Group Exhibitions

2010

The Drifters, Gallery Beyond, Mumbai, India

Indo KoreanArt, Kyung Sung University, Busan, Korea

2009 

The Drifters, Gallery Beyond, Mumbai, India

India Art Summit, Religare Art, India

Art Select, Dubai, United Arab Emirates

She says,

“I understood art when I moved to Iraq as a four year old during the Iraq-Iran war. I lived in an Indian camp where the small Indian community preferred staying within and didn’t interact much with life outside that was dominated by a language and culture so different.

Iraq looked, smelt and sounded different.

Unlike India, Iraq was not busy and everything seemed to have a strange character of mystery. People looked deep into my eyes with curiosity and I imagined dressing up like them and living their lives.

This is when I developed a sense of art and started using my imagination to understand the uniqueness and complexity of life and my relationship to the intriguing cultures and spaces through the smells, sounds and images around me.”

In 1999 she was awarded Most Innovative Design by De Beers.

Please enjoy some of Singh Pratibha’s work images!

"Map Becoming", acrylic, ink and gold foil on French oil paper, 25 x 39 in

"The Happy Earth Series", mixed media on paper, 12 x 16 in, 2009

"The Happy Earth Series", mixed media on paper, 12 x 16 in, 2009

Group Exhibitions

2010

Drifters, Gallery Beyond, Mumbai, India

2009

Drifters, Art Konsult, New Delhi, India

Multitudes, Zen Art Studio, Cochin, India

Multitudes, Max Muller Bhawan, Bangalore, India

2006

PACHIMARI, Camp I & II, Lanxess ABS, Vadodara, India

She says,

“It is always difficult for me to speak or write about my work in words. I would rather love that my work speaks for itself. But if given a choice to express, I would say I love painting women and I celebrate womanhood through my paintings. I feel that with this, I am defining or evolving my own womanhood. My painting works at different levels – one very personal, the other very pictorial and painterly.

Since socially, I have not lived my life as a woman for almost 26 years, now that I am in my true body I feel completely at home, and each new experience and feeling makes me celebrate my womanhood. Perhaps being placed in a wrong body has inspired me to think and explore the woman image beyond the conventional horizons.

There is no fixed definition of ‘woman’ or ‘womanhood’, yet somewhere we all define it for ourselves… And that is what I am doing – living life through painting…

While painting ‘woman’, the most painted subject in human history, one realizes that most of these images celebrate the female figure as an object of desire for men. In fact, the stereotypes are so predominant that many a time, even female painters tend to represent woman through the male gaze. That’s why one of my intentions is to crack this mould of the pretty, submissive, persona-less image of women, in which each move and gesture of theirs is controlled in such a way that they come out as a mere sex object.

I choose a language which is very close to illustration, and I think representing woman in contrast light – a known and accepted language is a better choice. When I look out for references I find the work of Paula Rego, the Portuguese painter, very unusual. In there lies a very simple story telling technique to reach out to the viewer; but more than that – we both share similar subject matter and concern. I feel awed by her mastery in dealing with woman as a subject in her painting and illustrations.

My other favourite works are those of Elain De Kooning and Cindy Sherman.

I always wanted to paint my female figures strong, powerful and independent. To achieve these characters I used various pictorial elements, like lighting, use of bold strokes and distortion of certain parts of body, and putting less emphasis on others. While working on figures, I try to find and focus on the area where I feel lies the most strength and also the maximum vulnerability. Figures in my work generally take up most of the picture plane and vary from life-size to larger.

More importantly, my effort is always towards capturing a frozen moment, which I can see as an inner existential state coming through. I try capturing different states of female mind, mood and try to emphasize on distinct elements of their character. I let the facial expression, composition, color and other pictorial elements convey to the viewer, the mood I intended to portray/capture.

In my earlier paintings, I gave all the importance only to the main figure, and kept the background silent. Now I have started introducing new elements into the painting – origami birds, cats, plants and movement in the background. Even friends and people have started to come in now, which gives me more challenge to keep my stands firm, in context of seeing woman in a frame shared with man. Also, placing man and woman together in the frame brings up interesting interaction and conflicts.

It is very interesting to work on such paintings where one wants to give equal importance to both the figures; but to make this balance one could end up with too many new elements in the painting. That is why, in my painting process, it is very important for me that I conceive the figures and their position in the beginning, while the rest is achieved during the process. This approach is not only a lot of fun because of the element of dynamicity involved, but it also leaves me with the ability to surprise my own self!”

Please enjoy the work images of Kanak Shashi!

"Silent Argument", acrylic on canvas, 3 x 4 feet, 2009

"Altering Histories", acrylic on digital print, 2 x 3 feet, 2009

"God Mother", acrylic on canvas, 3 x 4 feet, 2007

"Altering Histories 4", acrylic on digital print, 2 x 3 feet, 2009

Group Exhibitions

2011
WHAT RULES? ATER FIRST SHOWING, Nature Morte, Berlin, Germany

2009
Integrating Times, Gallery Blue Spade, Bangalore, India

Never Before, Faraway Tree Gallery, Chennai, India

KINETICS Chithra Kala Parished, Bangalore, India

He says,

“As travels give lot of inspiration for my work and the happenings in those innovates me to works. I represent myself, my memories in the canvas.

