Closing Party - Art Summit

Gallery Espace Hosts The Closing Party for Art Summit with a

preview of a drawing show titled Keep Drawing!

To celebrate the closing ceremony of India Art Summit 2008, Gallery Espace recently hosted a cocktail party on Sunday evening which coincided with the preview of ‘Keep Drawing!’ - a group exhibition of drawings by 34 eminent artists, conceptualized and designed by prominent artist Chintan Upadhyay. The works are on view from August 25, 2008 to September 13, 2008 at Gallery Espace, 16 Community Centre, New Friends Colony.

The live jazz performance and poetic verses by Murad Ali made the night even more memorable. Present on the event were Gallery Espace Director Renu Modi, Sotheby’s Deputy Chairman Henry Snyed, fashion designer Rohit Gandhi, theatre actor Sita Raina and Murad Ali, NGMA Director Rajeev Lochan with wife Yuriko Lochan, artists Satish Gujral with wife Kiran, Manu Parekh with wife Madhavi, Satish Gupta with wife Ameeta, Krishen Khanna, Subodh Gupta, Gopi Gajwani, Vivan Sundaram, Amitava Das, Chintan Upadhyay, Prayag Shukla, Manjunath Kamath, Ram Rahman, Veer Munshi, Nupur Kundu & Mekhala Bahl, cartoonist Sudhir Tailang, curator Ina Puri, Sunaina Anand, Poonam Sarin & Aarti Sarin Jain, art collectors Supriya Trikha & Anand Narayanan.

Said Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace: “All works in this exhibition are of an identical size of 5 feet by 3 feet and displayed in a manner such that one work merges into the next… transforming the entire exhibition into an integrated installation and thus challenging the audience to decipher the exhibit from the exhibition.”

INDIA ART SUMMIT

‘Outside influences’, ‘security concerns’ keep Husain out of India Art Summit

Vandana Kalra

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New Delhi, August 17 When the India Art Summit opens in the Capital on August 22, a conspicuous absence in the three-day festival will be the canvases of MF Husain.

“It was a collective decision taken because of certain outside influences and due to collective security concerns. We respect the legendary artist and his work,” says Neha Kirpal, associate summit director, as she takes care of last minute preparations before an expected 6,000 visitors troupe into hall number 8 and 9 of Pragati Maidan.

“We are disappointed on being denied the permission to include MF Husain. But we have to adhere to the decision and exhibit the works by the rest of the artists,” says Delhi Art Gallery director Ashish Anand.

Anand himself will participate in the summit with two stalls showcasing works of ten artists, including FN Souza, SH Raza, Sohan Qadri, Himmat Shah and Velu Viswanadhan.

“The fair is an important way to create art awareness and meet different people from the art fraternity,” says Anand, “and we are looking forward to that interaction.”

With each gallery given an option on the choice of wall colour and theme, the hues on palette will range from red to black at the Nature Morte stall to an ambience akin to a tunnel created by Palette Art Gallery.

Formal seminars, meanwhile, have also been organised to discuss art-related issues and concerns, with topics varying from “Growth and Development of Indian Art” to “Art appreciation and Investment” and “Indian art for the global art market”.

The panelists will include Rajeev Lochan, director, National Gallery of Modern Art, Robert Storr, dean, Yale School of Art, Pooja Sood, chairperson, Khoj Artists Association and Philip Hoffman, chief executive, Fine Art Fund. “The experts will help provide a holistic view,” says Kirpal.

A nod of approval comes from Vikram Bachhawat, director of Kolkata-based Emami Chisel Art: “There is a need within the community to understand the difficulties faced by the growing trade. Issues relating to fakes and interstate trading needs to be sorted out. This can only happen if trade is united and there are more summits in the country.”

But for now, the curtains are still to go up on the first year of the India Art Summit — sans one of the best-known faces of Indian art.

