INTERLUDE – VENICE / KASSEL
A GROUP SHOW

The Guild Art Gallery is delighted to present the works of Anpu Varkey, Zakkir Hussain, Sathyanand Mohan, Lavanya Mani, KP Reji, Om Soorya, Sukhdev Rathod, Ashutosh Bhardwaj, Lokesh Khodke, Arunanshu Chowdhury and Thomas Kovoor. This group show was inspired by the artists visit to the Venice Biennale and Documenta 12, Kassel in July 07.

Anpu Varkey completed her BFA and MFA in painting from M. S. University, Baroda. She further studied in London at the Byam Shaw School of Art. Her work often journeys beyond subjectivity and concentrates more on colour. The dominant and supportive colours in her paintings, highlights, shadows and loose brush strokes swerve to suggest inexplicable phenomenons. Her work oscillates between what is visible and what is not, what can be painted and what cannot, and where the boundary lies. She is always searching for a niche within this vast magnitude of painting.

Zakkir Hussain was born in 1970 in Kerala. He is a recipient of the Lalit Kala Akademi Award and the IFACS award. His art explores the possibility of an art practice within the bounds of a system in which reality is always a preordained subject imposing itself on life. He aims to expose the real, hidden behind this already ‘programmed’ reality. His art mainly deals with ecological issues related to the totality of life. For him the complexity of human life cannot be reduced to any singular aspect and the problems that are reflected in the environment are part of the complexities in the social and inner aspects of man. He uses such images to mark the violence that man unleashes against man. 

Sathyanand Mohan was born in Kerala and has done his BFA from The Government College of Fine Arts, Trivandrum and his MFA in Printmaking from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Ms University Baroda. He mainly works on private metaphors where he tries to evoke various aspects of the self and attempts to work it out in his paintings in a somewhat playful and ironic manner, thus drawing attention to the language of the visual and its materiality. Sathyanand’s art obscures the notion of realism by bringing into play different registers of languages culled form different contexts and sources which appear like collages employed by the Surrealists, stuck together in the work by some notion of the 'real'. The fantastic subject matter of the works allows him to suspend the gravity of the real, and permits him the liberty of engaging in a play of his own. 

Lavanya Mani was born in 1977. She has obtained her BFA and MFA in Painting in from The Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.U Baroda. She works with various techniques associated with textiles such as embroidery, tie and dye, appliqué, batik etc in conjunction with painting. For her cloth has been at the center of a long set of historical associations between femininity, decorativeness and deception. Her work emphasizes correspondences between ‘textiles’ and ‘text’ and metaphors relating the two and engaging with these relations leading to a thread of narratives within her works. Lavanya has received the Nasreen Mohamedi Award and Kashi Award for Visual Art. She has also participated in many group shows in Paris, Hyderabad and Baroda. Currently Lavanya lives and works in Baroda. 

K. P. Reji was born in 1972, Kerela, he obtained his BFA and MFA in Painting from M.S. University, Baroda. A significant facet in K.P Reji’s work is the intimate way in which his work integrates personal and the social aspects, thereby liberating meanings through disassociation and relocation from their commonsensical associations. K.P. Reji watches his human figures not so much through urban media as through the imagery and colouristic, almost physical tactility of modest domestic architecture. His paintings display a matter of fact quality and his work is multifaceted and complex in its analysis of the individual’s relationship to his external environment. His canvases explore the connection between psychological states of mind and socio-political behaviour. Reji has participated in numerous camps and group exhibitions and currently lives and works in Vadodara.

Om Soorya attained his BFA from College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala University and his MFA from University of Hyderabad. He was also a participant at the Peers Khoj, Residency and the Kalakriti residency. His work transmits the overwhelming feeling of the day-to-day reality and the contradictions and contrasts between the different facts of human life. His use of the two dimensional surface gives an ambience of surreal and magical illusion. His art begins where the conscious mind enters the real world and it searches for the logic in reality. Concurrent to his thoughts, the unconscious mind manifests an imaginary world of dreams and his works act like a pendulum in between the quest for total existence and the anxieties over the present realities. Om Soorya has recently had a very successful solo show with The Guild Art USA Inc, New York, 2007.