And my evolution to conceptualization happened symmetrically. Here I express unique space which gives chances for everyone to have their own dimension with my intervention on it with simplicity.

Believing towards the idea and being executed in the most simplified form is more effective for my thought to be convyed, better than excitements off the work.”

Please enjoy some work images!

"Perspectives", permanent marker on vinyl print, 60 x 48 in, 2010

"Perspectives", Watercolour on paper, 30 x 22 in, 2010

"Bonding With The Environment", silkscreen 355.6 x 50.8 cm, one panel 35.56 x 50.8 cm, 2010

Selected Exhibitions

2008
Metaphors in Matter Gallery Espace, New Delhi, India

2006
Bronze Lalit kala Akademi organized by Gallery Espace, New Delhi, India

2003
Sculpted Images India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India

Rajendar has received Awards and Recognitions, including:

Awards

• The National Award for Sculpture
• 8th triennale-India (International) award for sculpture
• Senior Fellowship of The Department of Culture, Ministry of Human Resources Development, Govt. of India
• Pollack Krasner Foundation Grant

Roobina Karode wrote about Rejendar in a catalogue essay; an excerpt:

In all the tall claims of heroism manifested in its current gigantism, the danger that art faces most today is of being drowned out by the talk and noise of it. And that art has thrived as meditative presences in silent corners of the house, backyard or in open fields is treated perhaps as history.

Often in the present times, Art is aligned to an aesthetic that overwhelms, petrifies and possesses the human psyche in most haunting ways. But for Rajendar Tiku, his sculpture, must hold its dignity in silence and communicate through even a whisper.

One is moved by the intimacy of his perception that makes the intangible and meditative moments of the everyday visible in the most poignant fragments of his modest-sized creations. Without any figure released from the stone or the block of wood, one confronts the presence of human life in oblique and symbolic ways.

In configuring his ‘part-bone, part-flesh’ assembly of materials via unusual juxtapositions, the working methodology alters between carving, rupturing and suturing, ultimately threading and tying the disparate and disjointed parts to conjoin and coexist. Most importantly, Tiku’s poetic sensibility sublimates reactions to situations of protest, disquiet and vulnerability into an inspiring resilience. Transcending the limits of a specific address and meaning, Tiku’s art gathers the scattered pieces of life and strives to hold them together. What can be more urgent than this in a disintegrating world?

Please enjoy images of Rajendar Tiku’s works!

"The Site - X", dever stone, variable dimensions, 2007

"The Relic", bronze, 16 x 10 x 9 in, 2006

"Hearth Back Home", bronze, 16 x 11 x 13 in, 2008

Group Exhibitions

2008

Harmony, Nehru Center, Mumbai, India

Group Show, Regionale des Beaux Arts, Nantes, France

2007

Artequalated: Group Show, Open Palm Court Gallery, India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India

Environmental workshop with students of Art and Architecture, Rachna Sansad, Mumbai, India

No title, Lemon Grasshopper Gallery, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India

Workshop and Presentation on Environment, Kashi Art Café/Gallery Cochin, Kerala, India

Sarai says,

“My search is for ways and forms that touch upon the basis-principles of life. I have sought to express an inwardly felt intense flow of colours. In seeking that I feel the subconscious and the meditative come into quiet play. For me they are signs that connect in their geometry and seeming coincidences, as also in their chemistry of colour and substance, to life and its power to create and recreate. Hence my sense of my work is as signs felt in dreams and certain fleeting moments of wakefulness.

Within the lines and mesh structures I draw lies the thought and pathos of my surroundings and me. Lines and colours are for me a way never fully made or completely transparent, towards the universals of abstraction and life. I seek to look at elements that hold and move as also the paradoxes of movement and translation: human beliefs, longings, exodus and return, divisions, identity and a feeling for the universal in things little and small.”

Please enjoy the work images!

"Birds", natural pigment on paper, 111.5 x 158 cm, 2009

"Birds", 75 x 56 cm, 2009

"Earth Lines", natural pigment on paper, 30.8 x 40.8, 2009

"Buried Signs", gauche on paper, 35 x 22 cm, 2009

Please enjoy images from our opening reception.

Main entrance of La Cave in Old Town, Geneva

Display view 1

Display view 2

Display view 3

Display view 4

Display view 5

Guests in the Room 2

Guests in the Room 1/ ‘Between tiers- cars 282′ by Wook Heo

Can Kang’s work ‘Ice age crazy’

Wook Heo’s work ‘Between tiers- books 112′

Wook Heo’s work ‘Between tiers- football 67′

Can Kang’s Works ‘Come back to T’ang in my dream (above)/ ‘Horse doesn’t move (below)

Guests

Guests and the OVA team

Guests

Garden of La Cave

Reception

Guests

Guests

Young guests

Organiser Kayla Hye K. Yang/’What we see conceals a lot behind it’ by Kumaresan Selvaraj

Photographed by Iryna Manzhosova

The Space Between features works that respond to each artist’s individual perspective of their mercurial identity within a world that is changing rapidly by globalisation and breakneck urbanisation.

The three artists commonly explore how objects, images and surfaces can be viewed in a myriad of ways.  It is not the point to merely create an interpretive framework based on the subject matter, nor on the layers of medium used to create the work.  What each artist strives for is an analysis of what lies between reality and representation; an investigation of The Space Between.  The Space Between represents a connective point between the convergence and divergence of cultural life and identity in contemporary civilisation.

