Journeys in Light Opens on July 24, 2009

Dileep Sharma's Solo Show Opening in Tokyo

Dileep Sharma's latest solo show titled 'Theatre of Libido' is to be held at Space 355, Tokyo (co-operated by Keumsan Gallery, Tokyo and Gallery Hashimoto, Tokyo) on July 17, 2009. The show will continue till August 4, 2009.

Venue: Space 355, Yabe Bld. 1F & 2F
3-5-5 HigashiNihonbashi
Chuo-ku Tokyo 103-0004
JAPAN.


Website: www.space355.jp

Sohini Chattopadhyay’s Solo Debut at Art Konsult, New Delhi

New Delhi: Call her a prodigy if you must, but there is no denying the fact that having barely turned 21, Bangalore-based Sohini Chattopadhyay has already caught the eye of art connoisseurs across the country. While she has already tasted success with eminent group shows, and especially as part of the art outing in Cairo on a Lalit Kala Akademi platform last year, she is now all set to make her solo debut in India with her exhibition titled Step in Light at Art Konsult, New Delhi. Comprising of twenty-six photography based digital prints on archival paper created over a period of two years, the show will be held at Art Konsult, 23, Hauz Khas Village, New Delhi from July 15, 2009 to August 15, 2009.

Says Siddharth Tagore, Director, Art Konsult: “Sohini captures photographs with a painter’s eye and then juxtaposes images through varied digital maneuvering to create her own visual world.”

The entire series of works have been divided into four subsets, the first being titled Time, the dressmaker composed of self portraits and intimate still lives combined with occasional seascapes. The second series comprises of pictures of found objects juxtaposed with landscapes which conceal the identity of the object and create a whole new metaphorical aura, especially in My shadow in the evening has risen to meet me. The third series captures the essence of time with pace and speed resulting in the camera capturing multiple shots of run sequences thereby heightening the idea of detached yet attached freedom in works like To Reach the Blossoms and the Golden Thread series. The fourth series titled Global Quotation juxtaposes the protagonist with various props that have a constant narrative flowing through them.

Time and hope forms the central backbone of her first series titled Time, the Dressmaker, comprising of six intimate compositions, each work capturing a moment of life. Here, she juxtaposes painted self portraiture with seascapes using motifs like a hand, seascapes and clocks. She also introduces and captures infinite space in various sequences and presents the symbolic self portraiture in significant tones of burgundy so as to create a rather personal atmosphere. Explains the artist: “As a cultural commuter, I have been constantly engaged in the sophisticated play with identity. ‘Time’ becomes a constant witness to the ever changing attire that we put forward to the world. Thus, in this series I have made ‘Time’, the protagonist as a Dressmaker.”

The second series of her work, based on photographs of various still lives and landscapes, has a more poetic flavor greatly inspired by T S Eliot. The angle of the photography in this segment not only conceals the identity of the object but rather creates a whole new cognitive metaphorical aura through strategic juxtaposition. My shadow in the evening has risen to meet me is one of the prominent work in the series which is the result of her constant experiments with digital technologies.

The third set comprises a series of images that capture the essence of action and time, arousing the quest, urge and discovery of the human mind. For instance, her work titled To Reach the Blossoms consists of an image in action which shows the great leap towards the known and the unknown freedom. Similarly, Golden thread of Unity Running and Golden thread of Freedom Run shows figures running in a struggle to free themselves from unknown bondage. The overlapping of the aspects of the run in both works and the drapery with butterfly imprints signifies the essence of floating. Yet another work titled Tracing Byways of Freedom, denotes the metaphor of the crossroads where the printed butterflies and floating birds are moving in opposite directions. One notices that printed butterflies which have wings are unable to fly as they are caught in the thread of the drapery and, on the other hand, the birds which are not caught as an imprint of the drapery are also hesitant to take flight with wings closely attached to the body.

The fourth segment is the concluding Global Quotation which is a visual commentary of the current global situation. Dealing with the ideology of protection and overprotection, the work shows juxtaposition of the protagonist with the helmet and images of leaf plates placed one above the other. The work indicates the references to the various questions raised in the context of human existence. The repeated sequencing of the protagonist points towards the understanding of existence taking place as an isolated solitary phenomenon in an uncompromising world. It also reflects on the idea that we create our own human nature through the independent view and the choices that we thereby take.

