Gallery Espace hosts Amit Ambalal's Recent works

Gallery Espace Presents Veteran Artist Amit Ambalal’s Recent Works

Inspired by Bali

New Delhi: Gallery Espace presents “Recent works by Amit Ambalal”; a solo exhibition of more than twenty new works (paintings in oil on canvas & sculptures in bronze) by Ahmedabad-based veteran artist Amit Ambalal from July 21, 2008 to August 12, 2008 at Gallery Espace, Level 0-1, 16, Community Centre, New Friends Colony. The exhibition will be accompanied by a well-documented book on the artist’s stylistic oeuvre by critic and art historian, Gayatri Sinha.

Says Ms. Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace: “Ambalal’s work may be seen within a critical phase of Indian modernity, his adaptations and resistance, as he seeks to create a language that is both recognizable and intensely personal.”

Born in Ahmedabad in 1943, Amit Ambalal qualified in Arts, Commerce and Law to become a businessman before taking up painting full time in 1979. So taken in was he by his childhood dream of becoming a painter that he sold off his family-owned business (textile mill) in 1977 to pursue this passion. Trained under veteran artist and teacher Chhaganlal Jadhav, Amit’s engagement with the arts extends to a wide ground of historical research, documentation and collection and his particular interest in the Nathdwara School of Painting. He has to his credit a book on the subject, Krishna as Shrinathji - Rajasthani Paintings from Nathdwara, published by Mapin in 1987, followed in 1989 by an exhibition of Nathdwara paintings from his collection. His work can basically be divided into two categories. One has a contemporary approach to tradition via the popular religious traditions. And the other is the historical Rajasthani Nathdwara devotional paintings he has been creating for the last two decades now. Part of his work also revolves around human drama.

Amit Ambalal occupies a singular position as a satirist-painter who develops parody, caricature and mimicry into visual tropes. He usually works from the familiar and the domestic outwards, tentatively inhabiting unfamiliar worlds. In the present paintings, we may participate in his elliptical style of autobiographical narrative with Amit, his wife Raksha and their dog Dusky and the monkey god Hanuman – figures from known and imagined spaces, who confront change like brave if somewhat, bewildered travelers. The outcome is an alchemic mix of ideas that fosters a sense of dislocation.

The accompanying publication seeks to locate Amit Ambalal within a particular framework: his own roots in a mercantile family with strong traditions of devotion, his seminal research into the visually opulent 19^th century school of Krishna as Shrinathji and the reappearance of this twinned strain through his critique of figures of authority and faith. It covers nearly four decades of a practice marked by keen observation that is enriched through references to signs and visual coda, colloquial references and aphorisms.

A prosperous society embedded in a destitute society is thus oft the focus of his work. His portraits of India are simple and a direct means of him coming to terms with the horror he sees around him. He has a unique ability of perceiving quirks and flaws in human behavior and making them part of his great pictorial scheme on canvas. It’s often been noticed in his canvases that where his faces, body and gestures are devices of his irony, it's the color, design and texture that gives his paintings the light and easy mood.

Hypocrisy doesn't bother him, he prefers to splash it on canvas and mock the world thus. Says he, "I don't decide what to paint before hand, the initial idea may be from a newspaper photograph I have seen in the morning or an antique sculpture. Then as I am painting something starts to grow inside that canvas and that takes on the final form on the canvas.”

Be it historical or contemporary, his work is paired with the critical, irreverent humorist creating a satirical representation of the everyday and the divine, filled with eccentric human and animal protagonists. Works titled ‘Painted Tigers Don’t Bite’, ‘V Fall Victory’, ‘Nat-Raj’, ‘Kaun Hai’, ‘Barking Dogs Do Bite’, ‘Jacuzzi In Jurassic Park’ & ‘Pee-Cow’ all showcase a no-nonsense double-take on a nonsensical universe populated by the beautifully contorted and attenuated bodies of his idiosyncratic protagonists, human and otherwise.

The works thus have a directness of appeal which gives it an assertive quality. His practice of figuration seems to enjoy a rare freedom perhaps not available to those with the weight of academic training on their shoulders. Yet it is not out of naiveté that the artist draws in his characteristic manner. Rather, it is a carefully devised figuration that he makes use of; the deceptive looseness of line in his work is perhaps matched only by the tautness of his terse commentary.

A large part of Amit’s work is in watercolors- a medium he terms as ‘friendly – guiding you where to stop’. However, this current exhibition will showcase his recent works in the oil medium- a part of a series influenced by his recent trips to South East Asia- particularly Bali where he was invited for an artist residency. To quote the artist, “The exotic island of Bali has always intrigued me with its underlying likeness with our own visual culture. The legends of Mahabharata and Ramayana are brought to life in the pictorial images that we see in Far East as also the Ajanta and Ellora Caves of India. What is indeed fascinating about the Far East Culture is the harmonious relationship that man shares with nature resonating his acceptance to all its forms, be it gods or demons. Vivid images of graceful women in temple processions and idiosyncratic protagonists, human and otherwise, thus find way on to my picture plane.”

Amit Ambalal held the first solo exhibition of his work at the Hutheesing Visual Arts Center in Ahmedabad in 1980, and has had numerous solo shows through the length and breadth of the country, since. His work has also been represented in several group exhibitions in India, including the Sixth Triennial - India, 1986, and the Bharat Bhavan Biennale, 1990; and abroad in Amsterdam, Harvard and Perth, amongst others. Winner of the Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, Amit’s works feature prominently in noteworthy public and private collections like the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum, London, amongst others. The artist lives and works in Ahmedabad.