Korean artist Wook Heo finds new space and meaning by analysing and mixing an object from diverse angles. Created in unique form, his work is neither painting nor relief. His work is layered with puzzles to create and combine divided images. His colour fields create new planes, and when layered, form a solid structure. They do not come to a standstill. Planes become solid figures, and solid figures spread out on a two-dimensional surface. Disassembled objects are reassembled, and reassembled things are disassembled again. Elements expand and reduce. His work is full of constantly circulating energy.

The paintings of Can Kang are surreal narratives in response to his native-born China’s own process of internationalization and development. According to the artist, babies are the ultimate symbol of human purity – entering the world simple and unadulterated – and when juxtaposed against a contemporary context Kang transforms pre-existing notions of these symbols, creating a new disposition suggestive of this fanatical age of consumption.

Contrasting meanings collide and circulate in the work of Indian artist Kumaresan Selvaraj. Selveraj is interested in what the surface textures of his chosen medium implies about the ‘subterranean emotions’ of his memories and consciousness, not only of his state of mind now, but historically. The process of his awareness is filled with the energy of contradiction and harmony, and subsequently Selveraj explores mediums to blend diversely contrasting concepts such as matter and non-matter, time and space in his work.

The opening/vernissage takes place this Thursday, 3 March, from 6 p.m. 9 p.m. at La Cave in Geneva.

"Between tiers - football 67" mixed media, 81 x 122 cm, 2010 - Wook Heo

"Telescope", oil on canvas, 50 x 50 cm, 2010 - Can Kang

"What We See Conceals A Lot Behind It", ink on magazine paper, 60 x 84 in, 2010 - Salvaraj Kumaresan

Galhotra says,

“I believe that the cyclical nature of events governs our lives. Construction is the event of generation, Destruction of death and Reconstruction of re-birth. Every object has a life, every object has a point when it dissolves back into oblivion from where it came, and eventually it regenerates from the abyss into its own objectivity. The human cycle is attributed to the nothingness we call the absolute, man today has taken on the role of this absolute, believing that we, ourselves can control this cycle of life. My depiction of the same is the events that affect me, that make me question the moralities of today’s world. Words like sustainability and environmental issues seem to remain words in the capitalist dictionary. They are nothing but an antithesis to the actions of construction and destruction.”

Please enjoy the work images!

"Beehive", metal, trinkets & febric, big: 2.1 x 1.5 x 0.3 mtrs, medium: 1.2 x 0.92 x 0.22 mtrs, small: 1.1 x 0.92 x 0.22 mtrs

"Many Times", wood, watches automobile paint & sound, 76 x 28.5 x 21.2 in, 2007

"Work in Pregress", casted metal, variable, 2007

"Master Plan", metal, 60 x 42 x 10 in, 2008

He says,

“Growing up and living in this world of unjustified conflicts and contradictions, successes and failures…

My earlier works were quite reactive, in the sense that I reacted with craving and aversion towards the object of my expression in my artworks, which made me feel confident about their choice, but definitely frustrated me as the goal was to spread the similar political subjectivity all around. This practice did produce many eye-catching, hard-hitting projects as in public art projects, photographs, videos, posters and performance…

The previous series of paintings were called Classic Colonial Tales, they were mostly black and white, oil on canvas, and quite large in size, created by juxtaposing my family photographs and pictures of Queen Victoria downloaded from the net.

Thereafter I started attending 10-day Vipassana courses, which gave, rise to new esthetic questions and inspirations.

This gave birth to the ongoing series of painting. These are again black and white, gouache on paper. I was inspired by psychedelic art, Buddhist art and Chinese landscape painting. This ongoing series is not a critic as my earlier works were but emphasizes the meditative/hallucinatory aspect of painting. I take photographs of these and mirror them to produce an effect of near symmetry, near balance and the slowness of Intelligent Dance Music by painting in very thin layers. I have intentionally removed color from the paintings to attain an essence closer to Chinese landscape painting, which reduced distraction and seduction; I have also removed linear narratives which were quite central to my earlier works to produce a kind of Now and here, where the mind would not meander into the Past or Future. I am in a transition, as the ongoing experiments in art and sustained meditation in life will definitely lead to unknown quarters of the mind worth exploring as a newcomer to this zone of Mindfulness.”

Please enjoy images of his works:

“Humpty Dumpty II”, watercolor on paper, 26 x 20 in, 2009

Watercolour on paper, 26 x 20 in, 2009

“Man Eater”, watercolour on paper, 26 x 20 in, 2009

“Mask”, watercolor on paper, 26 x 20 in,  2009

Solo Exhibitions

2008

Metastasis Of Signs, Gallery Espace, New Delhi, India

2007

Tentuaa Dabaa Do (Kill Her), Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur, India

