A Tree in my backyard, The Nanyang Spirit, India Song and more..

NEWS

A Time to Dream

Apparao Galleries, presents a show titled, ‘A Time to Dream’ at the Sandy’s, Chennai. the show focuses on the works of two artists,  Farhan Mujib and Pradeep Nerurkar, inviting the viewer to ponder on the concept and power of dreams. 

Dreams have been the precursors and answers to many a problems, also as inspirations to artists, writers, philosophers and thinkers for centuries. The show encourages the viewer to delve deep within themselves and find out what their dreams have presented to them individually.

The show is on view from 13th March to 14th May 2014.

India Song

( Work byKaren Knorr)

Piramal Gallery of National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai presents British photographer Karen Knorr’s four-year-long Deutsche Börse Photography Prize nominated ‘India Song’ at the new Tasveer show. It features images from Rajput traditions, taking inspiration from the cultural and wildlife heritage of India besides fables from Panchatantra, and references to orientalist appropriations of Indian culture, as well as the personification of animals seen in folklore. 

Most images are a collage of stunning architecture across Rajasthan, Delhi and Hampi, photographed, which is scanned and digitally combined with photographs of animals. Knorr transfixes the viewer with her surreal views, peppering her work with considerations of caste, femininity and how they relate to the animal world.

The show is on view till 19th March 2014.

The Nanyang Spirit

( Work on display)

Art Spice Gallery, at the Metropolitan Hotel, New Delhi presents a show titled, ‘The Nanyang Spirit’. The twenty two Singaporean artists, each with a unique style of painting, are all representatives of the ‘Nanyang’ spirit. 

Having grown up in Singapore during the developmental period, some of these artists have experienced the tensions between tradition and modernity, enabling them to incorporate these elements into their painting styles. Such is the essence of the ‘Nanyang’ spirit. In these ‘Nanyang’ artists express their personal unique painting styles in their artworks, often through a blend of multiple stylistic techniques of the East and West, resulting in a varied body of works unified by their focus on Southeast Asian subjects.

The show is on view from 12th March to 21st March 2014.

A Tree from my backyard

( Work by Arunanshu Chowdhury)

Tao Art Gallery, Mumbai presents a solo show of art works by artist Arunanshu Chowdhury.

The show titled, ‘A Tree from my backyard’ features the works by the artist which focus on the amalgamation of cultures, people and where the idea of origin is lost in this give and take.
Depicting the intersection of diversity from a global scenario, the artist blends and presents small scale works and large scale ones as well. this incessant influencing, tends to dilute the original and there is a shift in the equilibrium. 
Trying to visualise the lost traditional with the popular and the so called new, the artist bridges the gap with his works and thoughts of time and movement.

The show previews on 14th March and is on view till 27th March 2014.

(News reports by Sushma Sabnis)

FEATURE

Krishen Khanna On Painting At Night, Drawing With His Eyes Closed And The Modern Cannibal

(Artist Krishen Khanna)

“To this day it makes me wonder how a small lead point peeping out of a pencil can yield so much,” writes Krishen Khanna in his handwritten concept note accompanying his ongoing solo show A Celebration of Lines at Sakshi Gallery. In Khanna’s case, the yield is a body of drawings and canvases dating back over 40 years, encompassing his minimalist experiments with Japanese woodcuts and his gory vignettes of ghoulish cannibals, and harking back to a childhood spent in Lahore and being witness to the violence of Partition. The 88-year-old Khanna, who quit a career in banking and joined the Progressive Artists’ Group at the behest of M. F. Husain, his friend and fellow painter, spoke to us from Gurgaon about painting at night, drawing with his eyes closed and sleeping at the early hour of 11pm. Edited excerpts:

In your concept note you say, “Sometimes I even close my eyes and let the point roam”. Is there a work in the show that started from that point?
No, I don’t think so. I’ve used this methodology many times in the past as well. It doesn’t become evident though, it gets scrubbed out, I go over it and use what I need. It’s a combination of the unconscious and the conscious mind.

You have a lovely work of an old lady called “Bye Bye Miss Amery”. Who was she?
She was an old Brit who lived in Lahore. She used to teach English and was employed by my father to teach my mother English. My mother was very young, my father was considerably older and more educated. She was a regular in the house, and used to come three times a week to teach English. She (Miss Amery) was a big, fat, old lady, she melded into the sofa she was sitting in, so you couldn’t very well distinguish where her clothes ended and the sofa began. She was an amusing woman and very proper.

