Clay at the Attic, Feminine Narratives and more..

NEWS

Audio-visual by Jagannath Panda

(work by Jagannath Panda)

Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi, hosts an audio visual presentation by artist Jagannath Panda at the Government Museum & Art Gallery. 

The artist is known for creating images that are deceptively simple. Often, his works consist of light, linear drawings and melting of liquid shapes placed on the surface. At the same time, the works also reflect conflicts between ecology and development, nature and technology. Panda's works are often inspired by his immediate surroundings: Orissa, his native state, and his current home in chaotically urban New Delhi. Through his art, Panda brings together many binary opposites, nature and culture, the urban and the rural, tradition and innovation, and the figurative and the abstract. In his works he brings together these opposing scenarios to form a coherent whole through deft colour treatment and a personal aesthetic sensibility. Animal life also plays an important part in the artist's circle of motifs. Animals represent people, gods, or the cycle of life. 

The audio visual presentation will take place on 31st March 2014 at 5:30 pm.

Clay At the Attic - 3

The Attic art space, New Delhi is presenting a pottery exhibition that will be showcasing art works by nine contemporary artists. The artists whose works will be displayed at this exhibition are Akila Chungi, Nausheen Bari, Kaveri Bharth, Neha Pallarwar, Shayonti Salvi, Ranjita Bora, Sylvia Kerkar, Veena Chandran and Tejashree Segvekar. The show is curated by Ray Meeker, and this exhibition offers a wonderful experience for art lovers in the city.

The show is on view till 29th March 2014.

Ladakh—The Land of Mountain Passes

The Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata will be hosting an exhibition of paintings and photographs by Sasanka Ghosh and Kakoli Dey, respectively. Their works capture the landscape, people, culture, architecture and wildlife of Ladakh.

The show is on till 30th March 2014.

Feminine Narratives

( work on display)

Malaka Spice Art Gallery, Pune presents an exhibition of paintings by Chetana Chaudhari-Sudame. Chetana is an artist with her own style of figurative painting. Her mostly self-taught pursuit of excellence in art has added facets of learning under artists of repute in India and in UK at the Slade School of Art,(UCL), London. 

Her paintings explore the feminine subtleties inspired from folk painting styles of India and are a celebration of colors and enhance the finer moments of the feminine life. Using various media, from oil pastels to ink and acrylic to oil, is her forte.

The show is on view till 31st March 2014.

( News reports by Sushma Sabnis)

FEATURE

In search of the missing

Interview: At Art Dubai, Indian origin artist Hajra Waheed unveils the second chapter of her ongoing novel-like work based on the issue of migration.

( A work by Hajra Waheed)

Hajra Waheed was born to Indian parents in Canada. The artist grew up in Canada and in Saudi Arabia. Educational pursuits took her to the U.S. and then back to Canada. This diversity can perhaps explain how Hajra’s art eschews regional trappings so well.

The artist is exhibiting at the eighth edition of Art Dubai, a significant platform for the visual arts from the West Asia, North Africa and South Asia regions. Hajra is being presented by Kolkata’s Experimenter gallery.

“I think having been raised in different places has enabled me to look at various aspects of myself,” says Hajra, who had her first solo in India last year where she showed different pieces from the same body of work.

Because she finds it problematic to situate an art work in a particular region, her work ends up having a universal resonance. “I don’t look at myself coming from a particular region. If I did then the narrative would have been very channelled,” she says.

Describing the “Sea Change” series as a long novel which will unfold over the years, the young artist says the India show was an introduction of the narrative. The plot deals with people who disappear during their journeys, and at Art Dubai, Hajra’s series “Sea Change Character 1: In The Rough” becomes a little specific in introducing one out of nine characters who go missing.

Based on the real account of disappearance of a large group of people travelling by sea, Hajra does a take on migration and issues around it. Her vivid experiences of, particularly, living in the Saudi Arabian oil compound with many restrictions owing to gender and nationality, inform her art practice.

( A work by Hajra Waheed)

So, “Returned” is a set of 24 works on paper, which with collaged photographs of rocks, landscapes, accompanied by some text, qualify to be called minimalistic.