2006

I Want to Be an International Artist, Seoul Art Center, Korea

Mutants, Sarjan Art Gallery, Gujarat, India

Baar Baar, Har Baar, Kitni Baar?, Sarjan Art Gallery, Gujarat, India

Clone Vithalla, Ashish Balram Nagpal Gallery, Mumbai, India

2005

Maya, Ashish Balram Nagpal Gallery, Mumbai, India

2004

Conker’s Installation Project, Spike Island, Bristol, UK

Designer Babies, Ashish Balram Nagpal Gallery, Mumbai, India

Group Exhibitions

2007

Have You Eaten Yet?, Asian Art Biennial, Taiwan, Japan

Beijing Art Fair, Art Fair, Beijing, China

Here & Now: Contemporary voices from India, Grosvenor Gallery, London, UK

2006

Satyagraha A group exhinbition by South African and Indian Artists, Travanore Art Gallery, New Delhi, India and Kizo Art Gallery, Durban, South Africa

“Pink Shop” Part of Hybrid Trends, Seoul Art Center, Seoul, Korea

Bombay Maximum City, Lille 3000, Lille, Frace

‘I am a slut’ a collaborative Video and performance with Amit Kekre, Gallery Beyond, Mumbai, India

KAAM, Arts India Gallery, New York, USA

KAAM, ArtsIndia West, St. Palo Alto, California

Annual show, Sakshi Art Gallery, Mumbai, India

2005

India/Australia cultural and regional exchange, KikArts Gallery, COCA. Perth, Australia

Sanjeev Khandekar has this to say about Chintan:

Our new world of transgenic realities and virtual possibilities has made it possible to have a new order for the world. This new order is precisely the contestation that Chintan wants to put forward through his works. Hyper-reality is the new order of the real, or ‘ireal’ is the new real, is the polemic that he offers through his more recent works.

For Chintan, the sculptures and his paintings serve as units of cultural information, symbols of political memes, kind of cyber game objects, substance-less, disinvested of material, inertia opening up the possibilities of new realms of reality.

All of his works strike a strange angle, as a built in architecture, or as if default system, what hits your eyes every time is the infantile visage, with the globus fat head and the conspicuous genitals of the body, making a weird and wonderful relationship between head and genitals apparent. Once we understand the limits of viewer’s gaze, the ideolological and fantasmatic coordinates of his works in the matrix of the late capitalist, consumerist contemporary society get denoted, and find their location.

Smart Alec is his new real, a copy of the copy, without an original, It stands for a symbol of New Man. Smart Alec is predicament and a dilemma, his desire and death. Smart Alec is new myth that Chintan is building, predicative of outmoded utopia of renewal of perception.

(This is an extract of an essay written by Sanjeev Khandekar, on Chintan Upadhyay’s recent works for private circulation. Sanjeev Khandekar is a visual artist, poet and writer. He lives and works in Mumbai.)

Metastasis Of Signs

Writer and independent curator, Johny ML, weighed in on Chintan’s works as well:

Once detached from the zones of production, signs gain independence from the ideology of their producers and start accumulating values that operate between the logics of the intentional and the experiential. Any society that consumes the signs while replicating the intentional ideology of the producers, also replicates the values created out of the consuming experience and these values proliferate in the social body as the cancerous cells ‘spill over’ from the zone of origin to other parts, conveniently passed through the unsuspecting mediums. This metastasis, a term Chintan Upadhyay adopts from the discourse of human pathology, effectively transcends from the realm of pathology to the realm of culture. Signs could be as polemical as the cancerous cells, not to mention the process of metastasis which could be even worse…

Please enjoy some images of his works!

“Chintu”, Oil & Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 in, 2010

“Memory”, oil & acrylic on canvas, 36 x 36 in

Left: ‘Sculpture’, by Gunwoo Shin, Right: ‘Park Cemetery’, by Juyoung Park

‘La Cave’ in Old Town, Geneva

‘Skin of Trees’, by Parasuranman Saravanan

‘La Cave’ in Old Town, Geneva, Switzerland

‘Untitled’, by Parasuranman Saravanan

‘Empty Hands’, by Gunwoo Shin

Guest

Guests

Guests

Listening to the Curator/Sculptor Gunwoo Shin

Gunwoo Shin with the Korean Ambassador, his wife and the 1st Secretary in Geneva

Guests

Guests talking with the Artist and Organiser

Guests

Left: Curator/Sculptor Gunwoo Shin, Right: Artist Juyoung Park

Left: Artist Juyoung Park, Middle: Organiser Kayla Hye K. Yang, Right: guest

Guests

Guests

Guests

Our good friend ‘Antoine’ at the bar

Listening to the Artist ‘Juyoung Park’

Oriental VisArt presents ‘Threshold to everyday-life’, the 1st group exhibition in Geneva, which includes 5 Asian Artists, who are now working across Europe and Asia. This exhibition is curated by Gunwoo Shin.

In my opinion, one of the most frequent discourses in the art world since the 1990s has been the notion of the ‘everyday-life’. Artists are fed up with the boundlessly expanding notions of art and its bulky discourses. They have sought to discover their own values and have tried to capture and represent this theme of the everyday. At this moment, there is no doubt that the domain of contemporary art has expanded from the ambiguous and abstract to the specific and concrete. The world each of us knows consists of everyday incidents and specific happenings, repeated over and over again.

The exhibition ‘Threshold to everyday-life’ brings together five international Artists. Each Artist presents and manifests how everyday-life can influence them and the world through their works with diverse cultural perspectives. All the work, exhibited in this show, might open new avenues to the question: “what is real everyday life and what exist beyond it?

