist Rina Banerjee to town with a solo exhibition titled ‘Allure’


New Delhi: Gallery Espace presents ‘Allure’; a solo exhibition of recent works (acrylic and ink on paper) by internationally renowned Brooklyn-based artist, Rina Banerjee from December 19, 2008 to January 13, 2009 at Gallery Espace, (Level 02), 16, Community Centre, New Friends Colony.

Says Ms. Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace: “Rina Banerjee’s work mixes Asian and western materials. Powdered spices, glittering sari cloth create a hybrid version of exoticism, one that works not just west to east but in both directions, and has a creepy, spoiled, mutant beauty. Her characteristically mischievous process of transformation of objects and their cultural locations playfully unhinges them from their unique specificity.”


"…...Rina Banerjee’s work is all about excess and colour and has south Indian vibes, it is also about east-west relations, tourism, exoticism and stereotypes..." that’s how New York Times describes the work of the Kolkata-born artist.

Says Rina Banerjee: “There is a long history to the mythologisation of the female figure, body and its vanishing sexuality towards an ungendered old age. Like a dizzying pendulum, we as people find something to mistrust, find fault with, blame, fear and negate that is also the very core of our most tender curiosity. Unlike greed or lust this space delivers, rescues, enlightens and surrenders us to an eternal blissful sanity. Sigmund Freud’s points of referring to the other sex as ‘container’ refers to the womb, this jeweled box, gendered in a trap not yet known.”

Born in 1963, Kolkata, India, Rina Banerjee has lived in the United States since she was a child. Educated at Yale University, School of Art, she currently lives and works in New York City. Her work explores specific colonial moments that reinvent place and identity as complex diasporic experiences. The way she assembles colonial objects, souvenirs and decorative crafts makes the experience of seeing artefacts and history in art making as an entangled process. Their aesthetic and cultural beginnings suggest in particular how the many regional culture affects continue to stain our perceptions of home, the exotic, the foreign and domestic worlds.

Beginning her profession as a material science engineer, one can sense in her artworks the material awareness often mixing the organic and plastic to invite a blurring of our recognition. Says Rina Banerjee, “My sculptures, installations, videos and drawings are inspired by a wide range of mundane objects and home crafts. The metaphors jewel, gold, glitter and net proliferates the visual vocabulary of my work.”

The result one can see offers a new way of seeing culture. Simultaneously preoccupations with the savage, insects, foreign, alien are familiar categories of identity that is also generated in the work. There is also the forbidden prolonged looking that confuses, beguiles and mixes beauty with the grotesque. Another aspect in her artworks are the use of narrative text which decorate the work with meaning and intention that further plays with the idea of artist voice and the aesthetic of exotic beauty, physical illusion of ornamental object as a sign. Her imagery stems from multiple cultural histories, both eastern and western art.

From her sensational debut at the Whitney Biennial 2000, Rina Banerjee has been very successful at her last exhibitions in Tsumari-Echigo’s 3rd Triennial in Japan and PS 1/MoMA. Her works have been in focus in the

Brent Sikema, Bose Pacia Modern Gallery, Debs and Co. Gallery, Bronx Museum, New Museum, and Queens Museum acquiring favorable reviews in Art News, Art Forum and Art in America. Presently her works can be viewed at Mass Museum of Contemporary Art in North Adams in an exhibition "Yankee Remix". She has also exhibited abroad in Madrid, Durban, Africa and India.

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For further media enquiries pls contact Poonam Goel @ 9811143131 or Persona @ 41552945-8.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Kalyani Kala Mandir presents ‘Aradhana’

Kalyani Kala Mandir presents ‘Aradhana’ by

Bharatnatyam danseuse Rashmi Khanna

Event: Kalyani Kala Mandir presents ‘Aradhana’, a Bharatnatyam recital by renowned danseuse Rashmi Khanna and her disciples on Sunday, December 7, 2008 at Triveni Kala Sangam, Tansen Marg, Mandi House, New Delhi at 6:30pm.

Aradhana, an expression of the bhakta (disciple) towards the almighty is based on the devotional aspect of the Shringara Rasa.

1. The programme commences with Thodaya Mangalam which is dedicated to Lord Vishnu, the preserver, the one married to Janaki, who took the Narasimha Avatar to destroy Hiranyakashyap, who came as none other than Krishna to live among mortals in order to help rid their troubles.

2. Shlokam: This is a sanskrit shloka from the Krishna Karnamritam. It praises Krishna who is the Lord of all the three worlds and has the power to attract both the gods as well as the kinnaris. His individuality has so many different colours that all the nine emotions and Rasas reside in him.

3. Navarasa: In this piece, the nine emotions or Navarasas shall be depicted through the medium of the different episodes of Lord Rama’s life. It is set to ragammalika , talam aadi. It is a composition of Padmashree Dandayudapanipillai.

4. Meera Bhajan: “ Chalo Man Ganga Jamuna Teer” , as the song suggests, the nayika, Meera, wants to go to the shores of the river Ganges to be united with her lover, Lord Krishna, the one who plays the flute and is accompanied by his brother Balveer, the one who wears the peacock feathered crown and diamond ear drops. Meera wants to bow down on the lotus like feet of her lord and become one with him.

