Gallery Espace presented a mega art event on “Magic Realism” as its 20th Year Celebration at Lalit Kala Akademi

New Delhi, December 19: GALLERY ESPACE recently celebrated its 20th anniversary with an international art exhibition of unprecedented scale titled ‘LO REAL MARAVILLOSO: MARVELOUS REALITY’ 2009 at Lalit Kala Akademi, Rabindra Bhawan, Copernicus Marg, New Delhi. The exhibition was based on the theme of “magic realism” and inspired from sources as diverse as Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Laura Esquivel, Salman Rushdie, Joanne Harrism, Mikhail Bulgakov, Milan Kundera and Louis de Bernieres; and included in its gamut video art, drawings, paintings, photography, site-specific installations and sculptures by 36 artists from across the globe.

Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace said: “Since the time the gallery started in 1989, our USP has always been to put together highly specialized, medium based shows. Time and again, Espace has cut across boundaries by exhibiting works of different nationalities, genders and cultures. Espace has always treaded the unconventional path and introduced to the Indian art market new genres like sculptures and drawings when they were relatively unknown mediums. It is apt, therefore, that Magic Realism is the theme of our 20th anniversary show and I am excited to show such a wide array of disciplines all under one roof.”


The gallery began working on the show way back in early 2007 when it touched base with the artists worldwide “whose art practices and sensibilities would respond and react to the theme”. The show includes works of 36 artists amongst whom are internationally acclaimed names like Anila Rubiku from Albania, Sutapa Biswas from United Kingdom, Rina Banerjee from New York, Bharti Kher, Ranbir Kaleka, Chintan Upadhyay, Jagannath Panda, Manjunath Kamath and Shilpa Gupta among others.

The show was designed by Mark Prime who made a special created ambience where one came face-to-face with Waswo X Waswo’s hand-made Krishna image or a huge tree sculpture by Chintan Upadhyay which ws suspended from the ceiling. Manjunath Kamath’s life-size fire glass automobile wrenching white rabbits into exhaust fumes shared ceiling space with Chintan’s work while Shilpa Gupta’s video allowed you to interact with images in the video while performance artist Nikhil Chopra’s ghost images make one wonder if there are any boundaries between the real and the fantastic.



Present on the occasion were Renu Modi (Director, Gallery Espace), Rajiv and Ruhi Savara (The Savara Foundation of Arts), Italian Ambassador Roberto Toscano with wife Francesca, theatre personality Sita Raina, socialite Kalyani Chawla, Kuchipudi danseuse Rashmi Vaidialingam, gallerists Ashish Anand (Delhi Art Gallery), Peter Nagy (Nature Morte), Tunty Chauhan (Gallery Threshold), Sunaina Anand (Art Alive Gallery), curator Ina Puri, Aruna Vasudev, cultural impressario Rajeev Sethi, artists Amit Ambalal, Bandeep Singh, Barbara Ellmerer, Bharti Kher with husband Subodh Gupta, Ebenezer Sunder Singh, Gigi Scaria, G.R. Iranna with wife Pooja, Ishan Tankha, Jagannath Panda, Manjunath Kamath, Maxine Henryson, Pushpamala N, Ranbir Kaleka, Sheba Chhachhi, Sonia Mehra Chawla, Tanmoy Samanta, Waswo X. Waswo, Satish Gujral with wife Kiran, Manu Parekh with wife Madhvi, Veer Munshi, Harshvardhan, Gopi Gajwani, Maithali Parekh, Rajendra Tiku, Mithu Sen, Alka Raghuvanshi, George Martin, Ravi Aggarwal, Kanchan Chander and Shamshad Hussain.