Your Guide
* The three-day pass for the fair costs Rs 200
* Available at the venue will be a catalogue of participating galleries, artists and the summit schedule. This can be purchased for Rs 200
* Cars will be allowed to drive in till the gate of the hall

MORE INFORMATION LOG ON TO http://www.expressindia.com/latest-news/Outside-influences-security-concerns-keep-Husain-out-of-India-Art-Summit/349966/

Gallery Espace presents Keep Drawing

Gallery Espace Brings Keep Drawing! In a Unique Installation of Myriad Lines

New Delhi: Gallery Espace presents ‘Keep Drawing!’ - a group exhibition of drawings by 34 eminent artists, from August 25, 2008 to September 13, 2008 at Gallery Espace, 16 Community Centre, New Friends Colony.

The participating artists in the exhibition include Amitava Das, Birendra Pani, Chinmoy Pramanik, Chintan Upadhyay, Dilip Chobisa, G R Iranna, George Martin, Gigi Scaria, Gopi Gajwani, Jeram Patel, Karl Antao, Komudi, M.Sashidharan, Mahula Ghosh, Manish Sharma, Manjunath Kamath, Mekhala Bahl, Mona Rai, Owais Hussain, Probir Gupta, Rajan M Krishnan, Reji Arackal, Sanjiv Khandekar, Sanjive Sonpimpare, Shreyas Karle, Sindhu R.V, Soumen Das, Tanmoy Samanta, Vasudevan Akkitam, Veer Munshi, Vibha Galhotra, Walter D’Souza, Yashwant Deshmukh, and Yogesh Rawal.

Says Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace: “Keep Drawing! has been conceptualized and designed by the prominent contemporary artist Chintan Upadhyay, known for shocking viewers out of their comfort zone. All works in this exhibition will be of an identical size of 5’ x 3’ and will be displayed in a manner such that one work will merge into the next… transforming the entire exhibition into an integrated installation and thus challenging the audience to decipher the exhibit from the exhibition.”

This is not the first time, however, that Gallery Espace brings to the viewers a stylishly designed show of drawings. Its tryst with this art form, which has now become an important part of any gallery’s repertoire, began way back in 1994 when Gallery Espace held its first highly successful drawings show of works by 80 artists curated by Prayag Shukla.

Subsequently, Espace has had a few significant exhibitions of drawings and works on paper, namely, In Conversation (2001 – sketchbooks and works on paper by 26 artists, curated by Gayatri Sinha), The Lyric Line (2005 – drawings by 18 senior contemporary Indian artists) and You Shall Remain Hidden… (2007 – Works on paper by Amitava from 1970 to 2007.

Placing in context the art of drawing, says curator and art critic, Sunil Mehra: “Drawings provide voyeuristic pleasure through which the artist stands revealed…. The sketch scribbled in here, then smudged over…. The omissions tell you as much about the artistic mind as the inclusions.” Likewise, artist Amitava Das further maintains that drawing is a “very intimate medium”. “In drawing,” he says, “there is no point of departure: I can start from a corner or the centre.” He finds drawing to be more adventurous, “like a journey to the unknown.” For him it is a method that allows him to develop a future language and as for curator Prayag Shukla, “drawing remains a constant preoccupation of many artists, throughout the world. And the role of the line has not been minimized in any way. I curated a drawings show for Espace in 1994 and fourteen years down the line, this still holds true.”

Keep Drawing! spans a wide-ranging collection in the genre of contemporary drawing, and will open in an elegant ambience over cocktails and live music with a Jazz pianist

Incredible Sculptures

Ron Mueck's Amazing Sculptures!!

Ron Mueck is a London-based photo-realist artist. Born in Melbourne, Australia, to parents who were toy makers, he labored on children's television shows for 15 years before working in special effects for such films as Labyrinth, a 1986 fantasy epic starring David Bowie. Eventually Mueck concluded that photography pretty much destroys the physical presence of the original object, and so he turned to fine art and sculpture. In the early 1990's, still in his advertising days, Mueck was commissioned to make something highly realistic, and was wondering what material would do the trick. Latex was the usual, but he wanted something harder, more precise. Luckily, he saw a little architectural decor on the wall of a boutique and inquired as to the nice, pink stuff's nature. Fiberglass resin was the answer, and Mueck has made it his bronze and marble ever since.