5. Tillana: Tillana is an epitome of pure artistry where the variegated patterns of movements flow in one sheer rapturous symphony creating alluringly sculpturesque dance poses as found in the temples of South India.

Venue: Triveni Kala Sangam, Tansen Marg, Mandi House, New Delhi.

Date: Sunday, December 7, 2008

Time: 6:30 p.m.

Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Nehru Memorial Museum & Library presents Nehru BAL MELA

New Delhi: Transcending barriers of class, caste and religion, encouraging active involvement with science, nature, culture & history, fostering values of harmonious living in a fun way that makes learning an enjoyable process are the aims with which Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML) presents its annual children and youth festival titled Dhanak Din: Living Together in Harmony, a three-day Nehru BAL MELA for children, teachers & parents on November 27, 28 & 30, 2008 at Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, Teen Murti House, New Delhi.

Woven around the theme of peace, nature and creativity, the fair seeks to be inclusive, earth nurturing, peaceful and celebrates diversity with a wide range of learning oriented fun activities. It is the right opportunity to let your child free and have fun alongwith a deep meaningful engagement with his favourite activity. Dhanak Din, especially designed for the children between the age group of 5-18 years, also encourages the active participation of those who love to work with and for the children. The fair breaks the restraints of ‘channel surfing’ through stalls as a mere spectator but allows a deeper involvement with the participants which makes them co-creators and owners of the event.

Says Ms. Mridula Mukherjee, Director, Nehru Memorial Museum & Library: “The mela simply reiterates that “fun is serious business’. It is, however, not a stand-alone event but the celebration of a longer process of deep engagement which we have encouraged through children and parent workshops throughout the year. For this mela in particular, we have planned a series of events including talks, film screenings, fun games, exhibitions, scientific experiments, nature trails, puppets, magic, theatre and music by and for children.”

While some of the activities require prior registration many others are open to all. Those who wish to participate can choose one registered activity and any number of unregistered/open activities. Children and their parents can easily participates in various open activities like pottery making, clay modeling, toy making, paper craft, free writing, kite flying, mehandi applying, face painting, skipping, charkha weaving, dancing, music and much more.

Children can also volunteer for various registered workshops and events like radio workshop, creative writing, photography, arts, T-shirt painting, science toys, nature walk, history walk, heritage, theatre workshops, handling puppets, learning astronomy and magic etc. Almost every registered activity enables the child to understand the concept thoroughly and proves to be helpful in the long run. For instance the Community Radio Workshop teaches the method of production of radio programs and clears doubts about the basics concept of script writing, voice recording, editing and production. The final product is then shared with the audience in the fair. Comics is another interesting activity that challenges the child to create satire and provides a solution on the day to day issues life. Students can also opt for Heritage & Nature Walk to get a simplified perspective of the historical monuments, flora and fauna around Teen Murti while understanding the significance of history, ecology and city design. Kabaad se Jugaad is another hip activity amongst children that teaches them to experiment and make meaningful use of seemingly useless things. The Science game activities, facilitated by the Nehru Planetarium educate kids about lights, rainbow, solar system etc. The energetic Theatre Workshops are a sure shot method to add confidence to the child’s personality. It not only enhances the creativity but also teaches team spirit. At the same time, this is also an opportunity to view the ongoing exhibition on Bhagat Singh’s life (Sarfaroshi Ki Tamanna) that is certain to bring perspective to the revolutionary’s role in modern context.

More significantly, Dhanak Din is designed not as a stand-alone event but a celebration punctuating the longer process of deep engagement that includes workshops and interactions with schools and children and would continue even after the fair. Young people who have demonstrated social leadership will also be the part of fair. Abiding by its pledge of providing a platform to the unprivileged, NMML ensures that kids and students from the remote parts of the country get a fair chance to participate and work hand-in hand with the kids from urban society. These participants are also felicitated with certificates based on their level of participation.

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About Nehru Memorial Museum & Library

Standing true to the spirit, wisdom and legacy of a great visionary Jawaharlal Nehru, the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library (NMML) is currently engaged in several innovative projects and programs. Besides being a premier center of academic excellence, the NMML has been evolving to be a vibrant and child-friendly place. Addressing the issues and concerns of children, it runs regular activities and events and develops meaningful partnerships with key stakeholders, such as teachers, parents, schools, educators, civil society organizations and government institutions.

The values and principles which Nehru stood for - peace, conflict resolution and dialogue, passionate secularism, equality, love for nature, accessibility, relating and engaging with people – is reflected in the content and design of the mela. This festival of colours and flowers is woven around the themes of harmony, peace, non-violence and diversity. Living together in harmony is the leit motif of the festival.


Tuesday, November 11, 2008

Gallery Espace participates in the first-ever Asian Contemporary Art Fair, Miami

Gallery Espace participates in the first-ever Asian Contemporary Art Fair, Miami

With Miami poised to host its first-ever international Asian contemporary art fair called ART ASIA from December 4, 2008 to December 7, 2008, one of Delhi’s leading galleries Gallery Espace announces its participation by taking work of three bright artists steadily climbing up the charts. Art Asia, Miami is slated to take place in the prestigious Wynwood Art District, located on NE 31st Street and Midtown Boulevard.