Explains Sohini: “I have been inspired by various personalities from history and present, especially T. S. Eliot’s poem “The Waste Land” and its significance of the universal global idea.” She also says that Swami Vivekananda’s lecture Maya and Freedom delivered in London on the 22nd October 1896 has played a major role in creating Step in Light. Some other masters who influenced this young artist are authors Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky. She adds: “The evolution of my works have also resulted due to the search of content that is on the face of it abstract, but at a deeper level symbolic, and that content is necessarily philosophical and religious.”

The curious fact present in the midst of all our joys and sorrows, difficulties and struggles, is the fact that we are all advancing towards freedom. In response to our quest “What is Universe?” Step in Light is an exhibition that reinstates - ‘In freedom it rises, in freedom it rest and in freedom it melts away’. Perhaps, an apt summation of an artist’s work who herself is a young philosopher!

Summer Show II 2009 at Anant Gallery, New Delhi

NGMA, Mumbai: 'Remembering Tyeb' on July 11, 2009

THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART
deeply mourns the passing away of the eminent artist
TYEB MEHTA
(1925-2009)

Please join us for a memorial meeting:
‘REMEMBERING TYEB’

On Saturday: 11 July 2009
at 6.00 pm
at the National Gallery of Modern Art
Sir Cowasji Jehangir Public Hall
M.G. Road, Mumbai 400 032
[Ph: 22881969 / 22881970]

In Tyeb Mehta’s demise on 2 July 2009, the Indian art world has suffered a grievous loss. A major figure on the Indian art scene for six decades and associate of the Progressive Artists Group, Tyeb was a friend and mentor to some of us, an ideal to others, and a reassuring and magisterial presence to many more. The National Gallery of Modern Art would like to commemorate him through this memorial meeting, at which some of Tyeb’s friends, colleagues and contemporaries will share their memories of the artist, their thoughts on his work, personality, context and achievement.

Prof. Rajeev Lochan
Director, NGMA

Emami Chisel Art Launches Kolkata’s First Art Magazine - Art etc

New Delhi: A feast awaits art lovers of Delhi when Kolkata-based Emami Chisel Art launches its first quarterly art magazine ‘Art Etc’ in the capital on July 14, 2009 at Kaustubh Auditorium, Lalit Kala Akademi, Rabindra Bhavan, 35, Ferozeshah Road, New Delhi.

Emami Chisel Art, one of the biggest auction houses in India is a joint venture between Emami Group and Chisel Crafts, the parent company of the Kolkata-based Aakriti Art Gallery.

Says Vikram Bachhawat, Director, Emami Chisel Art: “Emami Chisel Art Pvt Ltd started as an auction house with a promise that it will diversify in terms of publications, a library, art camps, seminars etc and we are happy that we have kept that promise. Most importantly, Kolkata needed an art magazine and by publishing Art Etc, a quarterly art magazine, we have fulfilled our promise in just a year and a half's time. The magazine will represent every form of art like cinema, fashion, photography, architecture, music and also cater to the needs of the entire country's various artistic expressions.”

During the colonial period, the entire discourse of modern Indian art had its roots in Bengal and was backed by art historical writings. It was in this period that prolific art writing by people from various disciplines like the poets, writers, scientists, philosophers, architects and even artist themselves contributed in a major way for the development of modern art in Bengal. Ananda Coomaraswamy, E. B. Havell, Stella Kramrisch, George Birdwood and Okakura all came from abroad and became partners/collaborators of this movement. In 1874, art writing in Bengal had a distinct idealist strain but as things progressed, Bengal art writing took to a materialist approach. There were hardly art magazines as such then but magazines like Modern Review, Prabashi, Bharat Barsha, Sundaram, Parichoy and various other periodicals published articles that contained art criticism and writings on art which created debates/discussions on Kolkata’s artistic practices. Though sparse exhibition catalogue writing was quite popular, however, there was a big vacuum in critical writing. Also, in the mean time the very nature of art history and art criticism changed drastically all over the world.

Hence, it is after a long hiatus that an art magazine from Kolkata has been published which has a nation-wide representation of editorial content. Art Etc aims to publish articles both on modern and contemporary art. The inaugural issue contains a special focus on the works of a Bangladeshi artist, Dhali Al Mamoon, who has faced extraordinary difficult situations in his own country to undertake a secularist position and a major article on artist N.S. Harsha. Apart from reviews, interviews, essays on art and profiles of artists who live and work on the margins, it has a special section on young artists’ works from all over India.