“Co-ordinates” is a set of steel slide viewers — handcrafted wooden boxes — inside which can be seen an image (found film, cut and reassembled) of a landscape.

The material she uses helps her in elaborating the narrative. Found objects, aged paper, gifted things often make it to her work (like the family photographs gifted to her by a friend that were used in “Entranik Anouchian Passport Drawing”, portraits of men and women, now in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York).

“I notice that the materials that have existing history have a much more mature way of working,” says the artist, who is also doing what she describes as a live installation at the venue. “It is like a floating lantern which comes alive. I collaborate with a shadow puppeteer and we interact with shadow and light,” explains Hajra, who will be performing on a boat floating in the water body at hotel Madinat Jumeirah, the venue of Art Dubai.

Indian presence at Art Dubai

Bangalore-based artist Anup Mathew Thomas has won the Abraaj Group Art Prize along with four other artists from different countries.

The commissioned work, “Nurses”, a set of photographs of nurses, is also on display at the venue.

Sunoj D, another Bangalore-based artist, and Mumbai-based art collective Clark House Initiative are part of Art Dubai Projects.

Then there are Indian galleries like GallerySKE, Experimenter, Chatterjee and Lal, Jhaveri Contemporary, etc, which have booths at the fair.

(Report by Shailaja Tripathi for The Hindu)

Profile Pragati Dalvi, Nature Series, Rang De and more..

PROFILE

A Ballet of the Unuttered

A calmness ensues the hectic activity of things. Like a stray piece of paper performing a solo ballet under a street lamp on a dark morning to an only witness. A silent commune of energies in unuttered syllables. Probably the same nondescript piece of paper had been the centre of a midnight dust storm, an observer in complete stillness. At once a performer in the limelight and at once the unmoving spectator in a swirling dust tornado. This is how artist Pragati Dalvi’s work mutates from being an artist’s act and a silent reflection of events, observes Sushma Sabnis.

( Artist Pragati Dalvi)

Pragati Dalvi has a BFA degree in Painting and MFA in Creative Painting from Sir JJ School of Art, Mumbai. Her medium of making art varies from water colour to oils and inks on paper. She has recently stepped into the realm of experimental photography as well.

When one looks at the paintings by Pragati, one would be aware of the obvious influences of nature in them. It would be too easy to type cast them as nature abstracts, but on closer observation, one could see the interplay of metaphors and a conscious study of the subject at hand. Most of them are rendered as abstractions of sensory stimuli and memory sources, but what takes them a step further would be their multiple implications. The artist tries to capture an emotion exactly as it was experienced, an intangible ethereal emotion she has felt at the instant in response to the external stimulus. Hence the works can either appear as if painted hurriedly or at leisure as if savouring a moment of beauty and sensitivity to make it last much longer than its original occurrence.

( Blue After Rain -I)

Also captured in the works are multiple essences of an experience. In an interview Pragati talks about the sensorial aspects of an experience. As an artist she tries to capture what the senses say initially and then she urges the viewer to take this sensory response to a transcended level of a lingering moment. A midnight sky, may appear in the mind’s eye as  black or dark grey to most, but to Pragati this very midnight sky is a palette of blues, purples, mauves and violet shades. This palette is kept to a minimum of colours and most of her works in the ‘Pause’ series are an interpretation of the influence of this muse of memory of one moment in time. 

(Red in Rain)

For example, a sunset in the summer induces far different feelings in the viewer than a sunset in the monsoon or winter. Moreover the location from where it would be experienced and with whom, would impart a new meaning to this experience. Intermingled with a liberal dose of emotional catalysts, the images that emerge are a blend of the sensorial, the reactionary and the imagined in complete aesthetical harmony.

(Blue After Rain - II)

In her works, ‘Blue After Rain I and II’, ‘Red in Rain’, ‘Blue and Warm’, ‘A touch of Blue’ the images suggest the dominance of a colour as well as an emotion, possibly a moment spent in solitude. ‘Witnessing a Change’ hints at the seasonal changes or it could also subtly hint at the artist’s state of mind to a more optimistic outlook towards life. 