By Gunwoo Shin

Chinwook Kim attempts an expansion to another unfamiliar space in ever-changing daily life. He inserts an image he discovered in a familiar place in another space, randomly, and endeavours an attempt to excavate another aspect buried between image and image, space and space, through new assumptions and suppositions.

Gunwoo Shin’s work portrays mental landscapes on the crossroad between the conscious and the unconscious, through relief style painting. He freely moves beyond the lines of reality and the world of the surreal, giving diverse artistic imaginations to realistic subject matter.

Ju young Park focuses on ‘movement’ in her painting with fast strokes. She starts with moving her brush very quick and tries to capture her gestures. After that the Artist develops spontaneous brush work into a more objective language. Her paintings look quiet and tranquil. However, you can feel a kind of ‘tremble (moment)’ even in the static image on a plane surface.

Kumeresan Selvaraj experiments with new spaces and materials using untouched marginal areas of medium in his work such as a blank space of photography or an outer space of existing objects. His perception of self-existence is the key source for understanding his works. He transforms his perceptions into works of art through confusion, analysis and references.

Saravanan Parasuraman‘s works are based on his intelligence that he acquired from his self-existence. He has been influenced by the world of nature. He uses ordinary objects such as an old palm tree, steel balls and clay in his work. He is interested in capturing traces of which every element has reacted to the world.

The opening reception is on Wednesday 29^th September from 6pm to 10pm. The Curator Gunwoo Shin and one of the Artists Juyoung Park will be present. Hope to see you there. I will attach the invitation and Artists’ information. Thanks a lot!

Artist

‘Skin of Trees’, Fibreglass & Silverstone, 49×96 inches (inc frame), 48×18 inch each panel, 2010

Kumaresan Selvaraj, Orpin, Fibreglass, 91.4 x 91.4cm, 2010

Inside and outside of landscape-4, Chinese ink on canvas, 152 x 122 cm,  2009

‘Toto’, watercolor on paper, 78.5 x 57 cm, 2009

‘Untitled’, Acrylic on resin on wooden board, 100 x 125 x 20cm, 2010

2009

‘Integrating the times’, Gallery Blue Spade, Bangalore, Karnataka, India

‘Madras Canvas’, Forum Art Gallery, Chennai, India

‘Kinetics’, Chitrakala Parishadh, Bangalore, Karnataka, India

2008

‘Between the lines’, New Delhi, India

‘Madras canvas’, Forum Art Gallery, Chennai, India

‘One man show’, Apparao Art Gallery, New Delhi, India

‘The south show’, Apparao Art Gallery, New Delhi, India

2007

‘Kinetics’, Lait Kala Akademi, Chennai, India

‘Expressionistic elucidations’, Apparo Art Gallery, Chennai, India

‘The spice of life in Uppal Orchid’, Apparo Art Gallery, New Delhi, India

‘Scapes’, Triveni Francaise, Pondicheery, India

He says,

Perception is the source for works, to transform the perceptions in to work of art, go myself into confusion, analysis, references, and get in to talks to furnish it.

The forms told and to tell in works leave thoughts for reconsidering .Evolution  is not forbidden in execution .To tell my negative space I need a positive space and vice versa. Without getting in to the margin of mediums exploring new spaces and materials is a great innovation which leads experimentation.

As perceiving being the shadow of mine, obviously thoughts overlaps and many disappears in the layer formed. This intended me to work on thoughts perceived .While drowned in thoughts, perception helps me out to get out of it with a hand full of good visuals.

Enjoy his work images!!

“Secrets Stuffed”,  plastic bags, size variable, 2010

“What We See Conceals A Lot Behind It”, ink on magazine paper, 60 x 84 in, 2010

“Light to Dark”, serigraph on paper, 22 x 30 in, 2009

“Dark to Light”, die cut on paper, 10 x 10 x 1.5 in, 2009

2009

‘Integrating The Times’, Bangalore, India

Kinetics “Tracing The New Horizon”, Bangalore, India

2008

‘Between The Line’, Chennai, India

‘The South Show’, Apparao Art Gallery, Delhi, India

‘The Jewel Show’, Apparao Art Gallery, Delhi, India

‘50^th National Exhibition Of Art’, Chandigarh, India

2007

‘Arty Fly’s Group Show’, Hyderabad

‘Kinetics’, Lalit Kala Akademi, Chennai

‘Secret Garden’, Apparao Art Gallery Chennai & Delhi

‘Tenth Planet’, Apparao Art Gallery Chennai & Delhi

He was given an award as below;

Enjoy his work images!

“Accumulation“, steelballs & acrylics, 27 x 27 in, 2010

“Sand Rope”, sand & silica, variable, 2009

“Sand Rope”, sand & silica, variable, 2009

“Skin of the Trees”, fiberglass, 85 x 36 in, 2010

His colour intensive works are an eclectic mix of fantasy and realism. From the urban pomposity to the rustic memories, curious images take birth in his canvases and his paintings read like a story. He finds his images from the immediate surroundings as well as from the collective memories of the nation. Anything and everything becomes a resource for him and he calls his works ‘archival images’. The defying of logic and the introduction of absurd allegories give an interesting edge to his works.

Enjoy his work images!

