Gallery Espace presents a dual treat for eyes

Gallery Espace Presents a Dual Treat for Art Lovers this October

New Delhi: As a veritable treat for art lovers, Gallery Espace presents two diverse yet powerful art shows that capture an artist’s personal journey both on canvas and camera. The first show, titled ‘Within The Walls’ has been mounted in cooperation with Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke (Mumbai) and will bring forth twelve photo-realistic paintings in oil on canvas by Baroda-based Abir Karmakar. The second show, titled “An Other Place” is of recent photographs and a video installation by Delhi lensman Ravi Agarwal. Both the shows will begin on October 1, 2008 to continue till October 21, 2008 at Gallery Espace, 16 Community Centre, New Friends Colony, New Delhi.

Says Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace: “In the current exhibition, Karmakar’s primary intention is confessional. He lures the viewer into a secluded world where attitudes of homo-erotic desire are performed before our gaze. The domestic space or the lurid hotel room becomes for a brief period of time a stolen habitation. On the other hand, habitat is seen from a completely different perspective through Agarwal’s camera. As a gallery, it is indeed a pleasure to bring to the viewer art which can be both provocative and awe-inspiring!”

Born in 1977, Abir Karmakar obtained an MA in Painting (Gold Medal) from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda. A middle-class Siliguri boy who studied painting at Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata, Abir says, “I was always fascinated with the depiction of ‘realism’ on canvas and its various subversional possibilities. Even as an under-graduate student in Kolkata, I was using my ‘self’ as an image in my paintings.”

The works are unusual, to say the least, dramatic in their presentation and breathtaking in their visuality. Abir portrays his own self as haunting images of androgynous protagonists, placed in various expected and unexpected situations. He explains, “While everyone is talking about virtual reality in electronic terms, I am portraying it actually on the canvas. Frankly, that is the only interest I have. Perhaps I will look at various ways of representing it in my future paintings.”

Abir’s take on the dual existence of male and female in each human being is as old as the concept of Ardhanarishwara. The artist is featured as female on the canvas while being male in real life. He uses cross-dressing as a visual tool to make his point. However, what is interesting is the way he takes it beyond the obvious, drawing in facets of female physical exploitation and various problematic social attitudes to gender issues.

He says, “I work slowly, taking a lot of time to focus on and develop my concept, the layers of ‘sexual confusion’ that I can explore, all of it takes a lot of time.” Locating himself within middle class domestic spaces, he works with tropes of realistic painting, mannerist portraiture and the overt sexuality of tabloid pin-ups. While the (sexual) confessional photograph has gained currency – the deliberated sensuousness of oil painting delivers images of psychological abjection and sensual assertiveness.

To explain his paintings, one can say that they tend to move up and out, from the private to the public domain, assuming a powerful masculine view of cities, building sites, symbols of growth and the urban landscape in transition. The artist-to-subject engagement appears to be grounded in responses to media information, global economy and social discourse.

Ravi Agarwal trained as an engineer and works as an environmentalist in the non-governmental sector leading the NGO Toxics Link. As an environmentalist, 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. His earlier work, in the documentary oeuvre, encompasses 'nature', 'work', 'labour' and the ‘street', while more recent work has been traversing explorations of self and the social and based on questions of nature and ‘personal ecologies.’

‘An Other Place’ showcases his latest work through a body of photographs and video shot over the past two years. In bringing together the ‘found’ and the ‘constructed’, in the four series of composite images-‘Urbanscapes’, ‘Mechanical Man’, ‘Machine Man’, ‘Ecology of Desire’ and a video- ‘Oil is not water’, 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.

Says Ravi Agarwal: “As the city’s richly layered histories are replaced by a temperamental commercial plasticity, my 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 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”.

Ravi Agarwal became a familiar name in the art world when he represented India in the 11th Documenta, Kassel, Germany in 2002. He started wielding camera at the age of 13 and since then it has been a faithful companion to him. His engagement with the movement against ecological and environmental depletion added a new dimension to his photographs. Says the artist: “Photography, which has always been a sustaining and meaningful activity for me (like diary writings) became a medium in itself to further my interest in environment.”