National Gallery of Modern Art presents two simultaneous ground-breaking exhibitions to mark the opening of its new wing

New Delhi: To mark the opening of its new wing, National Gallery of Modern Art presents a dual treat for art lovers with two simultaneous ground-breaking exhibitions. The first exhibition that will be on display in the new wing is titled ‘…In the seeds of time’ that traces the historical evolution of modern Indian art starting from Indian miniature art, Company period, European art practices, Bengal School of Art, Progressive Art Movement leading up till contemporary art. The second exhibition that will also be displayed at a separate floor in the same block is a retrospective show of works by the legendary Nandalal Bose titled 'Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose (1882 - 1966)'. Both the shows will begin at the new wing at National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi from January 19, 2009 to February 28, 2009.

The celebrations won’t stop with this. NGMA plans to further host a retrospective show of the living master, Tyeb Mehta, followed by an exhibition on the making of the new wing, finally culminating with an exhibition showcasing the best of Indian contemporary art by younger artists.
Says Prof. Rajeev Lochan, Director, NGMA, Delhi, “With this expansion, NGMA would now possibly be Asia’s largest museum. When the three new wings of the museum open at Jaipur House, it may not be possible to see the enormous art collection on display in a day. The new area will be 24,700 square metres, six times the current size. This will make it a truly world-class museum.”
Ever since its inception in 1954, NGMA continues to be a premier institution of modern art in the country. The opening of its new wing is yet another landmark. The expansion includes the building of three new blocks together with two levels of basements, adding almost six times the space to the existing Jaipur House. This brings about a quantum leap in the positioning, status and infrastructural environment of the National Gallery of Modern Art, making it at par with best museums of Modern Art, worldwide.

The three new blocks include permanent gallery spaces, temporary exhibition spaces, a new auditorium, a special preview theatre, conservation laboratory, library and academic section as well as a cafeteria and museum shop. The new spaces incorporate all aspects of NGMA's vision to develop a modern, state-of-the-art museum building in terms of flexible display systems, varied ceiling heights, lighting and support facilities and much more.

While the exteriors of the new wing respect and complement the art-deco style heritage building Jaipur House, using similar pink and red sand stone for its façade, the interiors introduce a modern and contemporary look. A new exciting design space unfolds, lit by both natural and artificial light. The asymmetrically placed levels break the rigid monotony of an orthogonal space and allow the visitor a view of the dazzling display of art spread through the whole space. Areas open from one to another, while the walls give way to glimpses of the outdoors. The use of cutting edge technology for 'Intelligent' artificial lighting, sensitive internal environmental control and electronic security system enhances the efficiency of the Gallery floors. The predominantly sand blasted granite flooring, laid to a rational pattern, provides for a variety of display options for the curator.


The new wing makes the NGMA a unique institution; perhaps no other museum in the world has such a vast space at its disposal, in the heart of a metropolitan city. Built on 7.84 acres, the indoor display area alone will be approximately 12000 sqm, while there is more than ample space in the courts and sculpture gardens for outdoor display and site installations. All the spaces easily accessed by walk-ways, ramps, lifts and staircases together with special facilities and comfortable seating within the Galleries and on the outside, the new wing of the NGMA welcomes senior citizens and the differently-abled equally.



ABOUT THE EXHIBITIONS

'... In The Seeds Of Time' traces the trajectory of modern Indian art from the colonial encounter from the 18th century to current trends in the 21st century. The history of the development of modern Indian art is both complex and chequered. Art has developed in tandem with the exigencies of a region and nation in constant evolution; the artists responding to the socio-political and economic tenors of each decade with alacrity. The potency of Indian art stems from its ability to include and adapt all the diversities that it encounters rather than exclude on the basis of claims to purity. Indian art from every region is an amalgam of different locals that are now globally experienced and shared with remarkable developments in information-technology and web-based sharing.

'Rhythms of India: The Art of Nandalal Bose' (1882 - 1966), a landmark exhibition from the collection of the National Gallery of Modern Art is being exhibited for the first time in India after successful expositions at the San Diego Museum of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, USA.

The exhibition traces the artistic journey of this legendary master over a period of more than 50 years; his work symbolising the transformation of a colony into a newly emergent nation. It allows a view into the remarkable versatility of this pioneer who worked in a multitude of material and a range of styles, remaining true always to the essence of his land... to the rhythms of India.

Says Prof. Rajeev Lochan, Director, NGMA: “Nandalal Bose’s aesthetic legacy, cultivated by imbibing the significance of tradition and skillfully tempered with a rootedness in his times, is one of the most authentic responses of an Indian artist to his environment. The artist’s engagement with tradition is not so much a replication but rather a reinterpretation and reinvention to suit his inner sensibilities and their contemporary needs.”