Says Amit Mukhopadhyay, Editor, ArtEtc: “Even though we had a great tradition of art and art historical/critical writing, Kolkata needed an art magazine where a number of young artist’s works could be discussed, creative writing could be encouraged and artists' practices in Kolkata and elsewhere could be supported. There is a feeling that Kolkata is perhaps a bit away from the global stream affectivities and I think it is our responsibility to take a step forward towards building a global consciousness about art, culture and society. Art Etc goes along the philosophical thinking of Rabindranath Tagore who even though a Bengali believed in Internationalism. In other words, the matter may be published from the Eastern part of India but, it will certainly look after the artistic interest of the neglected and marginalized art practices in North-Eastern states and will never remain a local or regional magazine. It will aspire to be one of the best magazines of the country as well as the world.”


Concludes Vikram Bachhawat, Director, Emami Chisel Art: “We are putting in our best efforts to make Art Etc a magazine of international standard, in the sense that it will have articles and essays from international art critics and theoreticians representing global art forms.”

The inaugural issue has articles contributed by Oindrilla Maity on Aakriti Art Gallery’s annual show – Gen Next III, interview with art collector Sri Prasant Tulsyan by Sarmistha Maiti, soliloquy by Manjari Chakravarti, reviews of Sharmila Samant's show at the Biennale of Sydney in 2008 by M.K Thompson and Gulam Mohammed Sheikh by Deeptha Achar. While Syed Manzoorul Islam brings forward the art of Bangladeshi artist Dhali Al Mamoon, Jayati Mukherjee writes about the multiplicity of art practices in Vadodara. On one hand Rajashree Biswal examines the Dalit issue in art represented by Savi Savarkar, a neo-Buddhist himself, while on the other hand Moushumi Khandali explores the contemporary art practices of the North-East ravaged by violence. The issue also contains profiles of several young artists and a history of the Emami Chisel Art Auction House.

The magazine, a colour spread of 132 pages is priced at Rs. 150 and can be purchased in Delhi through Vadehra Art Gallery, Arts Of the Earth and Rahul & Art galleries.

Chaithanya Art Gallery Presents Mining Minds

Second Edition of First look at Project 88

Project 88 is delighted to present the second edition of “first look”, our annual student exhibition. This year we showcase the works of five post-graduate students from Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda.

Hemali Bhuta (b. 1978)
In her video, “Shedding”, Hemali Bhuta deals with issues of identity, sexuality, gender, caste, religion and memories, by the creative use of cleaning agents such as horse hair brushes in a mechanical, repetitive way. The original installation consisted of elongated and exaggerated brush dimensions, suspended from the ceiling. Although conceived as a four-channel video, “Shedding” will be shown as a single-channel video in this show.

Praveen Maripally (b. 1986)
Praveen Maripally’s work has been to find possibilities of combining and co-relating his interest in the fields of arts and science, by utilizing electronics to bring out their aesthetic and design elements. Using electrical components, “Migration/Modernization” depicts the mass movement of people from villages to cities for better living standards.

Ranjan Ghosh (b. 1981)
Ranjan Ghosh’s preoccupation lies in observing the patterns between the real world and the virtual world. In his woodcuts and prints, he depicts situations where one is eventually always a winner, experiencing the constant thrill of victory, such as upon repeated engagements with a video game.

Siddhartha Kararwal (b. 1984)
Siddhartha Kararwal’s creative practice revolves around the use of everyday, mundane materials.
Plastic bags, foam sheets, firecrackers, cardboard, bronze, iron, copper, fibre, clay, plaster of paris, etc., mould themselves into seductively raw sculptures such as “my generation is silent”, and “funny garbage.”

Kumar Jasakiya (b. 1985)
Kumar’s paintings are like fragmented visual diaries. They reveal the artist’s experiences or feelings from specific incidents transformed into mutating organic forms. These active forms create a mobile, pulsating visual field which is sometimes shared with human figures.

The Loner

EXPRESS FEATURES SERVICE
Posted: Jul 03, 2009

Living in virtual isolation, painting only for the sake of painting, and for the better part of his career addressing virtually a rather small art audience, and an even smaller art market, this loner of an artist strove all his life to transcend ordinary human and pictorial concerns. A sense of urgency emanates from Tyeb Mehta’s works and an amazingly uncompromising spirit can always be experienced. His works are characterised by strong diagonal lines breaking canvases and charging the spaces with reflections of anguish, and by structurally fractured figures that are almost suspended in weightlessness in vast expanses of pure colour.