There are a series of drawings of ghoulish cannibals, one shown plucking the eyeball of another. What inspired these works?
Well, current situations, where people are eating people, that was about three years ago. Periodically I venture into this kind of horrific drawing which nobody is going to buy, but that doesn’t matter. These are metaphorical drawings of what is going on today in many ways. There’s a depletion of love, and increase in the variety of hate.

( Selection of a Target)

Could you tell us a little more about the work of the man peeping out from a tree (see image, at left)?

This was apropos of the assassination of Saunders, who everyone said was shot by Bhagat Singh. Of course it was a whole lot of people who did it. [In this work] there’s this chap in the tree, he’s photographing the cavalcade which used to past underneath my window. I saw this fellow, and I asked the chap looking after me, who is this fellow and he said he’s just bird watching. Later on it dawned on me, he wasn’t watching birds, he was looking for a target. This was in Lahore.

How do you spend your day?
I do get up early to start painting, the evenings I spend doing drawings. I go to bed relatively early, around 11pm. I used to go to bed much later than I do now. All these drawings were done more or less in the evenings. I used to read a lot. The thing is I read a lot of poetry. I still remember a lot of poetry, and the poetry I remember I don’t need to read, I verbalise it to myself. The various images from the poems, things I’ve seen, they all meld and work together in an image, which I then might be interested in painting and drawing.

Do you still paint at night as you used to do with M. F. Husain?
We used to have night sessions in a little studio. I’d be painting, he’d break off and say, ‘You carry on painting, I have to say my prayers’. I was painting, and he was saying his prayers in this tiny little studio. Those were very happy times. Night is a wonderful time to work, no disturbance, no telephones. Of course I was much younger then.

(Report sourced from Mumbai Boss)

Mythologies, The Art Critic, Achrome and more..

NEWS

Mythologies

Project 88, Mumbai presents a solo exhibition of legendary artist KG Subramanyan’s works. The show is titled,‘Mythologies’ and coincides with the 25th anniversary of Galerie 88, Kolkata.

On display will be some of the artist’s gouache on paper works. The show previews on 13th February 2014 at 6:00 -9:00 pm.

The show is on view from 14th February to 6th of March 2014.

The Art Critic

Spaces, Chennai, presents a launch, of the book titled ’The Art Critic’ written by Richard Bartholomew. The book focuses on his writing on art from the 1950s to the 1980s.

IThe book will be introduced by Pablo Bartholomew with choice extracts read by Rosalyn D'Mello, followed by a discussion titled "The Politics of Art," with Sadanand Menon, Vishwanadhan, and S.G. Vasudev.

The discussion deals with what constitutes the mainstream and what conspiratorial forces sideline artists to the fringe? Prejudicial hegemonies decide the legacies that remain and those that are subdued, resulting in a convoluted art history rife with gaps. Artists S.G. Vasudev and V. Vishwanadhan will speak about their experience of the politics of art, while drawing on and dialoguing with Richard Bartholomew's extensive writing on the subject in his posthumously published book ‘The Art Critic’.

The book launch will take place on 11th February 2014 between 6:30 to 7:45 pm.

Achrome- One by One

India Fine Art Gallery, Mumbai presents an exclusive exhibition of works of a group of contemporary artists of today. The show is titled as ‘Achrome - One by One’,and this group  show will feature the works by Gunjan - Rahul, Kavita Jaiswal, Nupur Kundu and Rahul Kumar. The works on display are a depiction of their creativity and variety of styles and mediums explored and are a must see.

The show is on view from 12th February 2014 to 28th February 2014.

Tao turns 14

Tao Art Gallery, Mumbai presents its 14th anniversary show. The show titled ‘Infinite Tao’ is a celebration of the completion of 14 years of the gallery.

The group of artists chosen have been part of those years of the gallery’s shows, solos and group shows. The show displays an array of works, from charcoal drawings to paintings and sculptures. 
Participating artists are, Akash Choyal, Ali Akbar Mehta,Anwar, Arunanshu Chowdhury, Arzan Khambatta, Bharti Pitre, Brinda Miller, C Jagdish, Debashish Dutta, Devdatta Padekar, Dhruvi Acharya, Heeral Trivedi, Indrajit Prasad, Jagdish Chander, Jaideep Mehrotra, Jayasri Burman, KG Subramanyan, KS Radhakrishnan, Kalpana Shah, Kantikishore Moharana, Karl Antao, Krishen Khanna, Madhvi Parekh, Mahendra Bhagat, Manu Parekh, Mrinal Dey, Nanda Das, Paresh Maity, Prabhakar Kolte, Ratan Krishna Saha, Ratnadeep Adivrekar, Ravi Mandlik, Rini Dhumal, S H Raza, Samir Mondal,  Sanjay Kumar, Seema Kohli, Senaka Senanayake, Sohan Qadri, Somenath Maity, Shipra Bhattacharya, Shuvaprasanna, Sujata Bajaj, Sunil Padwal, Suryaprakash, Venkatesh Pate, Vijay Shinde and Yashwant Deshmukh.