“Vishnu Villas”, fiberglass, wood, TV monitor and video (on loop), 180 x 60 x 72″, 2008

“Over Dose”, digital work on archival paper, 96 x 144 in, 3 + 2 AP, 2009

“Second Hand Car Goes to Heaven”, automative paint on fiberglass, variable size, 2009

“How Come He Is Here?”, digital print on archival paper, 52 x 80 in, 3 + 2 AP, 2009

]]> http://orientalvisart.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/indian-artist-akshay-r-s-rathore/ Thu, 03 Jun 2010 09:30:05 +0000 Oriental VisArt http://orientalvisart.wordpress.com/2010/06/03/indian-artist-akshay-r-s-rathore/ Akshay R.S. Rathore was born in 1978, in Chindwara (Madhya Pradesh) India, he is a visual Artist based in New Delhi, where is he has also been practicing as a creative director for advertisements, publications and set design.

He was given a B.F.A. from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda and a PG from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.

Trained as an animator, his first film, Swayambhuva, explores the concept of creation, sustenance and destruction derived from the mythology of Shiva’s dance (Nataraja). It was largely acclaimed for it combines a modernist/scientific view of life seen through the scales of time, space and matter; from one unknown end of a sub-atomic world to the other end of the infinite cosmos, arising questions such as who we are and what is our existence at a micro and macro level.

Since his first film, he has been experimenting with various media (drawing, photography, sculpture, animation, sound and installations) to address issues of violence at all levels, from the internal to the societal, always keeping latent the promise of an immanent harmony.

In his current work, modern weapon imagery become decorative items shaping peace, beauty or gives a feel of happiness. In the hands of the artist, weapons become passive and almost absurd.

His recent participation to group shows/residencies include: Soilbite, Khoj Bihar (2009), Sandarbh International Artists Residency, Partapur, Rajasthan(2009), Outer Circle, Arts.i Gallery, New Delhi, India (2008), Satyagraha, A Soul Force, India Festival, Johannesburg and Durban, South Africa (2008).

Enjoy his work images!

‘Dreamer’, installation, 2010

‘Dreamer’- detail, 2010

‘Hustle & Bustle’

‘Hustle & Bustle’- detail

‘When she is away’

Exhibition view I

Exhibition view II

]]> http://orientalvisart.wordpress.com/2010/05/30/indian-artist-shantanu-lodh/ Sun, 30 May 2010 22:07:02 +0000 Oriental VisArt http://orientalvisart.wordpress.com/2010/05/30/indian-artist-shantanu-lodh/ Shantanu Lodh was born in Kolkata, India and he is currently living and working in New Delhi. His series titled ‘Drifters’ were shown at Gallery Beyond in Mumbai, 2010 and at Art Konsult in New Delhi, 2009. Anant Art Gallery in New Delhi showed his previous series ‘Classic Colonial Tales’ in 2009. ’Classic Colonial Tales’ were mostly black and white, oil on canvas, and quite large in size, created by juxtaposing his family photographs and pictures of Queen Victoria downloaded from the internet.

He was inspired by Psychedelic Art, Buddhist Art and Chinese landscape painting. This on going series is not a critic as his earlier works but emphasises on the meditativ aspect of painting. He takes photographs for these and mirror them to produce an effect of near symmetry and near balance. He says

“I have intentionally removed color from the paintings to attain an essence closer to Chinese landscape painting, which reduced distraction and seduction, I have also removed linear narratives which were quite central to my earlier works to produce a kind of Now and Here, where the mind would not meander into the Past or Future. I am in a transition, as the ongoing experiments in art and sustained meditation in life will definitely lead to unknown quarters of the mind worth exploring as a newcomer to this zone of Mindfulness”.

Enjoy his work images!

‘Mask’, watercolour on paper, 26″ x 20″, 2009

‘Humpty Dumpty – II’,  watercolour on paper, 26″ x 20″, 2009

‘Man eater’, watercolour on paper, 26″ x 20″, 2009

She has worked 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 or simply marks scratched on to the matrix. She creates endless possibilities; blurring and divesting watertight categories of their legitimacy in her art making. The scale of her work too, ranges from small intimate images to vast canvases, neither, adhering to a practiced formulae.

Latika Gupta (Art Critic) says

“Her images read like journals- daily happenings, memories, recollections of dreams find place in her art. Intuition navigates the direction of Mekhala’s hand as she scribbles, doodles and makes marks, creating layers both visual and emotive. A reading of Mekhala’s work raises essential questions about the definitions that are accorded to categories such as ‘Abstract’, ‘Representational’ or ‘Non-representational’ art. As viewers, we need to discard the insistent need to read familiarity into an image. We are taught to assign explanations to sounds, to visuals, turning each into a symbol with a fixed meaning, recognising only that which can be optically verified, forgetting perhaps to trust our mind’s eye, our memory and instinct. Mekhala’s works are representational- they map the places, people and experiences that the artist has encountered. She purges each of their recognizable forms, but each mark and even the titles of her works are rooted in actuality”.

Enjoy her work images!!

“Nest”, mixed media on quilted silk, 41 x 48 in, 2008

“Picnic”, acrylic, collage, ink on quilted plastic, 82 dia, 2008

Animals have occupied a very permanent place in his canvases for a long time. Like old Christian paintings, he has shown Ox and Donkey as a part of his narrative. In old Hindu paintings, sculptures and murals, Lord Vishnu represents the aspect of Matsyavatara and Kurmavatara to symbolise various incarnations. A painting never speaks very directly and it contains lots of hidden layers installed by the Artist from his perceptions past or present.

