Jhupu Adhikari: A life in Drawings, Beyond the One, Whispering Canvas and more..

NEWS

Jhupu Adhikari: A Life in Drawings

India International Centre, Delhi presents a retrospective exhibition on Jhupu Adhikari (1927 - 2013). Titled as 'Jhupu Adhikari: A Life in Drawings', the exclusive exhibition will cover the works by the artist from his earliest days. The display will feature a wide variety of works in water colour portrait and woodcuts. There will be sketches and designs, advertisements and logos, some works from the 'clown series', Rajasthan and Turkey and also the final works drawn on an Ipad.

As a part of this exhibition, the evening also had a discussion and readings from ‘Jhupu – A Life Drawing'. Reading from the book was done by Sheema Mookerjee, Sushmita Sengupta, Pialee Mukherjee, Miti Adhikari, Sara Adhikari and Neel Adhikari. The chief guest for the evening was Shri Keshav Malik and the speakers included Ella Dutta, Kishore Singh, Monojit Lahiri and Abhijit Dutt.

The show is on view till 1st December 2013.

Musical Landscapes

(Work on display)

National Museum, New Delhi presents a multimedia and interactive exhibition by renowned tech wizard Ranjit Makkuni. 

Titled as, ‘Musical landscapes and the goddesses of music: recent advances in interactive art’, the exhibition displays the various facets of music. Be it the science, art and spirituality related to music or the beautiful reflections in the Asian cultures, the multimedia exhibition is a visual feast for art connoisseurs of the capital. 

The show is on till 16th January 2014.

Beyond the One

(Work on display)

Goethe Institut, Bangalore, presents Anna Marziano’s exhibition as her initiative to explore the ways we relate to one another in close relationships. The documentation will be accompanied by sound-works created by 12 students from Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology. 

Beyond The One reveals a particular attention to the process of her film making. Anna involves some inhabitants of Bangalore in conversations and sound-recordings. The film unfolds as a sort of plural discourse in which many voices dialogue/cohabit/clash in the space of the film. In addition to archive material, the film is shot on 16 mm and S8 mm. The shooting will continue during the following months all over Europe.

The show is on view till 1st December 2013.

Whispering Canvas

(Work on display)

Nehru Centre Art Gallery presents a show of paintings by Nilesh Vede at the week long exhibition titled 'Whispering Canvas'. Nilesh is a Mumbai based contemporary artist who started getting recognition in Indian contemporary art scene after 2006. He has been appreciated for his unique style of painting and his works have found a lot of admiration from international art connoisseurs.

With his latest exhibition, this Sir J. J. School Of Art graduate takes forward the Maanava series where the Maanava continues its journey as a ‘Whispering Canvas’. It is a silent dialogue between the viewer, his conscience, a space and the canvas, created through Nilesh’s thoughtful artworks.

The exhibition will be inaugurated by eminent artist Vinod Sharma on December 3rd at 4 pm. The show will be on view till 9th December 2013.

( News reports by Sushma Sabnis)

FEATURE

In Fine Print

An exhibition of young printmakers from across India is brimming with diversity in content and technique. Organised by a printmakers’ group, the effort is aimed at garnering respect for the medium.

(Work on display)

In a full on season when it’s pouring exhibitions, left, right and centre, those showcasing prints can be counted on one’s fingers. With art market biased towards a few mediums, the exhibitions of prints have become fewer and fewer. In such a scenario, ‘A Festival Of Printmaking: The exhibition of young print artists of India’ reinforces hope. Around 80 young artists, selected by senior printmakers from different regions of India, are presenting their prints in the exhibition currently on at All India Fine Arts & Crafts Society (AIFACS) in New Delhi. The exhibition is dedicated to late Jagmohan Chopra, considered a pioneer in the arena of printmaking.

Organised by Multiple Encounters, a group of 12 senior printmakers, the showcase becomes a window for the viewer to see much variety in content and techniques of printmaking. For the young artist, it is an effective platform to show that the medium isn’t bound by any limitations. “I think we need to redefine the word ‘print’. A print can be my impression…it can be anything. It isn’t a substitute. It is a medium and it shouldn’t be bracketed,” says Ananda Moy Bannerji, one of the curators of the show and a member of Multiple Encounters. Artists like Ananda Moy Bannerji, Kavita Nayar, Dattatraya Apte, K.R.Subbanna and Sushanta Guha were associated with Indian Printmakers Guild for a long time and then they came together to push the cause of printmaking as Multiple Encounters around six years ago. Last year, the group rolled out Indo-US print exhibition showcasing 127 artists from India and America at Lalit Kala Akademi. “The idea is to make the society aware of the medium and giving a little push to the young printmakers. The medium should be respected and that will happen only when the society is educated about it. We can make it economically viable. Like we have book publishers, we could have print publishers in the country,” says Bannerji, who though works with different mediums but is really passionate about printmaking.

(Work on display)

Chosen from all across India, these fresh pass-outs from art colleges present a collection which is exhaustive in nature on account of technique and subject matter. While a young Nilanjan Das takes a gentle dig at urban lives with his work titled ‘If I get a job in a real estate marketing company’ in lino, chinacolle on digital print, Priyanka Batra in her etchings ‘Femininity Series’ engages with gender issues poignantly. “All the works in the exhibition are so strong. Politics, urban life, human anatomy…the artists are engaging with various issues. The variety and the experimental nature of the works is the highlight of the show.” In another work Das, curiously integrates printmaking with computer generated imagery giving the medium a new dimension altogether.

Sachin Bhausaheb Nimbhalkar’s installation, built deconstructing the concept of playing cards, again fits into the category absolutely. The artist from Maharashtra takes recourse to his memory and culls out images from his village life. His grandmother, folk music instruments and other symbols enter his artistic realm, and the transparency the medium of lithography affords only aids Nimbalkar in expressing his feelings.

A young Gayathri K. of Andhra Pradesh chooses close-ups of insects as her subjects. Jagadeesh Tammineni, who studied printmaking in Baroda, renders the exterior of an art gallery displaying print show in woodcut.

“A lot of artists, I observed have used woodcut, which I feel is making a comeback. Artists like Priyoum Talukdar, Sanghita Das use this technique so beautifully,” feels Bannerji.

A slice of history

(Work on display)

A small section dedicated to Ex-libris prints, taken from the collection of Paramjeet Singh, Chairman, AIFACS, underlines the significance of the medium and the significant role it has assumed in history. Ex-Libris is a Latin expression which means ‘from the books of’. Soon after books came out, a need was felt to mark their possession in some way. So after the printing press was invented, ex libris became a small printed label, pasted onto the volume’s back cover binding, bearing its owner’s name and a sign of personal identification, artistically executed through woodcut or wood engraving process. The collection showcases ex-libris prints produced in Japan, Finland, USSR and Romania.

( Report by Shailaja Tripathi for The Hindu)