(Witnessing a Change)

Most of her works have a suggestive ‘moving on to something-ness’ in them. This would be possible only when all the nuances of a reaction to a stimulus are not closed. Pragati leaves a few unexplored areas, intentionally, in the form of empty spaces or white spots or addition of small bits of tissue paper, which probably is her way of keeping the mystery of her work intact, veiling it. When asked about the  curious usage of tissue paper in her works she reveals that it could be that the emotion experienced then was not a positive one, hence the tissue implies a ‘cleansing’ logic. So it is not about just veiling a negative emotion, but wiping it off from the psyche. The artist revisits her inspiration in nature and according to her, nature often is in a flux, a moving, evolving state which reflects in the regenerative ability. In spite of all the abuse nature is going through from various causes, She survives,  retaliates or resurfaces for the better, restoring the balance. Pragati tries to capture these subtle unseen intuitive qualities of nature in her works, ensuring that anyone who views the works would take with them a sense of harmony and balance in their lives, like Mother Nature offers.

Pragati Dali lives and works in Bangalore.

NEWS

Nature Series at Tangerine

(Work by Sripad Kulkarni)

Tangerine, Bangalore, presents its first artist for 2014, Sripad Kulkarni. A graduate from the Karnataka Chitra Kala Parishad, Sripad's latest exhibition at Tangerine titled 'Nature Series', displays paintings that are influenced from nature and inspired from Indian paintings to the extent that the figures are drawn in the same form and all his work depicts forms of either the butterfly, fish or the horse. 

Having conducted a number of group shows and solo shows, notable being his solo at the Chitrakala Parishad in 2012 and at the Udupi Art Foundation in 2013, Sripad believes, 'There has to be a certain freshness and newness in one's art, otherwise it's pointless to pursue it. To be different means doing something you have never done before’. Strong yet inspiring words that influence the way you work, Sripad Kulkarni is one such artist inspired to create a different perspective. His drawings reveal his predilection for form: forms that consist in tone rather than line, carefully expressing the textural effects of various mediums. 

Sripad’s works are on display till 10th February 2014.

National Art Katta 

The Art Katta, Pune presents a national level art exhibition every year starting from 2014. This is the first ever national level exhibition organized by The Art Katta and they are happy to have it in the cultural capital of Maharashtra. The idea is to maintain the diversity in display so the people could get a chance to see the variety of artworks. 

There will be more than 40 selected artworks on display by various artists from various parts of India such as Pune, Mumbai, Kolkata, Ratnagiri, Delhi, Surat, Ahmednagar, Vishakhapattanam, Goa, Kolhapur, Patna and Hyderabad.

The show is on view till 4th February 2014.

Rang De

( Work by Reha Shisodia. Image courtesy Pradarshak Gallery)

Gallery Pradarshak, Mumbai presents a solo art show of self taught painter, Reha Shisodia. The show titled, ‘Rang De’ displays the artists abstract renditions on canvas in acrylic and mixed media.

Her work can be classified as Abstract Expressionist. Each of the canvases communicate with the viewer in a bold rush of colour and intensity, taking the viewer deeper into their journey, sometimes playing the field, merging into each other, and at other times standing loftily apart.

“Rang De” is the artist’s tribute to the season of joy that begins with the harvesting season in January and culminates in Holi in March. 

The show is on view till 15th February 2014.

Kaleidoscopic Art

( Work by Burhan N Nagarwala)

Malaka Spice Art space, Pune presents an exhibition of paintings by Burhan N Nagarwala. Burhan holds a degree in Fine Arts and is doing his Masters from Bharati Vidyapeeth, Pune. All of 27 years, he is already imparting art to others. He is inspired by what he sees in real life , and captures what touches his heart, on canvas. 

His works vary from horses to people to nature and also still life and objects. His paintings reveal boldness as well as, an inner strength. His palette leans towards red and black in expression and renditions.

The show is on view till 15th February 2014.

( News reports by Sushma Sabnis)