Gallery Espace presents Video Wednesday

From Inner Demons to Demolitions: Gallery Espace Explores Life-Altering Issues in Video Art by four young women artists with Video Wednesday On August 27

New Delhi: After the successful launch of its path-breaking art presentation on video art last month, Gallery Espace now presents the second edition of VIDEO WEDNESDAY on Wednesday, August 27, 2008 as part of its innovative ‘Reach Out’ programme at Gallery Espace, 16, Community Centre, New Friends Colony.

Says Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace: “This unique project aims to reach out to the local communities and engage them with cutting edge new media art. As a gallery that promotes modern, contemporary and cutting edge art, we take this opportunity to exclusively focus on video art. ‘Video Wednesday’ will showcase work of four contemporary Indian video artists on the last Wednesday of every month. Devised by the expert team of Gallery Espace, Video Wednesday also includes active participation of eminent artists, curators, critics and consultants. By the end of twelve such programs, a well documented book will be published on the video works and the artists who have already participated in this programme.”

Gallery Espace also strives to make each presentation unique for the viewer. For instance, if the debut presentation last month showcased works of male video artists (Tushar Joag, Ranbir Kaleka, Vishal Dar and Gigi Scaria), the four contemporary video artists whose work will be showcased during the forthcoming ‘Video Wednesday’ on August 27 are women - Hemali Bhuta, Koumudi Patil, Rohini Devasher and Sharmila Samant.

Hemali Bhuta’s The Movement, a 5-minute video, is a documentation of an installation. It talks about the movement of forms floating in space. A form - that of a mere rubber-band, a mundane object - could be observed as and translated into a work of art. The horizontals and the verticals, like the warp and the weft, take us through an adventurous roller-coaster ride into a woven sea of patterns, changing due to the overlapping layers. The curtain of the undercurrent movement, partially visible, reveals itself at times, as though playing hide-and-seek, creating a sense of mystery. It showcases buoyancy, a contradiction that of gravity and against gravity; at the same time, it also gives a sense of weight.

Says Hemali Bhuta: “This work intends to take one on a personal voyage of thoughts and forms. The sound in the background, of the vehicles of the sea, tempts you to swim deeper into the sea in search of their existence. One rolls into this current, feeling its own presence manifested in these light weighted rubbers, as though heavy bodies filled with space, floating on the bed of the space. This work is basically a narration, a process of one multiplying into many, of reproduction, of fertility, of communion. Further, it questions the importance of each in a crowd and about the life of a rubber-band.”

Koumudi Patil’s Breathing In - Breathing Out, a 5-minute, 9-second black & white experimental video with sound, is an abstract experiential work that has been visualised more as a meditative painting than as a motion picture. The work is a fusion of an abstract imagery that has been juxtaposed with a ‘found’ voice over of the breathing technique of Pranayama from the classes of the Yoga teacher- Eoen Finn. The video, expresses the mutually existing principles of life (breathing in & breathing out) and death (not breathing in & not breathing out) through the disjunction of the black visuals against the serene sound of Pranayama (breathing technique)

Explains Koumudi Patil: “The work is inspired from my confession of the guilt of the death of two birds through my hands. Through the 9 months of shooting and simultaneous editing of my frenzied eyes that represented the birds, my work gradually transformed into a silent acceptance of the continual strife between sustenance and destruction in life. I have shot and performed for this video at the same time. The process required me to observe my own body as an object of performance to be viewed and captured in a frame without forgetting the emotions and guilt attached to it from the past. The work aspires to communicate a meditative feeling concluding in a haiku that essentially life is all about breathing in and breathing out.”

Rohini Devasher’s Ghosts in the Machine explores the generative possibilities of video feedback. Video feedback is capable of a wealth of complex imagery all of which is created by pointing a DV camera at its own output on a TV screen. The images formed within this feedback loop are fantastic plant structures, tree forms, bacteria, fractal snowflakes, mimic biological life. They are not imposed from the outside in any way and are thus ghosts within the machine.

Constructed of 165 individual layers of video, Ghosts.. charts a journey of artificial evolution. The basic structures and forms are generated from initially random processes via video feedback. These are then layered to construct a slowly evolving composite form that increases in morphological complexity, offering insights into the intricacy lurking within nature's processes.