The 1967 work The Falling Figure portrayed violence and trauma as part of human existence — it was his deep concern for the common man in a humanistic, pictorial and creative intervention. These are some of the thoughts that abruptly come to mind as I encounter the reality that this legend is no more.

The NGMA had been working towards mounting Tyeb’s retrospective exhibition — to showcase and project the trajectories of his art and his unique vision. His portrayal of violence and trauma of existence, the austere forms of the bulls, the rickshaw pullers, the falling figures and Mahisasura Mardini reflect his innate and committed desire to realise universal truths through visuals. In his words “When you are young, you try to understand the world. As you grow old, you try to understand yourself. Your work then becomes the essence of these efforts.” His drive is amply reflected in his statement, “In art you have to go on for a long time before you can say I have done something.”

My association with Tyeb goes back almost 30 years. Incidentally, few are aware that he was immensely passionate about the language of film, having begun his career as a film editor. I vividly recall sharing notes on his long cherished dream to make a film on Mahasweta Devi’s Hazaar Chaurasi Ki Maa way back in 1980. I was extremely enamoured by the simplicity of his persona, the silent warmth with a great intellect, always making one feel comfortable. He humbly and subtly acknowledged associations of the past in spite of his reaching a great stature. He had won a number of awards and fellowships. Among them were the Rockefeller III Fellowship in 1968 and his two-year stay as artist-in-residence at Viswa Bharati University, Santiniketan, during

1984-85 which resulted in significant changes in his conceptual concerns and pictorial language.

A prominent artist of the Progressive Art Movement and among the most well-known Indian artists of his generation, Tyeb’s passing away is a great loss to the art world and his contribution to the nation in the global art scenario will always be remembered with reverence and pride.

— Rajeev Lochan is director, National Gallery of Modern Art

Gallery Sumukha, Bengaluru, Presents Missing Link

Noted Artist Tyeb Mehta Passes Away

July 02, 2009, Mumbai: Noted artist Tyeb Mehta passed away at his residence in Mumbai on Thursday morning. Mehta was suffering from a heart ailment. The 83-year-old artist holds the record for the highest price an Indian painting has ever sold for in a public auction for ‘Celebration’ at Christie's in 2002.

Born in Kapadvanj, a town in Gujarat, Mehta is survived by his wife Sakhina, a son and a daughter.

In May 2005, his painting ‘Kali’ sold for Rs one crore at Saffronart's online auction. In December 2005, Mehta's painting 'Gesture' was sold for Rs 3.1 crore to Ranjit Malkani, chairman of Kuomi Travel, at the Osian's auction.

This makes it the highest price paid by an Indian for Indian contemporary art at an auction in India.

Mehta also received the Padma Bhushan award in 2007.
–ANI

GallerySke presents fig.1 by Mariam Suhail

GallerySke presents
Mariam Suhail
fig.1.
Preview: June 27, 2009, 7 p.m.
On view: June 29 to 27 July 2009

Bangalore: GallerySke presents fig. 1 by Mariam Suhail. This is Mariam Suhail’s debut solo show in Bangalore.

fig. 1 is a suite of drawings on paper.

The Artist has previously worked with a variety of media from sculpture and video to photography. Mariam has exhibited her work in Some Blind Alleys at Anant Art Gallery, Delhi (2007), has participated in the Tanera Mor 3-island International artist residency in Scotland (2007) and was part of the the Khoj International Artists’ workshop in Mumbai (2005). Mariam has also taught at the School of Visual Art, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore and the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi.

The Artist completed her BFA from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi (2001).

Mariam Suhail lives and works in Bangalore.

ART:21 Film Screening on Friday, June 19, 2009

Priyantha Weerasurya's Solo at the Noble Sage

New Work by Priyantha Weerasurya
Sri Lankan Contemporary Art in North London
June 17-21, 2009
Private View: 18th June, 2009, 6:30pm- 8:30pm

London-basedkan artist Priyantha Weerasurya displays a new body of work at The Noble Sage Art Gallery. The small, macabre mixed media portraits are inspired by Buddhism though appear to hold an ominous, slightly unsettling meaning for the viewer. This show will be Priyantha's first exhibition at The Noble Sage.

