Aravallis- From hills to apartments, Life Inspired and more..

NEWS

Aravallis - From hills to apartments

Alliance Francaise de Delhi, Gurgaon is hosting a group photography show, ‘Aravallis – From hills to apartments’, showcasing the works of Vinit Gupta, Cara Louwman, Vicky Roy and Marianne Van Loo.

The exhibition showcases the perspectives of four photographers and their reactions to the changing landscapes of Gurgaon. These landscapes are manifestations of the processes of modernisation and growth, in consonance with its image of a millennium city. The images are artistic portrayals of the economic and social impact on the polity and fabric of a city in the making.

The show is on view till 5th April 2014.

Life Inspired

( Work on display)

Aalankritha Art Gallery, Hyderabad invites all the art lovers for a really enriching experience at an art exhibition. The painting exhibition features the works of three young and immensely talented artists, Avinash Basu, MS Vasu and Nirmal Karmakar.

The show is titled, ‘Life Inspired’ and will be on view till 15th March 2014.

Shades of Women

( Work on display)

Gallery Space, Hyderabad presents a show titled,‘Shades of Women’ an international group exhibition of paintings, sculpture, print, photography. The participating artists are Anjolei Ela menon, Anupam Sood, Arpana Caur, Seema Kohli, Jaya Baheti, Ambreen, Poonam Chandrika, Usha Mishra, Rohini Reddy, Sneha Latha, Deepanath, Geetha, Tripti Dave, Sravanthi Juluri, Sarswathi, Lopa Mudru, Lona Logan, Rangoli Garg and others.

The show displays women centric themes by male and female artists. 

The show is on view till 23rd March 2014.

Exploring nuances of Oil painting

The Art Loft, Mumbai presents ‘Exploring Nuances of Oil Painting’ an invite to art enthusiasts to dabble in oil painting and explore its nuances with French artist Soazic Guezennec. Soazic lives and works in Mumbai and usually blends a poetic vision with a sense of threat in her works. She has been acknowledged and appreciated for her ecological sensibility that reflects in most of her creative works.

In the workshop, participants can explore the nuances and techniques of oil painting. You can also bring along the work of an artist you admire and Soazic will guide you to create your own interpretations inspired by their work. Her classes and way of teaching are intended to make the student independent and fearless in exploring their own path.

The workshop is on till 25th March 2014.

( News reports by Sushma Sabnis)

FEATURE

Artist Nandita Kumar Explains Her Trippy New Show At Lakeeren Gallery

Nandita Kumar’s show Let THe bRAinFly is a mind trip and not only because of the awkward spelling of the title (“I do all my titling slightly dyslexic because I’m slightly dyslexic,” she says). There are the titular brainflies, literally brains with wings, that flit across the gallery walls of Lakeeren in Colaba, where this show is taking place; clouds of drain covers that hang from the ceiling; and canvases that leak bug-like creatures that on closer inspection turn out to be livers and legs and other errant body parts. “Letting the brain fly symbolises freedom of thought,” says Kumar, an Auckland- and Mumbai-based artist, who was born in Africa, and who made her way to our city via Austria, where she spent a year living on an organic beef farm. This work, she says, is an attempt to bring together various strains of thought – of living on a metaphorical plane without losing track of reality; of embracing our masculine and feminine sides; of understanding sexuality; of living in the present; and of navigating life with an acute awareness of both mind and body. “Your true journey starts when you’re ready for an adventure,” says Kumar, who took us through this complex work and explained what it all means.

“When I migrated to New Zealand, I began analysing what I was experiencing, Carl Jung calls it the process of individuation,” says Kumar who has degrees in painting and experimental animation and filmmaking from universities in California, New Zealand and India. This wall of heads, called Assembly Line Emo, is she says all the emotions one experiences in the process of figuring things out – fear, guilt, pain – and the personas we adopt – the finger pointer, the listener, the tripper. Just out of frame in the lower right corner are tiny brains in wheelchairs, which Kumar says are symbolic of the process of evolution, “that at some point the brain has to get out of the wheelchair”.

Neuron Scape, says Kumar, is evocative of Ardhanarishvara, that is, the joint male and female figure of Shiva and Parvati. “If you don’t respect the feminine power, you can’t respect the masculine.” Kumar’s works frequently transgress the traditional barrier, not just metaphorically, but also literally, which is why these works flow off the canvas completely.

Titled aptly The Orgy of the Organs, these sea creature-like specimens are actually just body parts – breasts, spinal cords, teeth cavities, tongues, just a great mass of organs that appear to float off the canvas and towards the ceiling. “It’s about loving everything to do with the body,” says Kumar.

The all seeing third eye bobs in an ocean – is it sinking or rising? “It could be either,” says Kumar, who titled this work simply C. “It’s about seeing things as it is, an awakening of sorts.”

(Report sourced from Mumbai Boss)

Art for Concern, The Buddha, Stains of Stimuli and more..

NEWS

Art For Concern

( work on display)

Visual arts Gallery, of the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi presents its Annual art exhibition organised by Secure Giving in aid of Concern India Foundation. Showcasing the eclectic collection of art by masters and promising artists, the show boasts of works by acclaimed artists like Akbar Padamsee, Suhas Roy, Jogen Choudhary, Jayasri Burman, Sanjay Bhattacharya, Dhiraj Choudhury and Sudip Roy. 