Sharmila Samant’s Shanghai Tales, 2006, a 13-minute video, is a dramatization of actual accounts, narrated by children affected by the demolitions. Says Sharmila Samat: “Unfortunately, the Mumbai metropolis aims at transforming itself into a Singapore or Shanghai through grand mega city projects for improving infrastructure. The almost daily migration of people into Mumbai has also led to over-crowding, and the civic body is unable to provide basic infrastructure leading to proliferation of slums. 3.5 million slum inhabitants occupy 8,000 acres of land which means that two out of every five slum dwellers lives in an area with a density of 400 persons per acre. An estimated 55% of the city population lives in slums on just 11% of the city’s land.”

Sharmila further explains that a balanced approach to urban development remains an ‘abandoned’ agenda. From November 2004 onwards, Mumbai has witnessed the most brutal and violent slum demolitions on a massive scale. More than 90,000 hutments have been razed to the ground, of which around 60% of the people had names included in the voters’ list. Taking an average of two children per household, around 1,80,000 children are rendered homeless, around 64% of these are out of school, insecure and vulnerable, succumbing to extreme climatic conditions.”

Contemporary Indian Art has reached international heights in the recent years. The international art market is looking towards India for the new and cutting edge art. Many contemporary Indian artists have already been doing cutting edge new media art for the last few years. However, apart from the exhibition projects, no concerted effort has been taken by any gallery to showcase exclusive video projects and make it reach out to the common art loving public in the city. Video Wednesday in this sense, has proved to be a path breaker towards reaching out the common with cutting edge new media art.

The Reach Out program of the gallery includes, apart from involving local communities and art students with the new media art, instituting awards for upcoming art talents, documentation and library for public reference.

Preview Party-‘P. Khemraj – Wings of Desire

New Delhi, August 9, 2008: Delhi Art Gallery hosted a preview of ‘P. Khemraj – Wings of Desire; a retrospective show of artworks spanning four decades by veteran artist P. Khemraj. The works will be on view for public from August 11, 2008 to September 5, 2008 at Delhi Art Gallery, 11, Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi. This exhibition will showcase more than fifty works in acrylic, pen and ink on paper, oil, pen and ink on canvas, ink, watercolour, acrylic and gold paint on ivory board and mixed media on mount board. Ashish Anand of Delhi Art Gallery also released a 162-page comprehensive book on the artist. The gallery also showcased a video presentation of artist’s works prepared by P Khemraj’s daughter Dharna Jaisinghani.

Present on the event were NGMA Director Rajeev Lochan, ace photographer Raghu Rai, art critic Keshav Malik, Vinod Bhardwaj, artists Amrut Patel, Shamshad Hussain, Gopi Gajwani, O.P. Sharma, Sangeeta Gupta, Sovan Kumar and Sudip Roy.

Your Chance to BID or BUY

This Is Your Chance to BID or BUY:

Emami Chisel Art Offers the best of Indian Contemporary Art

at the India Art Summit

New Delhi: If you missed the immensely successful Emami Chisel Art’s (ECA) debut auction in February this year, where Husain’s ‘Tribute to Hashmi’ fetched a record-breaking Rs 10 crore and Tyeb Mehta’s ‘Kali III’ fetched 4.4 crore, here is your chance to register yourself as a bidder for the forthcoming ECA auction during the India Art Summit at Pragati Maidan from August 22, 2008 to August 24, 2008.

Emami Chisel Art Auction House is a joint venture between the Rs 1,500-crore turnover personal health care major Emami Group and Chisel Crafts, the parent company of the Kolkata-based Aakriti Art Gallery. Emami Chisel Art now announces its second auction on ‘Indian Contemporary and Modern Art’ to be held on November 8, 2008 in Kolkata. The auction is tipped to have a spread of about 90-100 lots covering modern and contemporary artists.

Says Vikram Bachhawat, Director, Emami Chisel Art: “I am participating in the Art Summit to give exposure to new artists to the international visitors while also hoping to widen my own knowledge base about various artists from other locations.”

What’s interesting is that while art galleries are viewing the Summit as a means to spread awareness, auction house Emami Chisel Art is hoping to use this platform to attract bidders who would like to participate in their upcoming November auction.