Private View
Thursday 18th June 2009, 6:30-8:30pm

Location Details
The Noble Sage Art Gallery, 2A Fortis Green, London N2 9EL (near East Finchley Tube)
Mondays & Tuesdays By appointment only
Wednesdays - Friday 11 - 7.30pm
Saturdays & Sundays 11 - 5pm

Anant Art Summer Show 2009 begins on June 12, 2009

Dissolving Stones Sculpture Show by Parminder Singh

Dissolving Stones

Sculpture Show by Parminder Singh

June 8 – 13, 2009

at Palm Court Gallery, India Habitat Centre,

Lodi Road, New Delhi 110 003

Sculptor’s words It is in doing that one realizes the essence of one’s life. Every man is born to do a certain kind of work. There are very few people who do what their soul dictates. I have realized that I am born to be a sculptor.

I took birth in a small village of Punjab (India). Whatever virtues I have cultivated in my spirit, is the result of my inner involvement with the simplicity of the life and culture of my native land. I may go anywhere but the fragrance of those memories always reminds me the power of my roots.

My works are inspired from nature and society. As nature inspires the society, so are my sculptures. Life in different shades requires motion, and rhythm is the soul of all motion. Balance thus achieved is a mystery and a rare achievement. I have really enjoyed the journey of exploring the motion amongst human figures and forms. My forms appear to melt in warmth of human emotion. I firmly believe the matter posses maximum energy of rhythm and motion in the liquid form. This interaction charges me to work without looking back. There is a sincere attempt to find an appropriate blending of logic and imagination in my work. For me human mind is the most fruitful creation of Almighty. So my works reflect the significance of this brain in transmitting human energy.

I am blessed to be born in a country where there were sculptors who created the wonders like - monolithic temples, Kailash Nath and Elephanta. I feel their presence in me and I am longing for those moments when I would contribute for the glory of my mother land in the world of art.

Book Launch and Show June 16, 2009

Neha Choksi's solo extended through June 20, 2009

The Promising Artist Award Show an Exhibition of Artworks by Beptist Coelho and Chinmoy Pramanick

BAPTIST COELHO

Project Note:

"You can’t afford to have emotions out there…"
During the past 25 years, the endless conflict between India and Pakistan, over the ownership of the Siachen Glacier, has been fought on the coldest battlefield on earth. Bitter cold temperatures, reaching to -60 °Celsius, make living conditions unbearable for the soldiers. Even though this formidable landscape is virtually impossible to access for a civilian, I set out to experience this world for myself. Through researching, collecting artifacts and recording stories, I was able to identify and define this space of conflict.

Throughout this project, I have focused on the life of the soldier; not as a machine of war but as a man coping with the day to day complexities of conflict; a soldier with emotions and vulnerabilities like any other human being. The soldiers’ stories and the intimate objects, which were abandoned by war and rediscovered on this terrain, are what remain from a conflict and imbue the experience with memory. War is no longer about victory but about the personal loss and triumph of the soldiers. One of the casualties of war is the sacrifice and loss of personal identity for the greater national one. These narratives of hardship and perseverance were collected from various sources and draw the viewer closer toward these encounters between the soldiers themselves and their environment.

I utilize a variety of media such as: video, installation, photography, acquired and found objects to explore the fabric of war. Here, the viewer experiences this journey of raw human interaction and realizes that what appears to be concealed is often revealed. As the narratives of these fearless soldiers unfold, what comes to light is the irony from such statements such as: "You can’t afford to have emotions out there…"

CHINMOY PRAMANICK

Exhibition Note:

(Partially) I was There
(Partially) I was There, Chinmoy Pramanik's latest body of works takes forward is his desire to weave stories around human desires, encounters and persona in artistic pursuit. Yet he shows a holding back traditional narrative modes out a discomfort about how the figurative is understood and represented in the Indian contemporary. As a continuation of his journey, the artist continues to hunt for tropes, inventing them through memories and associations. Houses, weapons, objects step out of their object-hood to take us down the lanes of narrative, telling stories about human lives in the ever shaping new realities. His object metaphors stand as mute witness often scarred by the violence of what they witness... carrying memories of change, embodying social and personal engagements in a society of conflicts.

Working with wood, metal and found objects, this show, put together as a co winner of the 2007 Art India Magazine-IHC Award for Promising Artists, works with constant re invention of iconographies, and a play with materiality artist to pursue the idea of sculptural narratives that work within certain structures of story-telling, yet interpreting that beyond the strictly mimetic or directly representational.