As the fair is a celebration of contemporary Asian art as a worldwide phenomenon, Gallery Espace has carefully selected works of three contemporary Indian artists to showcase at their booth. Works to be showcased at Art Asia Miami include NeoCamouflage, a new media installation by Vibha Galhotra, photographs from Ravi Agarwal’s latest series An Other Place, and satirical works on canvas and paper by Manjunath Kamath.

VIBHA GALHOTRA

Vibha Galhotra, Neo-Camouflage(Installation with digital prints, life-size mannequins & Fabric, 2008)

New Delhi based artist Vibha Galhotra is an ardent catcher of double speak. For her the urban sites are the realms of this double speak; they speak of progress and sell a Utopian dream. Each Utopia within it carries a dystopia, a suppressed zone of miseries and chaos. The fast pace of globalization and corporatization makes the individual in a society so giddy that he/she fails to realize these hints and double meanings.

In her work titled 'Camouflage' (and also 'Neo-Camouflage') we see the pictures of urban shanties becoming camouflaged clothes of the man living in peripheries. Camouflaging is a technique of survival for the lesser beings. But, seen in a different context, it is the uniform of power/state/army. Vibha uses this double meaning of camouflage as a medium and source to express how the people in peripheries are succumbed to their own shanty-ness.

RAVI AGARWAL

Ravi Agarwal, (From the series An Other Place, Archival Inkjet Prints, 2008)

Trained as an engineer and an environmentalist in the non-governmental sector, Ravi works tirelessly to suggest constructive ways in which burgeoning 'development' in the city can interact with the 'natural'. As a documentary photographer, Ravi's focus has been on environmental and labour issues and the changing face of urbanity. In bringing together the 'found' and the 'constructed', in the series of composite images-'Urbanscapes', and 'Mechanical Man', Metal Man', Ravi expands the possibilities offered by the photographic lens. The documentary and the performative collaborate in images that speak of dislocation, the alienation of the self, and the loss contained in uninhibited contemporary urban development. Delhi, the city that Ravi inhabits, seems eager to shed its past in its urgent pursuit of the future. As the city's richly layered histories are replaced by a temperamental commercial plasticity, Ravi's images serve as a residue of that which will soon be lost forever. However, the vibrant colours of the natural world seep into these photographs of desolate spaces and abandoned debris converting them into images of hope rather than loss.

'An Other Place' offers, as the title of the series suggests, an alternative space, a site that yearns to re-establish relationships with the organic, with that which is less ephemeral, a place where there is the possibility of "rediscovering a personal ecology".

MANJUNATH KAMATH

Manjunath Kamath, Igo Icons (Watercolour on paper, 16.5 x 14 in each (a set of 6))

Manjunath Kamath is a chronicler of our times. Like a skilful historian, he creates visual stories, constantly bringing images from the past and present. He, in his works traverses through memories, culturally accumulated visual facts and collective consciousness. Trained in sculpture and visual design, Manjunath in a sense designs his works with a lot of theatricality. Disparate images are culled from folk stories and maxims only to be juxtaposed with the familial and the familiar images.

By contrasting and juxtaposing images, Manjunath creates a visual vocabulary, which is particularly fresh in the Indian contemporary art scene. He narrates history with a jester's wisdom and vision. Lampoons and satires a play a predominant part in his works and this kind of trivializing of the past and the immediate becomes a powerful tool in Manjunath's hands for generating a visual discourse that goes against the norms of high-brow-ist aesthetic negotiations. A rebel in thoughts and creativity, Manjunath presents one of the unique features of Indian contemporary art.

Art Asia attempts to highlights the impact of Asian art on the art market in the U.S. and Europe and shows how over the past decade, artists from China, Japan, India, and South Korea have become among the most important of their generation, with major museum exhibitions, auctions, and wide media coverage. Art Asia aims to communicate the rich and exciting experience of South Asian Arts to the widest possible audience.

Thursday, November 6, 2008

Gallery Espace presents Rajendar Tiku's sculpture show

Using the defunct Kashmiri script in his work, Rajendar Tiku returns to the capital with dramatic sculptures that reflect resilience amidst tragedy

New Delhi: Gallery Espace presents “Metaphors in Matter by Rajendar Tiku”; a solo exhibition of twenty five sculptures in a range of mediums such as gold-gilded wood, bronze, stone and marble accompanied with works on paper and papyrus by Kashmir-based veteran artist Rajendar Tiku from November 12, 2008 to December 6, 2008 at Gallery Espace, Level 0-1, 16, Community Centre, New Friends Colony.

Says Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace, “Tiku’s works are metaphoric. By using a range of mediums, his works bear associations with architectural elements and the clever use of cracks and breaks in the block of stone creates an aura of a relic from the past. What strongly underscore his works are optimism, renewal and forgiveness with suggestions of survival under the most trying circumstances; an undying spirit that is waiting to germinate and take root.”