The exhibition features more than 85 of Nandalal Bose’s finest paintings, which are executed in a variety of styles and media. Rhythms of India also reveals how Nandalal Bose contributed to the success of India’s non-violent struggle for independence from colonial rule through his close association with Mahatma Gandhi.

Born in Bihar, India, in 1882, Nandalal Bose spent most of his life in Bengal as a pan-Asian artist and teacher. At the beginning of his career in 1905, Nandalal Bose was one of many artists and visionaries who sought to revive the spirituality and cultural authenticity of Indian art after 50 years of colonial rule and westernization. In 1919, Nandalal Bose became the first director of the art school at the new university founded by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore in rural Bengal. Here, traditional Indian teaching methods were favored over British-style education.

For the following three decades, Nandalal Bose began to experiment with a variety of indigenous Indian, Japanese, and Chinese techniques. His work consisted more of scenes of nature and tribal and village life, as well as devotional subjects. It was his portrayal of village India without dependence on Western materials or styles that captured the attention of Gandhi and catapulted Nandalal Bose to the status of national icon as the only artist Gandhi patronized. Although Nandalal Bose’s art was not inherently political, Gandhi used his images of a more traditional India to represent his non-violent peace movement.

After his retirement in 1951, Nandalal Bose’s work became more private and meditative. A deeply spiritual strain runs through his work that makes it unmistakably Indian and not derivative from western models of modern art. It is because he so successfully revived India’s cultural past and advocated the need for the Indian people to sink their roots in it that his work is hailed as the foundation for modern Indian art.

Sushmita Sen inaugurates Raghu Vyas' solo exhibition in New Delhi

New Delhi: Surrounded by beautiful paintings on Krishna created by Delhi-based artist Raghu Vyas, film star Sushmita Sen inaugurated Raghu Vyas’s solo show titled ‘KRISHNA - Romantic Fantasy In Peacock Forest’ at The Oberoi recently.

Presented by Ragini Art, the show consists of twenty-one figurative paintings which will be later exhibited at the Visual Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre from January 28, 2009 to February 01, 2009.

Said Sushmita Sen: “I congratulate Raghuji for these canvases that have mesmerized me. I believe Raghuji is a devotee of Lord Krishna and this exhibition clearly depicts his personal, religious and spiritual encounter with the lord. Realism seems to be the flavour everywhere..be it realistic cinema, Reality TV shows and with this exhibition, I'm sure realistic art will become the talk of the town..

Said Nidhi Jain, Director, Ragini Art: “The various moods and postures of Krishna reflect the contours of Raghu Vyas’s intense relationship with his god. In a creative process filtered through bhakti, he has constructed and deconstructed Krishna in this series.”

Said Raghu Vyas, “There are two lights - one in your head (imagination) and one that lights the room, my Krishna paintings are lit by the light of imagination, the real light. It is an emotional light that can convey a feeling, a mood or an idea, the light of nostalgia of a distant memory, the light of the magical garden of childhood. The forms and models used in my work are a product of my dreams. Working for the last two years towards this exhibition, I have tried to express the Sakhi Bhav of Krishna. The predominance of the peacock and peacock feathers reflects this, as traditionally in Krishna worship the peacock epitomizes the sakhi bhava.”

Gallery Espace Makes Art’s Winter Warm With Mekhala Bahl’s ‘quilted’ artwork in The Geometry of Error

New Delhi: Gallery Espace presents The Geometry of Error; a solo show of 14 works that includes five quilted works, five etchings on silk & four canvases by Mekhala Bahl from January 21, 2009 to February 28, 2009 at Gallery Espace, 16, Community Centre, New Friends Colony, New Delhi.

Says Ms. Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace: “The exhibition is a culmination of works created by Mekhala in the last two years. With her current body of work, Mekhala explores and incorporates the use of pattern within her large paintings and mixed media works where she scribbles, draws and prints to create visual and emotive layers. As viewers, we have to discard the need to immediately read familiarity into her images, and instead revel in the shapes and colours that seem purged of their recognizable forms.”

Mekhala Bahl was trained at the Rhode Island School of Design, USA, after which she returned to India in 2003 to pursue her individual art practice. She has never restricted herself to single techniques or media and continues working with materials as diverse as glass, wood, silk, paper, plastic and quilting. Her technical oeuvre extends from block printing, etching and lithography, to drawing, painting and sculpture. Her images read like journals recording daily life.