Ratnadeep Gopal Adivrekar's Solo Opens in NSU on June 5, 2009

Proverbial In(ter)ventions: Ratnadeep Gopal Adivrekar

Opening on Friday June 5, 2009,

NUS Museum, Singapore

Exhibition will be on view till July 26, 2009

Allegorical Spectrum – 14 Proverbs

The difference between the proverbs and the paintings is that of verbal and the visual. The physical view assumes that things in themselves are changeless but their relations change finds Abhijeet Gondkar.

‘Every Move brings a Change’ – The change which the proverb undergoes in the course of its evolution in the work passes from a subtle to a gross state – the existence of the manifold, is the oeuvre of Ratnadeep Gopal Adivrekar’s exhibition titled “Proverb In(ter)vetions”, at NUS Museum, Singapore. For the artist living in Mumbai a metropolis, a melting pot where the world's great religions are practiced brings along its own cultural baggage but wisdom is one familiar occurrence which cuts across these several practices. Much new knowledge is admittedly remote from the immediate interests of the commonplace man on the street. The void of these academics is completed by one liner wisdoms or proverbs. The universality and philosophies in these proverbs was what got Ratnadeep interested. Proverbs embrace the wide sphere of human existence: the philosophical antiquary may often discover how many a proverb commemorates an event which has escaped from the more solemn monuments of history, and is often the solitary authority of its existence. Amongst the 18 large canvases and 8 studies on paper displayed are strong streak magical realism, where irrational image settings are painted tediously (photorealist to an extent), “reconstruct histories the juxtaposition of ordinary moment or sometimes interaction with objects with an extraordinary event to create a comparative...”

The exhibition “Proverbial in(er)vention” was conceived around 14 proverbs its familiarity and omnipresent use in mundane context belies its complexity. Proverbs are truths based on experience of mankind but yet often contradict one another because of their metaphorical nature. Ratnadeep tryst with the viewer with a brilliant attempt at seizing the paradox of the union of opposites. For him painting proverbs is not merely an exercise of the thinking power and thought of man, but of his whole being it is a way of life. All knowledge he recognizes involves a process which comes to fruition not in concept but in a state of being. Like in the painting titled ‘Every exit is an entrance someplace else’, with images of felicitation of Yuri Gagarin and line portrait Kashmir Malevich against his supermatist composition hung in an interior wall with doorway, where the mental model must be seen not as a static library of images, but as a living entity, charged with energy and activity. It is not that we passively receive from outside. Rather, it is something we actively construct and re-construct from moment to moment. Restlessly scanning the works with our senses, probing for information relevant to our needs and desires, we engage in a constant process of re-arrangement and updating. There is no self-sufficient and obstructive fragment no divisions which cannot be linked by the viewer into a kind of narrative. And the narratives that the work invokes internally, as it were, readily move out of the work itself into a consideration of other larger narratives.

After Graduating at Sir J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai, Ratnadeep compiled concepts based on time, journey, cities and people in his work, right from his early exhibitions ‘Memoirs of Unreal City’(1998) based on T. S. Elliot’s work Wastelands to ‘Refraction of Ideas’(2004). His work stems from a kind of visual synthesis, layered with scientific documentation, allegories, mythology, symbolism, documentary footages and history. Leading one to revert to narratival explanations as a way of grasping the status of the art work and its gestures as a socially symbolic act or illustrate a series of overlapping and over determined social constraints, reasons and responsibilities. One of the work titled, ‘If you understand, things are just as they are; if you do not understand, things are just as they are.’ has group of people starring rather ambiguously at a Necker cube which can be interpreted in two different ways. When a person stares at the cube image, it will often seem to flip back and forth between the two valid interpretations like a proverb. It also provides a counter-attack against naïve realism which states that the way we perceive the world is the way the world actually is. The Necker cube seems to disprove this claim because we see one or the other of two cubes, but in actuality, the cube itself is metaphoric: representing only a two-dimensional drawing of twelve lines. The condition is that the painting should stand as a barrier to interpretation, should throw the reader away from the construction of readily graspable meanings, Ratnadeep’s paintings always send the viewer towards a process of contextualization or narrativization. In fact, many of his own comments about his works are strategies of defending against definitive interpretations or the setting up of barriers to understanding.