Dhaneshwar Shah says

“In my paintings, you can easily discover the small visual elements from my surroundings. I am physically attached to them. These elements are witnesses of the moment and place; they often step into my painting subconsciously and spontaneously.

I forgot the first time when I drew and painted an animal form but I am sure about those forms in my childhood doodles, done on walls, buried deep in various whitewash layers, they might be still there and breathing, I guess.

I remember in study classes in my college days, the human model used to pose like a dead man unlike the birds on windows which were more inspiring and alive. I started to study those bird forms; they had a feeling of motion. They were more spontaneous and energetic”.

Enjoy his work images!!

‘Tree-green’, acrylic on canvas, 60″ x 48″

‘Deer with red’, acrylic on canvas, 60″ x 48″

2009  Duet show BAJAJ ART GALLERY

2009  “Bengal Painters”Group show Academy of fine arts

2008  Solo Exhibition of TAJ BENGAL

2008  “Bengal Painters” Group show Academy of fine arts

2006  Annual Exhibition of Birla Academy of Art Culture

2006  Annual Exhibition  of Golden Brush

He’s got many awards from the Indian government and associations include ’State Govt. 1^st. Award’ , IN Water Colour, Annual Exhibition (WB), Certificate of Merit, Annual Exhibition of Government, ‘College of Art & Craft Award’, Annual Exhibition of Goverment  College of Art & Craft.

He says

“I’m deeply inspired by both nature and humanity therefore; I try to explore each subject with relation to the other. Most of my work brings out natural beauty through the expression of human physical beauty as I believe that they are one and the same”.

Hope you will enjoy his works!!

‘Dance’,  acrylic on canvas, 12″ X 18″

‘Happy deer’, oil on canvas, 40″ X 36

‘The cat’,  acrylic on canvas, 30″ X 24″

‘Dream’,  acrylic on canvas, 40″ X 40″

I selected an exhibition news of Anju Dodiya who is one of my favourite Indian Artist. She was born in 1964 and her art has remained rooted in the figurative and all elements within her paintings are charged with an emotional value. The self is at the center of her works though she had initially resisted the lure of self-portraiture. She has created a niche for herself while exploring various possibilities within it.
Anju’s self keeps recurring in the changing pictorial contexts. These are, on one hand, inward looking investigation but they are not narcissist in any sense. There is a keen sense of self-awareness and introspection, at the same time; these works compel the viewer to unravel the untold stories and ambiguous frames. She continually creates her own legend as though she were a fictional character caught in bizarre but lyrical narrative, a self-disruptive autobiography.

Her watercolours are her take on the heroic, romantic representation of the self and self-discovery. There is something vulnerable in her works as the stringent violence is inflicted on her mind and her art. Anju’s paintings start a process of moving beyond the narrow self and towards a larger self among the others. Nancy Adajania, an art critic and cultural theorist therefore observes,

“I will therefore argue that the artist’s various self projections, far from being a garland of whimsical and disconnected pictorial quotations phrased across the years can actually be seen to express strong psychological continuities”.

There are often curtains, props, costumes and even the spotlights in her works – the entire stagecraft transforming the surfaces into a proscenium that mediates between the real and the illusory. Her works lie between the real and the unreal, dream and reality where she selects her pictorial references from varied sources including Indian miniatures, Renaissance paintings, world cinema, ukiyo-e prints, newspaper photographs.
Anju Dodiya completed her B.F.A. from the J J School of Art, Mumbai in 1986. She lives and works in Mumbai.

Vadehra Art Gallery (VAG) has promoted contemporary Indian art through exhibitions, retrospectives, publications and educational programmes. VGA has become the locus through which both modern and contemporary Artists have reached the public over the last 20 years. VAG’s position as an artistic interlocutor with the public is especially vital in contemporary India because of the lack of vibrant art museum culture. I(Kayla) went to VAG in Dec 2009 with M.J. and we were very impressed as their book publication was absolutely outstanding. The book store is situated beside the Gallery and there were a number of series of Indian Contemporary Arts. They have high quality and well designed so that readers enable to catch the contents and images easily. I bought more than 10 books from there and had a difficulty to carry them, but i must say that it was more than worth!!

I hope you will enjoy her works!!

‘Promise’,  watercolour, charcoal & soft pastel on paper,  71″ x 45″,  2009

‘Bird’, watercolour, charcoal, acrylic & soft pastel on paper, 72″x45″, 2009

‘Breathing lesson’, watercolour, charcoal & acrylic on paper, 71″x45″, 2009

‘Untitled (With Bulbs)’, watercolour, charcoal & soft pastel on paper  83″ x 55″, 2008

‘Paper necklace(for Sophie Calle)’, watercolour, charcoal & soft pastel on paper, 60″x45″, 2008

‘Walled City – I’, watercolour on paper  12″ x 8.5″, 2009

‘Walled City – VI’, watercolour on paper  12″ x 8.5″, 2009

More info in Vadehra Art in New Delhi

With auctions, fixed price website sales, access to associated galleries’ exhibition programs, and technology enabled services for clients, all connected through an unparalleled online presence, Saffronart has effectively made reach to Indian Contemporary Art simple and instantaneous. Also involved with various institutions, organizations and publications, Saffronart is driven by an endeavor to provide the most accurate and timely information on Indian artists, events and trends.