Sukhdev Rathod was born in Gujarat, 1979. He received a Post Diploma in Painting from M.S. University of Baroda and an Art Teacher Diploma of the Gujarat Government. His works deal with illusions in our daily life. In his works he tries to capture the moment of transcendence between the immediate perception of a visual and its recognition in the mind. He tries to paint both these versions together creating an entirely new reality. He paints various objects using them as a symbolic medium to narrate ideas. Every object that he paints has its own individuality and its own story to tell, the story however, is interpreted differently by different people and hence they remain open to multiple readings. He has had several shows in India and abroad. Chief amongst these are; “Memories in Transit”, sculpture tableaux project organized by Word Social Forum at Nairobi, Kenya 2006 and Bronze sculpture workshop at Studio Sukrity, Jaipur, organized by The Guild art gallery. 

Ashutosh Bhardwaj  acquired his BFA and MFA from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.U, Baroda. He has been a recipient of the National scholarship and the Nasreen Mohammedi award and scholarship. His works provide equivocal meanings and interpretations by defiantly responding to the contemporary Cosmo and metro surroundings. The clichéd images projected to us through various forms of media, serve as the imagologue of the global socio-politics, which, he then uses as metaphors in his work, while keeping their clichéd ness alive. In doing so, he continuously attempts to use the meticulous strategies of these images as a tool, which decodes their own rationally crafted meanings, automatically questioning their superficial existence around us. He often creates unreal, abstract spaces where these clichéd images have a space to interact in. In this interaction, images from history are also gain importance, the history which we accept as a legacy.

Lokesh Khodke obtained his BFA and MFA from Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.U, Baroda. He has participated in many solo and group shows, workshops and is a recipient of the Nasreen Mohamadi Scholarship. A compelling area of interest in his work is the question of space and it’s inter/contradictory relationship with object, time and people. Within his work he tries to address these areas both at subjective as well as formal levels. With his artistic explorations with these areas and spaces and the complex power relationships that go with it, he addresses the issues of our contemporary times. As an artist what becomes a challenge for him is how to look at the marginalized spaces within this power struggle which have, over time, been pushed to the background through a process of homogenization which is increasingly becoming an integral part of our society. 

Arunanshu Chowdhury did his BFA and MFA in painting from M.S.University, Baroda. He was recipient of the The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant award, Canada. Since his early days Arunanshu has been open to experimentation in the usage of different mixed media, working with oils, charcoal, collage, paper, acrylic, water colours and screen printing. Arunanshu Chowdury gathers his inspiration from the urban society and the surroundings portraying different aspects of our society. His works show the daily activities along with the objects and images that one encounters everyday. He uses several metaphors, significant to the main thought behind his work in relation to the urban environ. He places his images and visual images so as to create a meaningful spatial relationship. This juxtaposition of images and their backgrounds are deliberate in all of his paintings. Arunanshu with the means of colour, space, media and image creates a powerful visual language which is convincing and intriguing. His works initiate a visual stimulus that is not only spontaneous but reactive as well.

Thomas Kovoor was born in 1967 in Kerala and he did his initial studies from College of Art, Trivandrum and Banaras Hindu University. He has been a recipient of several awards and scholarships. Currently he is an assistant professor in the department of sculpture, Faculty of Fine Art, in Jaipur’s University of Rajasthan since 1995. Radical and highly imaginative in his approach, he has over the past couple of years worked with bronze as a basic medium. For Thomas Kovoor physicality of materials is essential as well the content. Inspired from ordinary circumstances locally, he churns out  images which are palpable, and delivers it with miniaturist qualities of Indian traditional carvings fused with feelings and multifarious associations linking ancient past with the present, probing weighty, elemental substances intrinsically bound with certain archaic or sacred objects. He breaks them open into their subtle rawness and transforms them into poetic and playfully serious expressions that evoke preciousness as well the revival of tradition.