All that said, Ratnadeep’s paintings establish interpretative traps for the viewer. The proverbs attached to his paintings act as a line of defense against interpretation. The “titles” behind the canvas does not supplement and yet belongs to this huge canvas, despite its minuscule relation to the visual work, it is entrusted with an extensive and paradigmatic function. He implies this linguistic bait as process of seduction, a way of drawing the viewer into the puzzle of the picture, like the newspaper puzzle where answers are given at the back. The title then immediately offers itself as a semiotic lure – which is not to say that an inventive reader could not construe some relation between it and the visual, but that most readers will eventually have the good sense to recognize that they have been deliberately thrown off. The technique can best be summarized as heteroglossia, or a multiplicity of narrative voices housed in a single "form." The idea that art's content is ultimately determined not only by its creator's intention but by all the possible interpretations and misinterpretations it prompts is basic to contemporary aesthetics. The paintings then become more like poetry- suggesting rather than exclusively revealing. “I’m interested in the associational nature of thinking itself and sometimes a deliberate act of misunderstanding that can become poetry, because then you have to imagine its elements. Systematic-chaos or chaotic-system either works for me…” marks Ratnadeep, “In quest of knowledge I am self contradicting”.

The proverbs in the exhibition are accompanied by a string of qualifiers – ifs, ands, buts, and on other hands. Yet to enter every appropriate qualification in an exhibition of this kind would be to bury the viewer under an avalanche of maybes. Rather than do this, the artist has taken liberty of expression trusting that the intelligent viewer will understand the stylistic problem. The proverbs applied to the works need to be taken with a grain of judgement. Consciousness without word is comparable to light without illumination. Since word refers to something beyond itself and is thus by its constitution relational, all knowledge is therefore relational and determinate. In context to the proverbs in the work it is more important to be imaginative and insightful than to be accurate. The maps of the world drawn by the medieval cartographers were so hopelessly inaccurate, so filled with factual error, that they elicit condescending smiles today when almost the entire surface of the earth has been charted. Yet the great explorers could never have discovered the New Worlds without them. Nor could the better more accurate maps of today have been drawn until men, working with the limited evidence available to them, set down on paper their bold conceptions of worlds they had never seen. Even error has its uses, thus we explore the works like the ancient map-makers, and it is in this spirit that the concept of Ratnadeep’s work and the proverb theory are presented here – not as final word, but as a first approximation of the new realities.

The exhibition will be held at the NUS Museum Singapore from 5th June to 21st July 2009 offering an in-depth analysis of Ratnadeep's creative intellectual process.

Abhijeet Gondkar
May 2009


Abhijeet Gondkar is an independent writer and curator. He has curated several important exhibitions of contemporary art including ‘Refraction of Ideas’ (2004), ‘8’(2007), ‘Homage to Matter’(2009), Project Thebaw(2009)

Galerie Müller & Plate to Exhibit Manish Pushkale's Works

Aditya Pande's Solo Exhibition in London

Aditya Pande: Solo Exhibition
May 29, 2009 – August 24, 2009

Alexia Goethe Gallery, London

London: Following the success of a group show last year in collaboration with Gallery Nature Morte, the Alexia Goethe Gallery is proud to present Aditya Pande's first solo exhibition in London in another collaboration with Gallery Nature Morte.Aditya Pande is based in New Delhi and studied at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. His studio production oscillates between the fine and applied arts, two and three dimensions, the sensuously tactile and the aggressively optical.Pande begins his "paintings" with drawings made on the computer, weaving a tangled web of synthetic line work, looping through grand arabesques and squiggling together skeins to form animals and people, abstractions and characters. His line work is frenetic, compressed, and descriptive. These drawings are then printed on to paper or canvas and used as the starting points for elaborate compositions which may imply narrative or hesistantly elucidate a three-dimensional space. Pande anchors his sketched forms with bold blocks of skewed colors, usually applied with glossy enamel paints that contrast against the more powdery finish of the ink-jet print, sometimes further articulated by the appearance of an unblinking eyeball or a shiny nose. Collage elements are next mixed in: scraps of paper, wire or string, glitter, and scabs of plastic paint. The end result is a pleasingly demented farce that is the collusion of painting, print-making, graphic design and draftsmanship.Just how "Indian" (or not) is the art of Aditya Pande would depend on the viewer and his/her own cultural constructs. One could point to Pande's infatuation with the visual idioms of popular culture, his chromatic sophistication, his puckish wit, and his connoisseurship of craftsmanship as distinctly Indian traits. But then again, perhaps not. Performing a perfectly Post-Modern mélange within a globalised scenario, Pande turns a blind eye to the status (or lack thereof) attributed to various visual languages and artisanal materials, a position which perhaps comes more readily when entrenched in the cacophony of the sub-continent. The London art audience has by now become well-enough-acquainted with a number of distinct voices from India (such as Anish Kapoor, Subodh Gupta and Raqib Shaw) so that they may not need to pin any over-arching nationalistic sensibilities on the creative output of one individualistic young man.