In her current body of work, Mekhala displays an exclusive collection of quilted works along with etchings on silk and canvas, inspired from traveling and observing everyday objects. There is a predominant element of pattern in the work that at times guides the piece and in others simply resides in the background of the work. The use of the comic strip narrative and treatment results in works that appear large, playful and display colours that are unusual to reality and at times appear nostalgic.

Humour is often used to address concerns both personal and those of outward significance. On the same note, elements of collage and quilted sections of the paintings also add another layer and texture to the work, while encouraging the viewer to engage in the work, in a way that they may want to touch the three dimensional puffiness of the foam under the canvas.

The use of chine collé in the fine adhering of the fine silk on the backing surface is unique and gives an ethereal quality to the work. And drawing with the etched line creates marks that have strength in their stroke that is juxtaposed against the fragility of the surface on which they are drawn.

The artist explains: “I was always interested in experimenting with surface textures, whether it was silk, corrugated paper or plastic. I was drawn to the physical feel and appearance that was created by the foam underneath the surface. Quilting gives a bulbous shape and adds another dimension to the artwork. It makes the viewer almost want to reach out and touch the surface of the work and feel the actual softness below it.”

Explaining the title of her show The Geometry of Error, Mekhala Bahl says that her working style depends on intuitive mathematical calculations & games that involve measuring the distance between the marks created on the canvas. It is as simple as the much-cherished dot-to-dot game played during childhood days and yet her pure instinct-based works presents a flawless balance between colours and shapes on the canvas or fabric. For instance, in the work titled Single egg (Oil, ink, acrylic, lead, collage on canvas), the marks are created along the edges of the work only, following an invisible circular path. The order of these could not have been formed in any other way, but the one that exists as the balance and harmony is just right, creating an almost poetic narrative as these shapes dance along their pre-determined path. She also employs humorous anecdotes, memories and dreams in her images that stir the imagination of the viewer in an interesting manner. Her work Cart Strip (Oil, ink, acrylic, lead, collage on canvas), short for ‘cartoon strip’, is one such example that urges the viewer to start reading the work from a point and follow the small drawings to form their own humourous stories.

Mekhala’s work are however only seemingly abstract. They carry concrete images underneath which are usually only hinted at by the title of the work which may also serve as an entry point. For instance, works like Nest, Pancake, Picnic, Single Egg trigger an instant recognition with an idea, or an image. Her work titled NY Chimney (mixed media on quilted silk) explicitly suggests smoke curling out from an awkward building with two chimneys. The initials NY refer to New York City which forms the basis of inspiration of the work. Similarly, in Turn-Turn-Turn (mixed media on quilted silk), she draws a topless car, a swivel chair with hairy legs, croquet bats that play on their own through hoops that fly and many more that may not even be revealed unless they are found by the viewer. Sometimes, the non-abstractness of her work also reveals itself in a series of non-representational shapes that form a narrative. For example, Wooohooo (Oil, ink, acrylic, lead on primed linen) has been created out of spontaneous elation that the artist experiences while making overlapping circular forms, that sometimes seem heavy, other times inflated.

Thus, she repackages the tangible world with ideographs, signs and traces of observed reality. Unstructured and floating, her created world is open to instantaneous suggestion. Her textures have an evocative quality that command a closer look, and appear as independent entities in their own right. Explains Mekhala: “The textures, surfaces and drawings in my works are treated with secretive details, only identifiable from close and these same images transform into simpler shapes, marks and blocks of colour when viewed from a distance. I don’t think it’s necessary for the viewer to know that there are small sketches and imagery that is more recognizable than abstract. I find that my work can be viewed as both, or either.”

About the Artist

Mekhala Bahl studied briefly at the College of Art in Delhi before joining the Rhode Island School of Design in 2001, where she trained in printmaking and painting. In 2002, Mekhala was part of a Study Abroad Program in Japan and in the same year she was at the Palazzo Cenci, Rome for a Painting and Art History Program.

Since 2003, she has been pursuing her art practice in India and has had several exhibitions in India and abroad. She was an Artist in Residence in New York at the School of Visual Arts in 2007. Her work has travelled to international art fairs like Asia Contemporary Art Fair, New York and Art Dubai.

US-based Siri Khandavilli juxtaposes material concerns with the ‘BIG PICTURE’ in a unique show titled ‘Two Birds’

“Completely in control of my work, body and gaze, I declare that I am my own muse. There is nothing passive here” is the passionate belief of US-based Siri Khandavilli who is in India for her upcoming solo exhibition titled Two Birds that promises to strike a chord with every art lover this winter. The exhibition that comprises a combination of video-works and paintings (acrylics on paper) will be held at Open Palm Court Gallery, India Habitat Centre from January 28, 2009 to February 4, 2009.