While the prime focus is to raise funds for underprivileged sections of the society, it also takes this opportunity to bring forward the works of struggling and needy artists, thus providing them a platform to be visible alongside the masters. 

The show is on view from 26th February to 27th February 2014.

The Buddha

( work by Suniyata Khanna at the show)

Aalankritha Art Gallery, Hyderabad presents an exhibition of paintings titled, ‘The Buddha’. As the name suggests, it displays a range of colourful Buddha paintings by talented artists including Ananda Das, Anand Panchal, Ashoke Ganguly, Makrand Jadhav, Subramanian Gopalsamy, Subrata Das, Sukanta Das, Suniyata Khanna and Suryanarayan J.

The show is on view till 22nd February 2014.

And I laid traps for Troubadours…

( Work on display)

Clark House Initiative, Mumbai along with Kadist Art Foundation, Paris presents a group show titled, ‘And I laid traps for troubadours who get killed before they reached Bombay’ of artworks that have been curated by Emilie Villez, Zasha Colah and Sumesh Sharma. The works on display depict cultural transference. This implies how ideas travel through objects and how the meaning of artworks will change and increase, when brought into the context of Mumbai’s political and social realities, and imaginaries.

The works on display are a collection of works from the Kadist in Paris with productions by artists from Mumbai, or those who once travelled to Mumbai. The participating artists are Francis Alÿs, Liz Ballard, Yael Bartana, Yogesh Barve, Kemi Bassene, Zied Ben Romdhane, Judy Blum, Sachin Bonde, Kennedy Browne, CAMP, Ceal Floyer, Chinchu Kumar Sreekandan, Aurélien Froment, Grupo Etcetera, David Horvitz, Poonam Jain, Jamboys, Mangesh Kapse, Ben Kinmont, Chinchu Kumar Sreekandan, Naresh Kumar, Ranjeeta Kumari, Lawrence Liang, Simon Liddiment, Aurelien Mole, Scott Myles, Prasad Nikumbh, Roman Ondak, Open Circle, Prabhakar Pachpute, Amol Patil, Rupali Patil, Pratchaya Phinthong, Justin Ponmany, Tatiana Pozzo Di Borgo, Prajakta Potnis, Nikhil Raunak, Société Réaliste, Uday Shanbagh, Caecilia Tripp, Nil Yalter and Carey Young.

The exhibition has been scheduled as a second part of a project started in Paris in 2013 with the exhibition 'L’exigence de la saudade', curated by Clark House Initiative then in residency at Kadist.

The show is on view till 30th April 2014.

Interface and Stains of Stimuli

(Work on display)

Forum Art Gallery, Chennai presents two shows, a show titled, ’Stains of Stimuli’ solo show by S.N.Sujith and ‘Interface’ a group show featuring eminent artists A.V. Ilango, Biswajit Balasubramanian, Birendra Pani, BO. Shailesh, C. Douglas, Harsha Biswajit, K. Muralidharan, P. Elanchezhiyan, S. Nandagopal, Santhosh Kotagiri, Shalini Biswajit, Shivarama Chary and Thejo Menon.

The shows are on view till 12th March 2014.

(News reports by Sushma Sabnis)

FEATURE

Down memory lane, by the sea

(The exhibition was aimed at connecting people with Chennai's built heritage. Photo: K.V. Srinivasan)

Memories of a street that once was, revisiting personal landmarks that have vanished, looking away to observe how much the landscape has changed, and all this punctuated with the crash of the waves. ‘Madras before after’, a predominantly black and white photography exhibition at Elliots Beach, looked at the city not just through a sepia-tinted lens, but also a disciplined archival approach.

Organised as part of the ongoing Art Chennai 2014 festival, the exhibition traces a nostalgic, yet measured trajectory of the city’s colonial past and its evolution.

From Indo-Saracenic architecture to depictions of daily life, the exhibition draws you to engage with it.

72 photographs from the collection of ‘Vintage Vignettes’ were curated by the festival’s artistic director Girish Shahane. “We thought it was a great way of connecting people of the city with its built heritage,” he said.

The exhibition has photographs of Mount Road in 1907, flower bazaar in 1896, a rather pristine Adyar River in 1886, the central railway station, the Chepauk Palace, and the Marina among many others.

K. Skandan, Managing Director, Tamilnadu Tourism Development Corporation, said “Like climate change, cultural change also matters. It has to be discussed and debated.”

D. Krishnan, managing partner, Vintage Vignettes, emphasised the need for thorough and systematic documentation of the city. Sanjay Tulsyan, founder and convenor of the festival was also present.

For those such as Aishwarya Pesala, a resident of East Mada Street in Mylapore, it was about revisiting the street where she lived all these years.

“I live here and am trying to recognise this building and what stands in its place now,” she said standing in front of a photograph. “But the car festival at the Kapaleeswarar temple still draws as much of a crowd,” she added standing in front of a 1906 photograph of the festival.

(Report courtesy The Hindu)