Text written by Peter Nagy 2009

Caption: I'm Not Bad, 2009,Archival giclée print on hahnemuhle paper with enamel paint, ball-pen, staple pin and silk thread, 79 x 59 in

Structures: Works by Somenath Maity

SuzieQ Projects Present Mithu Sen's Solo Exhibition

Mithu Sen
Dropping Gold, Dropping Gold
May 30 – July 18, 2009

Switzerland: Suzie Q Projects are presenting the first solo exhibition in switzerland of the internationally established Indian artist Mithu Sen at the second exhibition space of Bob Van Orsouw Gallery.

Born 1971 in West Bengal, Mithu Sen today lives and works in New Delhi. She is considered to be one of India’s trendsetting contemporary artists. Her drawings, collages, objects and video works are often marked by an autobiographical aspect, which allows the way she copes with her role as a successful artist in an emerging nation to become part of her projects. Furthermore, the artist is engaged in general questions of gender as well as with the subjective experience of femininity and sexuality. A compelling physicality is manifest in her paper works, in which human figures fuse with animals and plants to enigmatic hybrid creatures. In a humorous way, the artist links the almost kitschy femininity of flower arrangements with bones, teeth and anatomic details. By way of her sensitive linear configurations, even intertwined entrails are divested of repugnance and thus metamorphose into ornamental structures. Mithu Sen’s drawings and collages are supplemented with objects and wall paintings that can be seen to provide her works on paper with a spatial extension. From time to time it is the artist herself who peers out at us from her photo-collages, as though she were prompting the viewers, by interaction with her works, to reflect on their own identity.

Nandesh Shanthi Prakash, Forum Mall, May 30, 2009

Artist Santhanaraj Dead

Source: The Hindu/Special Correspondent

Chennai, May 25: A.P.Santhanaraj, eminent artist and former Principal of the Government College of Fine Arts, Egmore, passed away at his home in M.C.Nagar, Chitlapakkam, near Tambaram, on Sunday. He was 77 and is survived by four sons, according to his former students.

He was suffering from a health problem for some time. The body was laid to rest at a cemetery in Pallavaram on Monday evening in the presence of a gathering of his friends, well wishers, admirers and former students.
Speaking to The Hindu, they said Santhanaraj’s contribution to modern painting was immense.

“He was one of the pioneers and forerunners of the modern art movement in the country,” said Rm.Palaniappan, regional secretary, Lalit Kala Akademi, Chennai. He said that even M.F.Hussain had gone on record to state that Santhanaraj was one of his favourite artists.

Apart from serving at the Fine Arts College in Egmore, he also headed government arts institutions in Kumbakonam and Thiruvananthapuram, Mr.Palaniappan said. A handout from his former students stated that Santhanaraj was born in 1932 in Tiruvannamalai. His lines were so distinct and even on a small scale, they would stand apart so uniquely different from the works by other artists. His death was a colossal loss to the world of art, creating a void that could never ever be filled.

Kiran Subbaiah: Part II of Sleepwalker Daydream starts Thursday May 14

Interpreting Spaces - Shweta Mohapatra on May 8, 2009

Progressive to Altermodern: 62 Years of Indian Modern Art Opens Tomorrow

Opening tomorrow: Progressive to Altermodern: 62 Years of Indian Modern Art, Private View Thursday May 7, 2009, 6-8pm

Grosvenor Vadhera
21 Ryder Street,
London SW1Y 6PX

Progressive to Altermodern
62 Years of Indian Modern Art 1947-2009

London Private View: May 7, 2009
Exhibition: May - 29, 2009

The exhibition will take place between London and New Delhi simultaneously with selected works at each venue. All works will be viewable online.

Earth Bodies – One Man Show of Oils, Water Colours & Drawings by Jatin Das