Born in Wadwan, Kashmir in 1953, Rajendar Tiku graduated from Kashmir University with science and then law. Simultaneously, he studied sculpture from the Institute of Music and Fine Arts, Srinagar and completed the course in 1978. Recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Grant (2005), Tiku is inspired by his surroundings especially the sacred. He says, “Being in Kashmir for the last fifteen years, I have witnessed great political problems but even during that violence, good still prevailed. Through my sculptures, I try to portray the good side that is prevalent in every human being.”

Further he adds, “My prime concern is to create an aura around my sculpture. That is why to make my visuals very strong, I use wood, gold, colours and lights to make it more dramatic.” Working for the last five years towards the current solo exhibition, Tiku has consciously worked towards transforming the ordinary into extraordinary, abstract into artworks and tragedy into resilience and beauty.

Exploring newer modes and materials to create images and forms of immense interest and significance, Tiku’s work are about colour and script. The works titled The Site - N bear the Sharda script - an almost defunct Kashmiri script that is now reserved nearly exclusively for Pandit ritualistic purposes. Its illegibility along with the use of colour, as in the Red Sprout or the Green Lantern, creates universality in the visual language that characterizes Tiku’s work and simultaneously evokes a sense of history.

Fascinated by how roadside objects are turned into shrines with mere belief, he forms abstract shapes out of bronze, gilding it with gold or by reversing the scale and carving out large rosary beads out of Devar stone (a stone mostly reserved for carving out deities), and titles them as Shrine or Stupa.

The work titled Sprout, a gold-gilded wood sculpture is based on Kashmiri poet Shama Kaul’s poem “Humne boyi hai apni asthiyon ki paniri – hum ugenge” which means we have sown the seedlings of our remains – we shall sprout again. Works like Hearth Back Home, My House in the Snow, or Snow Drops, are simple and designed in such a way that it not only generates silence but announces its presence as well.

A distinguished artist, Rajendar Kumar Tiku became the founder-secretary of S. P. College Artists' Association. Nominated as a juror in Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi (1998), he was conferred with the distinction of eminent artist by the Lalit Kala Akademi (1999). An extensive number of solo and group participations to his credit, Tiku has participated in numerous camps and symposia across the globe. Some of the prestigious awards he has received are - 8th Triennale India (International) Award for Sculpture (1994); National Award for Sculpture (1993); Jammu & Kashmir State Award for Sculpture (1979); Jammu & Kashmir State Award for Sculpture (1978).

In this show, one can admire the ethereal beauty of sculpture which is related to the medium as the body is related to soul (atma). In the absence of the one, the other loses its relevance. The exhibition introduces us to tradition and modernity in perfect harmony.

Kumar Gallery presents Prodosh Das' Retrospective

Kumar Gallery presents retrospective show of celebrated sculptor

Prodosh Das Gupta’s art spanning five decades

New Delhi: Kumar Gallery presents a retrospective show of sculptures and drawings spanning five decades (1940’s to 1990’s) by celebrated artist Prodosh Das Gupta from November 1, 2008 to November 15, 2008 at Kumar Gallery, Sunder Nagar, New Delhi.

A founder-member of the famous Calcutta Group (whose last living legend Paritosh Sen passed away last week), Prodosh Das Gupta brought the self-conscious individuality of a modern artist into sculpture. His love of the body- of man, woman or trees - links his work with the great tradition of Indian sculpture.

Says Virendra Kumar Jain, Founder Director, Kumar Gallery: “A creative artist can’t be held in bondage and Prodosh Das Gupta was no different in spirit from a freedom fighter. He inaugurated the new contemporary period of Indian sculpture. Though a great admirer of the concepts propounded by master sculptors in Europe, yet he was deeply rooted in the fibre of Indian philosophy. He was a profound scholar, educationist, poet and musician, writer on art and aesthetics. Till he passed away, he aspired for his work to achieve its true dimension. Kumar Gallery is also publishing a comprehensive book on the artist which will be available in the market as a limited edition copy.”

Prodosh Das Gupta was born in 1912 in Dhaka, now in Bangladesh and graduated from Calcutta University in 1932. Under the manifesto of ‘Art should be international and interdependent’ he co-founded the famed CALCUTTA GROUP in 1943. The other members of the group were Rathin Mitra, Prankrishan Pal, Sunil Madhav Sen, Nirode Mazumdar, Paritosh Sen, Kamla Das Gupta, Gobardhan Ash, Subho Tagore, Hemant Misra and Gopal Ghose. Although their individual stylistic approaches varied, they shared an innovative outlook and felt the need to enter the mainstream of world art, shaking off the tradition that no longer inspired them. The group chose to break away from the fashionable academic style in vogue at that time.

Prodosh Das Gupta was also the leading sculptor of the Calcutta Group which held its first exhibition in 1943-1944. Considered as one of the prominent pioneers who emerged at the juncture of India’s Independence, Prodosh Das Gupta reacted strongly against the decay that had set in modern life despite mankind's great achievements in the field of technology. Prodosh was not fooled by outer glitter. On the contrary, he had the power to contemplate, and be struck hard by the awesome surrounding universe, and had no wish to conquer it. His works represent love, the humane values and affection for fellow men. He built his sculptural forms through the modeling technique, i.e., using clay or plaster, but the resulting effect was ‘lithic’, that is as if they are carved from a stone block maintaining the essential simplicity of the human form and scooping out just what is redundant.