The online bidding commences from the November 3, 2008 and continue till the hammer finally comes down on November 8, 2008. Interested bidders can collect registration forms from the ECA stall during the Art Summit. These registration forms will provide an opportunity to ECA to identify a bidder and tabulate the bidder’s relevant details before the auction commences.

ECA is accepting works of artists of Indian origin including paintings, sculptures, drawings etc. from galleries, private collectors & artists. Works that have not been shown in any auction for the last five years will be eligible for inclusion. All the selected works will be uploaded to the website www.emamichisel.com. The last date for submitting consignments is September 5, 2008. A panel of experts will select the works and once the selection process is over, the consigner will be informed accordingly. Like the last auction, ECA expects to draw attention of collectors by offering rare and important works by Contemporary and Modern masters.

Adds Vikram Bachhawat, Director, Emami Chisel Art: “There is a big need within the art community to understand the difficulties faced by this growing trade, there are many issues related to fakes, interstate trading etc, which needs to be sorted out and it can only happen if trade is united and there are more summits across the country. Moreover a collector gets chance to see works displayed by galleries from all over the country, each gallery has their own set of artists who they promote and each visiting gallery will get the best of the available works from the area they belong. It will be a feast for the eyes as there will be a large selection of visual art under one roof. ECA will take this opportunity to highlight their future auctions and will use it as a platform to build long-term relationship with connoisseurs and art dealers.”

Focusing on Indian Modern and Contemporary Art, the forthcoming November auction will include some rare and significant works of art by many major artists like Satish Gujral, J Swaminathan, Ganesh Pyne, F. N. Souza, Arpita Singh, Chintan Upadhyay, M. F. Husain, Ganesh Pyne, Jitish Kallat, Reena Kallat, Sakti Burman, Bikash Bhattacharya, Jayashree Chakraborty, S. H. Raza and Shibu Natesan. All the works for the auction will be selected by a panel of experts for their value, authenticity and auction viability. The authenticity and value of the works will be endorsed by the artists if he or she is living. Paintings by those who have passed away will be certified by experts on the concerned artist.

If bidding at the auction seems out of reach, don’t despair. Emami Chisel Art will also put up significant artworks for sale. Works of artists from Bengal school like Bikash Bhattacharjee, Paritosh Sen, Ganesh Pyne, Satish Gujral, Kartick Chandra Pyne, Somenath Hore and K.G. Subramanyan will be sold during the Art Summit at the ECA stall.

So, this is your chance to either bid for or to buy the artwork you always craved for, at Emami Chisel Art’s stall in the India Art Summit!

Delhi Art Gallery Presents P. Khemraj’s ‘Wings of Desire’

Delhi Art Gallery Presents P. Khemraj’s ‘Wings of Desire’

In A Retrospective Resonating with Melody

New Delhi: Delhi Art Gallery presents ‘P. Khemraj – Wings of Desire; a retrospective show of artworks spanning four decades by veteran artist P. Khemraj from August 11, 2008 to September 5, 2008 at Delhi Art Gallery, 11, Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi. This exhibition will showcase more than fifty works in acrylic, pen and ink on paper, oil, pen and ink on canvas, ink, watercolour, acrylic and gold paint on ivory board and mixed media on mount board. The exhibition will be accompanied by a 162-page comprehensive book on the artist.

Says Ashish Anand, Director, Delhi Art Gallery: “Widely known as the ‘renaissance man’ of the Indian art, P. Khemraj focused on creating ‘lasting art’. He had given a new dimension to modern art with his colourful and often mind-boggling depiction of the female form that reflected sensuality and extravagant view of life at large in his artworks.”

Says art critic and independent curator Roobina Karode, “The exhibition not only showcases Khem’s mural sized works on combined boards & early canvases but also his delicate linear drawings swiftly moving on the surface with fluid grace. His series fluttering with hearts is full of youthful exuberance and confesses his love for life.”

Art critic Keshav Malik says: “He would invite cognition of creative interplay of different forms of artistic activity, brought about by his usual re-reading of his poems, avid strumming of musical instruments and formulate a visual cosmos in his canvas. His creativity represented a play.”