Saffron Art in Mumbai, New York and London

Saffronart’s gallery spaces in Mumbai and New York, and its offices in London, supported by an informative and interactive website, provide access to a substantial range of art, information and advice. The gallery in Mumbai opened with a definitive collection of works by Francis Newton Souza in 2003 and through the years has followed this with several partner gallery exhibitions and auction previews. M.J. And i visited there in Dec 2009 and got a chance to see wide range of master pieces. The staff was very helpful and explained about some works what we were impressed of. Saffron Art’s new space in New York is situated in the prestigious Fuller Building, and has a large viewing area, lounge and office. It opened with a preview of its 2007 summer online auction, followed by the autumn online auction preview and a major retrospective of S. H. Raza’s work.

Guide from Saffron Art;

About ‘Contemporary Indian Art (1985-present)’

It is clear that the modernism of the preceding decades prefigured the tone of Indian artistic practice in the late eighties and nineties. However, during this time, the preoccupations of the earlier part of the century were considerably attenuated and, with some younger artists, even become a non-issue. The hard facts of disappearing borders and a globalised economy made post-modernism the preferred artistic mode. In keeping with the tenor of the times, photo and hyperrealism, installation art, new media creations, and digital representations found their way into Indian artistic and public awareness. The “hybrid mannerisms” excoriated by Jagdish Swaminathan became “hybrid signs”, and ironically, began to seem normal and familiar.

However, even as many of the earlier divides blurred, and the borders between imported and indigenous seemed to suture, some rough edges continued to show. During the 1990s, a pluralist and fragmentative mood dominated the creation of contemporary art, highlighting the difficulties associated with the dawn of an age of information and instant gratification, and with the emergence and novel concerns of ‘the global Indian’. Dually charged by the excessive information they received and their personal responses to this environment, the work of artists like Shibu Natesan, Surendran Nair, Jayashree Chakravarty, Rekha Rodwittiya and G. Ravinder Reddy responded to newer and greater numbers of stimuli than any of their predecessors could have imagined.

With the old, outmoded dualities loosened, Atul Dodiya’s metaphoric montages took cognisance of the space in which Indians found themselves face to face with other citizens of the world, while Subodh Gupta used his paintings and installations to filter and magnify the everyday experiences of rural and middle-class Indians for a global audience. In the work of Baiju Parthan, the past and the present cohered without dissonance in a new, digitized realm, and Anju Dodiya’s personal struggles with the violence of the creative process were spelled out for viewers in her watercolours.

Like painting, contemporary sculpture evolved in accordance with new shifts in ideology and paradigm. Sculptors found that the only limits imposed on the techniques and materials they could use were those of their own imaginations. Traditional media like stone and metal were subjected to new treatments and unusual combinations, and inventive techniques like site-specific installations and kinetic sculpture gained popularity. In addition, boundaries between traditional disciplines like painting and sculpture were dissolved, with artists like Sudarshan Shetty, Anandajit Ray, Jagannath Panda and G.R. Iranna hybridizing the two through their practices.

With this contemporary wave came the opening up of the market for Indian art abroad, as also the profusion of art galleries within the country, meaning that the Indian artist now had no choice but to address a more diffuse audience, through themes that resonated with the local as well as the global. Today, the work of artists from the Indian diaspora, the blurring of design and art, and the videos, installations and digital spaces of an even younger generation of artists have all added new dimensions to Indian contemporary art, a seemingly nebulous concept ever-receptive to growth and change.

Through the trials and tribulations of its practitioners, Indian art has yielded a picture of a vital and vigorous creative practice over the last century. It is this frequently bewildering heterogeneity, this multiple and plural nature of Indian art which, perhaps, will eventually deliver up the insights its practitioners continue to pursue so dedicatedly.

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Today i’m going to share the views of Sambit Panda’s works. 1st of all, the Anant Art Gallery was spacious so that there were many works displayed that gave good distance to see the works. The staff was very kind and helpful. The gallery is one of the popular and authoritative one in New Delhi. We got a chance to talk to one of the staff and she gave us useful infomation in Indian Contemporary Arts and she showed some catalogues of the past exhibitions. We were so grateful and would like to visit the Gallery soon again.

Sambit Panda is already well-knwon Indian Artist as you might recognise. His works seem to be associated with deep religious background and have power to awake exquisite sensitivity from audiences. The colours are used in a simple way with some special medium like gold foil but the each plane tells us more complicated stories. We don’t know if the man on the paintings tells a myth, personal story or as a symbol of something. He might be the Artist himself, me or you at the moment when we are given to the paintings.

Invitation

TOWARDS BRAHMACHARI, 6.5″ x 8.5″, Graphite, Gold Foil on paper, 2009

TOWARDS BRAHMACHARI, 6.5″ x 8.5″, Graphite, Gold Foil on paper, 2009

Anant Art Gallery

Visit the Gallery website

Who also talked about

Visit the Art Musings Gallery

INDIAN Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since Post Independence. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced since Post Independence.

For more info visit.

http://www.contemporaryindianart.com/