His studies in Paris gave his figures a romantic touch. However, his return to India in 1940, added new shape and significance to these myriad influences. His depiction of the horrors of the World War II and the Bengal famine of 1943 made an impact in the second phase of his career. Over a period of time, however, there crept in doubts about the emotional excesses and probable sentimentalism in these works. In his own words, “this led me to change my methods of treatment of material to a more restrained order of basic forms, often instilled with and integrated to themes from everyday life.”

The years 1946 to 1950 were the most crucial years of his career during which he had to struggle to break free from the methods and techniques of pure academia that were ingrained within him. The young Das Gupta, having recognised the basic truth about organic form both from his Indian roots as well as from the great masters who inspired him, tried to instil the same philosophy and formal quality into his own work. It was during this period that some of his best-known works, such as Head & Torso, Toilet, First Born, and Pounding Corn took birth. His dabbling in abstraction began in his early years with works like Twisted Form (bronze), Cactus Family, Volume in Three Masses, and Symphony in Curves (Cement).

His Suryamukhi is one of the most power packed epitome of his entire sculptural oeuvre. It suggests the posture of a reclining figure of a woman in a mass of solid heavy form. Though realistic in approach, the artist has taken liberty in exaggerating her body parts with a relatively large pair of breasts. The placement of the feet, the mass cut away in between to create a gaping arch, the torso too, a play of spheres and arches, defining breasts and arms, the head flattened from the top, compressed into the body to eliminate the possibility of a neck, together look probable of a wait in anticipation. The resulting posture is suggestive of ‘birth-giving’. It has the connotation of the potential fertile soil absorbing energy from the sun’s heat so as to fructify. The fullness reminds of early Indian stone sculptures of feminine forms from the Mauryan and Sunga periods (such as from Barhut and Sanchi stupas of the second and first century B.C.).

In his paper ink drawings, he would be light as a bird on wings; he also enjoyed the various textures of a material quite as a painter may. At the best of moments Prodosh delights us, especially in curvilinear and ovoid forms. In his figurative and ink drawings, Prodosh has been able to reveal the energy in the human figure by his own unique emphases, stresses and gestures. It is how some of his works become impressive, powerful and moving, like the Woman and Child series. Among the artist's other foremost works are the Egg Dance or the Egg Family where the figures symbolizes the human warmth and closeness. The Lying Amazon (1990) works out the form of 'superwoman', and which in effect is certainly most commanding.

Challenging this lengthy and arduous process of sculpture making, Prodosh also conveys his views in terms of Instant Expressionism. To quote Prodosh Das Gupta (text taken from the catalogue of One-man show, Dec 1979,Taj Art Gallery, Bombay): “In my recent experiments in sculpture, through a chance happening I hit upon the idea of making Instant Sculpture in a matter of a few minutes or even seconds. I made it a point to keep my mind blank and thus have the intuitive approach instead of the intellectual, by way of playing with a lump of clay without having any preconceived notion. In the process of the action ― squeezing, twisting, rolling, flattening, pinching etc. suddenly a beautiful form emerges, sometimes in a very realistic fashion, sometimes in a near-abstract form giving certain clues of verisimilitude ― a composition with human, animal or bird form. The interplay of gliding forms, one merging into another or one emerging from the other creates a sense of rhythm.”

In every case, whether it be his abstract sculptures, or his geometric simplifications of the late '70s and ‘80s, Prodosh’s works are governed by a precise rhythm that infuses them with life. Their dynamism, volume and swelling, potent with inner growth, remain the hallmarks of Prodosh Das Gupta's art. Thus we see that by creating a language of solids in space Prodosh Das Gupta eventually went on to become one of the country's foremost artists in the somewhat sparse field of contemporary Indian sculpture.

Prodosh Das Gupta passed away in 1994 and the current exhibition is, perhaps, the first mega-show to be mounted on the artist who deserved no less and much earlier!

Thursday, October 30, 2008

Art Konsult presents Atul Sinha’s functional sculptures

Art Konsult presents Atul Sinha’s functional sculptures

New Delhi: Art Konsult presents Atul Sinha: Space Beyond Innovation, a solo exhibition of wood sculptures by young and promising artist Atul Sinha from October 21, 2008 to November 10, 2008 at Art Konsult, 23, Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi.

Atul Sinha is an accomplished and innovative artist who is adept at ceramics, glass etchings, wood, bronze and papier mache sculptures and has painted in oils, acrylics, gouache, water colour and inks, even using kerosene and diesel in his early works. His capacity to use different materials has given him a rare insight into blending matter with aesthetics. His forte, however, is sculpture and what makes him stand out in the crowd of young artists pursuing all sorts of fads is the fact that he has consistently been producing ‘sculpture for use’.

Says Siddharth Tagore, Director, Art Konsult, “The beauty of Atul Sinha’s sculptures lies in that he does not mass produce and each sculpture becomes unique in that sense. His sculptures can be used as tables, chairs, racks and lamps but they remain sculptures and one understands their aesthetic essence better by coming into contact with them. He has been able to transcend the fine line between art and design and the current exhibition showcases how successful he has been in this endeavor.”