Born in 1934 to a big Gujarati family settled in Bombay, Khemraj grew up in an environment where art and music were an integral part. As a child he would day-dream of becoming a painter if not a musician, and someday travel to Paris – the Mecca of Modern Art. In 1952, he joined the J.J. School of Art in Bombay under the tutelage of Professor K.S. Kulkarni. His love for music was so strong that he was motivated to leave Bombay in 1958 after graduating and settle in Delhi, to learn playing sitar from Pandit Ravi Shankar. The tight schedule of the icon eventually forced him to seek a job as an artist in a commercial studio but, it never deterred him from pursuing the sargams on sarod and violin. Years after he had made his life as an artist of eminence, he would diligently do his riyaaz and any joyous occasion was to be marked with music.

The artist’s childhood dream of traveling to Paris came true when he was awarded the French Government scholarship in 1962, which enabled him to study at the Ecole Nationale des Superior des Beaux Arts and then at Atelier 17. His art was shaped by teachers like Stanley William Hayter who is regarded as the father of contemporary printmaking and Krishna Reddy who is the first person to devise the process of obtaining multi- coloured prints. His art was further influenced by many a Cubist, Impressionist, and Expressionist and Surrealist masters.

Delhi, with several galleries such as the National Gallery of Modern Art, the Lalit Kala Akademi, the Garhi studios, the Triveni Kala Sangam, the Crafts Museum, nurtured the native talent of the sensitive artist in Khemraj. Therefore, when he returned from Paris in 1966, he gravitated to Delhi which became his home although every two or three years he would visit Bombay which attracted artists from everywhere - Calcutta, Madras, Delhi - as the capital market for art.

For any Indian artist living in Europe for any length of time during his or her youth, it is impossible to ignore the rich possibilities of artistic expression in stained glass. Khemraj was no exception. Especially noteworthy is his use of luminous colours ranging through ultra – marine, indigo, orange colours that are not commonly found in nature. While talking about his powerful lines cutting across the paper or canvas, on close view, one can find the lines to be delicate with minute fluid shadows found as if in droplets of water under a microscope.

In an essay A Toast to Bliss, Kolkata art critic Ratnottama Sengupta has emphasized on Khem’s artistic journey and influences which brought about the various changes in his art practices, giving birth to series like Charpai, Hatheli, Prithvi, Heart and a series of powerful drawings entitled Singing Lines. She says, “Khemraj represents the harmonious fusion of ‘virginity and virility’ through a sensuous simplicity and passion.” In her essay, she has zoomed on another aspect of the artist which is - “Khem seemed to depict deep empathy for the damaged environment which gave birth to Asha Hans, where he paints the vision of a paradise that could be our earth. Dreamy landscapes, painted in subtle colours evoke a paradise that exists in our mind’s eye. The intricately interspread flowers and leaves position nature in a timeless role of a silent observer. The hues of these works are in turquoise along with gold, giving a feel of lyricism and richness which could be associated with the works of Gustav Klimt.

In 1992, concerned about the increasing domination of commercial forces and disillusioned by the mono-cultural, west-oriented trend of the nineties, Khemraj along with three other Asian artists - Lee Kye Song, Hideo Sakata and Yoko Kamijyo initiated an art movement - Lantern of the East. The Lantern group believed that Eastern art, with a different sensibility derived from the distinctive religious and cultural traditions of the Asian region, needed to become a more active force in the contemporary visual art scene and that in doing so, would be a driving force in reshaping the world of contemporary visual art in the 21st century. In that spirit, the founders began, in 1996, an annual international art festival to communicate the spirit of Eastern art to the world.

Says Keshav Malik: “Artists like Khem drop out of the straitjacket of the contemporary society that suffocates them, that denies freedom, wonder and sheer joy. Painting peacocks and flowers in superfluous abandon, Khem indicates his conviction that life is not a trust but a gift to revel in.”

An artist who painted delicate dreams of an idyllic world of lovers, birds and mystical creatures, P. Khemraj passed away in September 2000, but his exhibition will remind us of that delicacy our lives have lost…..