The show previews on 12th February 2014, 7:00 pm onwards and is n view till 5th March 2014.

(News Reports by Sushma Sabnis)


FEATURE

The many layers of faith

Once called the ‘best-kept secret’ of the art fraternity, V. Ramesh is showing at a solo exhibition in Bangalore.

(Poet Karaikalamma)

V. Ramesh’s disarming warmth and graciousness at the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA) Bangalore, set the tone for the discussion of his solo exhibition, the first ever solo show by a living artist at the museum.

Consisting mostly of large canvases painted over a decade, Remembrances of Voices Past communicates Ramesh’s transcendental concerns of faith, devotion, and the essential oneness of being.

The artist’s unusual subject matter explores the idea of modern faith intertwined with ancient scriptures. Borrowing from mythology that describes human distraction caused by desire, his early series titled A Thousand and One Desires uses figuration to depict his ideas. In the painting A Thousand and One Desires, 2003, the central figure in the garb of a monk is surrounded by multiple gesticulating hands to denote greed and avarice. At the bottom of the painting is bold red text from American novelist Kurt Vonnegut ‘Grab much too much’, to denote blatant capitalist acquisition.

Yet, important as it is that a contemporary artist recontextualises and reiterates the essence of human values, Ramesh’s early figurative work falls short of narrative punch or engagement at a deeper level. Straightforward allegory in this work and in Building Castles in the Air, 2012, based on a Persian painting, seems less conducive towards evoking multiple layers of interpretation, or an awareness of who one is not in order to see who one might become.

Ramesh’s recent series Sanctum Sanctorum: A Corner for Four Sisters is inspired by four female figures. Hailing from different geographical and historical periods, these poet-saints come together through their renunciation of worldly ties. Here, one is not only fascinated by the artist’s retrieval of these long-forgotten figureheads and their defiance of tradition as early as the fifth century in their search for a higher truth, one is also moved by the subtlety and depth of Ramesh’s interpretation.

( Artist V Ramesh)

Karaikal Amma, 2012, pays homage to the Tamil saint whose sketchy, skeletal figure seeks a boon to appear as an ugly woman and be released from corporal needs. Covered with Tamil poetry and the hint of a more full-bodied female figure in the background, the painting encourages a discovery of meaning that begins the process of self-discovery, even self-transformation. Similarly, Remembering Laila Moj, 2011, is layered with different colours that suggest movement beneath the densely packed surface that’s filled with an English translation of the 14 century poet’s Kashmiri poetry. The technique of layering becomes paramount to the endlessly interpretable quality of the work.

The layering is best communicated in The Poet’s Passion series made up of four watercolours and four oil canvases. Alluding to 8 century poet-saint Manivachakar, the paintings alternate between joy and sorrow, earthly desire and spiritual realisation. Deep reds and oranges and the faint outline of female goddesses evoke the earth tones and intricacy of Ajanta and Ellora paintings.

In the diptych titled The Woods, 2012, two brightly-lit single-point perspectives suggest illumination at the end of the path of inquiry. Reminiscent of a forest, though not clearly defined, the multiple layers of thick brown and green paint convey the metaphor of impenetrability. Uncluttered by undue imagery, these works serve well to lure the viewer to go beyond the physical presence of the painting. In Untitled, 2006, Ramana Maharishi’s face is visible as the rest of his body merges with the landscape. As Gayatri Sinha points out in her informative essay in the catalogue, the painting is “emblematic of non-duality and the advaita of man and his natural environs”.

Ultimately, Ramesh’s oeuvre raises important questions about his place in contemporary Indian art. His body of work focused on spirituality certainly creates a locus of identity, and reflect his belief to “root myself in specific cultural and geographical location”. Although some of his allegorical canvases appear less successful, his denser paintings divested of pictography allow viewers to be provoked into testing the validity of their own ideas. At the end, Ramesh’s place will be determined by the ceaselessly contestable and interpretable aspect of his art. Remembrances of Voices Past: The solo show by V. Ramesh will be on till March 30 at the NGMA, Bangalore

( Report by Bansie Vasvani for The Hindu)