While some art experts have criticized the utilitarian concept of art, Atul Sinha continues to seek gratification in the utility aspect of his sculptures. Explains the artist, “When I start working on a sculpture, I only attempt to collate my expeditions and artistic capabilities into three-dimensional figures. But on the same hand, I don’t object when my buyers decide to make use of it. My studio is not a factory which makes multiple copies of one entity. Each work has an identity of its own and is just like any other piece of art.”

Inspired by his diverse travels, from the stark landscapes of Spiti Valley, Leh and Ladakh, the deserts of Jaisalmer to the hills of Uttarakhand, Atul Sinha brings out the best in wood, gently nudging it into shapes that evoke recognition of images from those lands.

His work Together & Forever, showcasing the face of a couple from the hills, is symbolic of man-woman relationship which is the essence of life. Similarly, Embrace shows a couple holding hands signifying the recognition of the self & human form. Nostalgia of Infinite is a boat that highlights a man’s craving to travel to distant places. Each sculpture denotes a feeling of harmony and peace and brings out the synergy between positive and negative spaces.

The concept of utility-in-art goes back to the Bauhaus artists of Pre-World War II Germany who saw no reason why goods for use should not be aesthetically good as well. They were the forerunners of the concept of designer products and what we call lifestyle today. Atul Sinha has gone beyond them by blending aesthetics and use in such a way that art doesn’t become design.

Atul’s ceramic bottles are collector’s pieces today, his lighted sculpture is in The National Gallery of Modern Art , and sculptures for use are in the collection of the Village Gallery, Gallery Ganesha, Arushi Arts, Delhi Art Gallery, Art Konsult, Rahul Art, CIMA and the Kumar Gallery, to name only a few. Apart from the gallery collections, collectors from Germany, USA, UK, Portugal, Chile, Angola and Cuba have bought his works over the years. It is interesting that his major collectors are all who are known to interest themselves in original and innovative art.

His present exhibition reflects not only the aspect of learning the qualities of a work of art through using it, but also his insight into three-dimensionality and the integration of light and shadow, positive and negative space in it to create a unique environment around each work. That is why his work is best looked at by moving round it and observing its changing forms from different angles. To make this process more engrossing, Atul says, “I have evolved a repertoire of multiple textures, levels of treatment of the layers and grain of wood and figurative elements as diacritical marks to guide the viewer along the way.”

Adds Siddharth Tagore, “This exhibition of sculptures reflects the self confidence we have today in our expression and its relevance to the future. The works reflect not only innovativeness and originality, but also the remarkable continuity that the sculptor has shown, which is important for an artist to be worth collecting and investing in.”

These qualities of Atul’s have been recognized, as a result of which his art is known and respected among a wide range of connoisseurs and collectors. It is also an advance on his earlier work, involving many more elements that are marshaled together to give us a complex picture of life in a framework of space that is structured and yet in motion; of three dimensionality that becomes a two-dimensional concept; and of touch and feeling awakening to new areas of visual experience in the viewer. At the same time his art is iconic without being reverential, figurative without being topical and infused with liveliness without being gimmicky. This is why it has a future and a place in the ongoing saga of our contemporary art.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Delhi Art Gallery presents Frame, Figure, Field

Delhi Art Gallery presents a blend of 20th century Modern & Contemporary Art practices in Frame. Figure. Field

New Delhi: Delhi Art Gallery presents Frame. Figure. Field; a group show of an eclectic collection of artworks by twenty-two artists from October 18, 2008 to November 20, 2008 at Delhi Art Gallery, 11 Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi. The show highlights some of the pictorial propositions manifested in the 20th century Modern Indian painting and its overlapping with contemporary art practice. The exhibition will be accompanied with a well illustrated catalogue with essays by art critic and independent curator Roobina Karode.

The participating artists include Shobha Broota, Avinash Chandra, Amitava Das, C Douglas, Shanti Dave, Jaya Ganguly, Sheela Gowda, Satish Gujral, M F Husain, P Khemraj, Ambadas Khobragade, Sovan Kumar, Altaf Mohammedi, Rabin Mondal, Gogi Saroj Pal, Sohan Qadri, G R Santosh, Paritosh Sen, Nataraj Sharma, F N Souza, Vivan Sundaram and Vasudha Thozhur.

Says Ashish Anand, Director, Delhi Art Gallery: “The exhibition highlights the constant challenge for the medium of painting in present times to reinvent itself and reconfigure meaningful equations between the frame, figure and the pictorial field. It emphasizes on the co-existence of a range of options with artists, especially from the 1970s onwards.”

The works in the exhibition embody radical acts performed by artists within the pictorial frame or field. The purpose of exhibition is not to display brilliant rendering and drafting skills but to attempt the shaping of a personal language that translates formal, conceptual as well as thematic concerns into creative expression. The show brings together expertise of artists from different generations and different regions. For instance, while veteran artist Ambadas Khobragade brings out non-representational genre on canvas, young artist Sovan Kumar utilizes the truck as the main motif for a tongue-in-check portrayal of the destruction of the rural life. Late artist P. Khemraj ploughs the vast terrain of his canvas titled Charpai that communicates depth, surface, illusion, movement and mystery within the medium of painting. Veteran artist Satish Gujral blurs the divide between painting and sculpture through his architectonic sculptural piece meant to be hung on the wall in the manner of painting. Yet another veteran artist Sohan Qadri makes use of challenging techniques in painting. He allows the colour to percolate through the thick hand-made paper he paints on, allowing forms to develop on the other side that he then textures by tearing and blending the surface.