Born in Mysore, Siri Khandavilli is the daughter of N. Lakshminarayan who was a renowned Kannada film director of his times. She migrated to US and studied new media arts, video & 3D modeling at Arizona State University (ASU). Her works have been exhibited at short film festivals in ASU, Harrywood Gallery (both at Tempe), Modified Art Gallery (Phoenix), SIGGRAPH (San Diego), and Art Junction (New Delhi). Currently the artist stays, commutes and creates between India and USA.

Siri Khandavilli is an inter-media artist working in the realms of video art, paintings and installations. About her influence, she says: “Personally, there is an extreme attachment to the worldly, but I do question how important these really are! I call it looking at the ‘Big Picture’!”

So while Siri accepts that she, like any other young person of her age, worries about under-eye wrinkles, finances, pollution, global economy et al and yet, as an artist, seeks to transform these concerns onto a canvas that is far more ethereal and metaphysical.

The overall effect of her works is a feeling of the material world beginning to merge into the metaphysical. As the artist explains “My definitions, desires, politics, opinions and issues are literally painted against the backdrop of the Big Picture.” In this manner, her works become very personal, poetic and at the same time socio-political. Conceptually, there is duality and unity, contradiction and agreement in her works. It is the conflict between the nuances of worldly attachment and spiritual detachment that defines her canvas.

It is her video works, however, that foremost highlight the sensuous and the spiritual quality of her art. Sometimes ‘performances for the camera’ form the raw footage of her work. The unconventional use of intense colors, space, scale and strange juxtapositions combine to create a mesmerizing effect.

For instance, Two Birds is a video installation which occupies an intimate space created by the panels and walls in the gallery. The viewer needs to enter a narrow and personal space to view two videos facing each other through circular openings at the eye level. The first video consists of the artist’s face layered with a fleshy, orange-yellow mango. The face in this video faces and observes the other video where the artist is immersed in consuming a mango. The music and the visuals combine to create an effect that may be described as sensuous to some and spiritual or meditative to others.

Shares Set to Rise is another video that starts in black and white showing a drive in a mountainous area. The dull rocky terrain is slowly replaced by the beautiful sunset. The background plays radio financial news as the image starts flickering and the viewer begins to see a stylized chart tracking the stock market merge in and out of the sunset scene. The video and audio abruptly stop with the beginning of serene music and surreally beautiful sunset scene against the backdrop of majestic mountains. The artist explains: “This work originated on one of my many drives amidst the beautiful Ahwatukee mountains in Arizona, where I live. During these drives I listened to financial news on the radio. The silhouette of the mountains and the stock market's graphs started looking similar to me. I observed the beautiful colors of Arizona sunsets and sunrises thinking about the stock market's rise and fall. Two extremes that seemed unrelated and incompatible seemed to merge and diverge in this everyday experience. The consumptive thoughts of economy were punctuated by moments of joy in the realm of metaphysical.”

Like her videos, Siri’s paintings are also vivid in color. In her paintings, one can witness the abandon and joy of painting as well as the restraint needed for drawings. The intricate drawings in her paintings depict everyday objects, people and mundane sceneries as microscopic objects. The flattened 2-D quality of her work speaks of a clear influence of Indian traditional painting and a love for tribal arts.

Her paintings are usually small in size and are meant to be hung together in a series. The bold usage of red, black, blue and yellow colors addresses issues of human concern. Colonies 1, Blue Skies Floating in the Red, Red Cells Blue Cells & Scratch and Sniff Layers of Reality are just the few examples that signify her response to various world issues. Inspired from the encounters of daily life situations, she links material worry to a non material experience.

Expressing a similar theme of human predicament is her work titled Border Issues that portrays how trivial the idea of ownership of land and place becomes when placed against the backdrop of the ‘Big Picture’. Her work titled Sansex and Sunsets is similar to her video-work titled Shares Set to Rise as both link material worries to a very non-material experience of being immersed in the divinity of sunsets.

She further adds: “In all my work, I allow myself to be influenced by places around me and the situations that I encounter, this helps me break away from prejudice and stylization of any sort. My paintings are a confluence of spontaneity in its process contrasting against drawings that are executed on the painting’s surface. These drawings make everyday objects and scenes look like objects visible under microscope, or, say through a telescope. Some of the paintings are independent modules, put together as a single unit, as an afterthought. Fragmented, yet the whole remains the summary of these works.”