Looking at the works of some women artists, one experiences an extremely vivid response to space, articulated through feelings of nostalgia, claustrophobia or longing. In Gogi Saroj Pal’s paintings, woman’s desire vis-à-vis prescribed societal roles is scrutinized quite persistently. Often her female figures acquire wings or extra limbs, expressing unspoken desires or predicament. In Valley of Flowers, Gogi has transformed the pictorial space into dreamy landscape, the crimson colour representing both the earth and sky in which the female protagonist appears in effortless flight. Acquiring cloud-like wings, her airborne body moves gracefully above the infinite landscape that carries no mark of place or people. While Gogi revels in the openness of the imaginative landscape, Vasudha Thozhur’s jigsaw composition in Still Life with Cat and Bananas presents an unsorted view of life. The crowded spaces of memories and imagination reveal conflicting emotions of desire and dilemma, joy and dread with symbols of fecundity and nurture scattered all over. Inventing ripped anatomies, Jaya Ganguly’s audacious display of disarticulations on the female form symbolizes an inquiry into the ‘unspoken’ depths that engulf a woman’s life. The female body here is not merely a form but bearer of pain, conflict and stressful situations. The ugliness of decadent female flesh represents the body as a speaking subject rather than an object of male gaze. Artist Shobha Broota, one of the strong feminine artists of Indian abstraction, uses the very basic geometric forms to visualize the unseen and links soul, body and mind in their abstract renditions.


Thus, these artists formulate an interesting mix, especially the ones who have now embraced other media and formats, using computer generated imagery, organic and recycled materials and the sculptural-installation format. This is surely an opportunity to see the early works of Vivan Sundaram, Shanti Dave, Sheela Gowda and some relatively recent works by Nataraj Sharma, Sovan Kumar and Jaya Ganguly.

While artists in present times move on to explore and master new media and formats in their art practice, using the video, photograph and site-specific installations, the medium of painting faces a constant challenge to reinvent itself and reconfigure meaningful equations between the frame, figure, and the pictorial field.

Therefore, this group show at Delhi Art Gallery is well worth a visit!



Thursday, October 16, 2008

Aakriti Art Gallery presents Gen Next aritsts


Gen Next, the annual show of the Aakriti Art Gallery was conceived with the sole idea of promoting contemporary artists below forty years of age. Gen Next shows have revolutionized the concept of curatorial endeavor and brought about a change in the approach to the way of seeing. The show that was initiated in 2006 as the first anniversary celebration of the Aakriti Art Gallery, the core concentration was led by the commitment to promote young talent and project their works. It has been the motto of this gallery since foundation to search for novel possibilities and unique ideas, thus to conceptualize a different language in showcasing and endorsing artworks.

Among its leading accomplishments in such a small span of time, the show ‘Gen Next’ holds a key role to enunciate the discursive platform in integrating the dynamism of creative minds beyond borders. Though the first year of Gen Next saw the union of artists of different faculties of visual arts mainly from the eastern fringe of the country that too prominently from Kolkata itself, the Gen Next II led the city as the most happening spot of promoting art, creating a distinguished position in the country; thus evolving a new wave in the art world. In 2007, the second Gen Next was an elaborative effort to profoundly bring in the young artists from all over the country to react on a single dais. It exploded in the form of a collective creative energy where thirty-seven young minds of the present generation expressed their artistic ventures at a single go. Gen Next II reached out to the vibrant audience of the country that shared the most effervescent experience in the medley of expressions with innovation, experimentation and freshness.

It was the success of the first Gen Next that encouraged us to go for the second dive. It’s no tall claim but in actual facts and figures that the first two Gen Next have not only given birth to a new discourse of articulating and showcasing artworks but also led to the establishment of a number of young artists with a rising graph in their artistic career including the attainment of international fame. Few among them like Farhad Hussain, Birendra Pani , Debraj Goswami , Barun Chowdhury amongst others are already auction listed. Now what makes Gen Next III a call of the day goes without any explanation!

Gen Next III has been designed in an exclusive way with exhibition, workshop and open interactive sessions to form a complete panorama lifting this event to an international height. This is the first ever time that foreign artists from different continents are joining the show through an arduous selection process and not by any request or invitation. Around eight hundred entries had been received from all over the globe where artists below forty years of age had sent their profile and current works to get entry in the selection process. A panel of experts comprising artists, critics, and connoisseurs went for a rigorous grueling of their creative effort and finally forty out of them have been given the opportunity to participate in this alluring platform. According to Vikram Bachhawat , Director, Aakriti Art Gallery, “Gen Next III will display works selected after thorough assessment , taking into account diverse genre and visual aesthetics, while offering the viewer an enlightening experience “.

Gen Next III holds the significance of a global phenomenon in outlining the cultural contour through different forms of visual arts. This time the exhibition will not only show paintings, sculptures, textile and fine prints but also include photography and video art, thus expanding the boundary of the conventional faculties of visual arts. Among the forty participating artists, twenty-nine come from different corners of India, and the rest eleven from USA (3), Italy (1), Poland (1), Canada (1), France (1), Austria (1), Bnagladesh (1), Pakistan (1) and Brazil (1). Only a handful of five among them are from Kolkata. And the most intriguing part of the third Gen Next is that most of the artists are getting the opportunity to open up in this type of exhilarating event of international stature for the first time, thus making the whole affair more challenging than ever.

Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Monday, October 13, 2008

Gallery Threshold presents Prithpal Singh Ladi

Prithpal Singh Ladi returns after a decade with sculptures that

still have the power to shock and awe!

New Delhi, October 15, 2008: Gallery Threshold hosted a cocktail preview of Logic 'il' Logic, a sculpture show by artist Prithpal Singh Ladi who is back with a bang after a self-imposed hiatus of almost a decade. His eclectic sculptures display the usage of found material like broken tube-lights, fused bulbs, old chandeliers, scraps of old trophies, gemstones and metal to exhibit beauty in eccentricity. The show is on from October 16, 2008 till November 12, 2008 at Gallery Threshold, F-213 A, Lado Sarai, New Delhi. The show can be simultaneously viewed at www.gallerythreshold.com.


Present on the event were artists Shamshad Hussain, Gopi Gajwani, Vivan Sundaram, Ram Rehman, Prithpal Singh Ladi, Dharmendra Rathore, Pratul Dash, Manu Parekh with wife Madhvi Parekh, Amitava Das with wife Mona Rai, Subroto Kundu with wife Nupur Kundu, Art Curator Alka Pande, Prima Kurien, Alka Raghuvanshi, Sushma Bahl, Shukla Sawant and art critic Suneet Chopra.


Explained Tunty Chauhan, Director, Gallery Threshold: “Prithpal Singh Ladi was quite the shooting star when he appeared on the horizon around a decade ago, then wasn't heard of much, and has recently come back into the reckoning with his new works. Ladi makes sculptures that are restlessly rooted in a pervasive multitude of life's transforming manifestations. The art world awaits his return with curiosity, anticipation and bated breath.”


At 53, Ladi's works continue to exhibit his penchant for the eccentric and strange and reflect his constant struggle to come to terms with personal loss far beyond the ordinary. Almost every work is a tribute to the suffering of a family member but it is the artist’s masterly imagination at using material that redeems the work from being merely a personal indulgence. Though each sculpture is almost a condensed narrative that begins with an autobiographical tinge, it soon grows into a larger picture. Through intricately detailed dragonflies and hindless frogs, mechanical devices like an antique Mercedes typewriter, limp human figures in postures of obeisance, Ladi infuses his sculptures with a queer humor that enables the viewer to access them, moving effortlessly from the familiar to the fantastic, or from the apparent to the suggested.

Take his series Jewel Insects for instance. Large dragonflies made of glass, gemstones and metal are reference to his childhood years spent in Shillong replete with freedom of creativity and innocence which now he feels are “under siege”. Or the sculpture titled Replotted (fibre glass) where a bemused man tries to hold down a fossilized butterfly that has almost escaped his grasp. Says Ladi: “My father was a famed jeweller who was modern in outlook and gave me the freedom to choose art when the rest of the family was either doctors or engineers. When I lost him to cancer, I almost went into hiding fighting my own internal demons. I think I’m now ready to face the art world with work which will tell not only my story but also of so many others who we call the ‘common man’.”


In another sculpture tiled Type Muskan, Ladi has used an antique typewriter from the makers of Mercedes to create what he calls a ‘jungle story’ for his 10-year-old son Muskan. So, one can find desolate animal figures all telling their tale of nature being lost to deforestation and commercialisation. “I am revisiting my childhood years through my son. Just like a child, I learn everyday to resurrect dead material that is no longer of any use. Glass of whiskey bottles, broken tube-lights, fused bulbs, old chandeliers and scraps of old trophies all find their way into my work one way or the other. Sometimes, I get carried way too,” he smiles. What’s interesting is one can dismantle the sculpture to use the typewriter as an original, a technique the sculptor could master because of his science background in college.

Just as he had broken all norms of sculptural attitude during his student days in Baroda (“All our teachers could teach us was to make buffaloes and elephants,” he complains”), Ladi still retains the rebellious streak in him. As is evident in his work titled “And Look Who Walks The Ramp” and “Judicious” where he makes a comment both on fashion and judiciary!

Certainly, a much-awaited show that’s a must-visit!

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Ladi was born in 1955, In Shillong. He studied sculpture with distinction at the M.S. University, Baroda, 1981. He received a National Lalit Kala Akademi award, 1981, Gujarat LKA awards, 1978, 1988 and the inaugural Bendre Husain Award, 1989, also scholarships including one to the Ecole Superieure des Beaux Arts, Paris, 1981-82. He taught sculpture at the School of Architecture, Ahmedabad and NIFT, New Delhi