Lokesh Khodke

AVAILABLE WORKS  |  PUBLICATIONS

Lokesh Khodke was born in 1979 and received his B.F.A (2002) and M. F.A in Painting (2004) from M. S.U. Baroda with gold medal. Khodke is a recipient of Nasreen Mohammedi Scholarship, Gold medal of excellence in Visual Arts and Junior Research Fellowship, UGC - years 2005 and has shown in selected group shows - 'Interlude: Venice/Kassel' at Jehangir Nicholson Gallery, Mumbai presented by The Guild; 'Are We Like This Only' at Vadehra Art Gallery New Delhi; 'Beyond Credos' curated by Shivaji K. Panikkar at Birla Art Academy, Kolkata; 'New Voices' The Guild Art USA Inc, New York.

On his recent solo show at The Guild -"In these works I have addressed the notion of the three worlds, a notion that shaped much of my worldview while I was growing up. The interest in these three worlds/spaces can be seen as a continuation of my long standing interest in the question of space and its relationship vis-a-vis object, not merely in formal terms but with all its complex historical, cultural and political implications. Many of my earlier works also try to address this relationship in various ways. The group of works displayed in the present show extends this exploration through attempting to look at the complexity of this relationship in the present time."  - Lokesh Khodke

“Lokesh’s complex journey through the geography of contemporary (cultural) politics reveals multiple levels and layers of spaces and territories and identifies the inscriptions that constitute the limits of this (discursive) geography. He detects the bricks on which all these walls are constructed in order to expose the fact that the genesis of the modernist nation of ‘pure Art’ has to be traced back to the Brahminical concept of purity (in the Indian context). In that sense, even though many matters still remain unresolved in terms of articulation his works are complex cultural essays on social hierarchization and they doubtlessly contribute to the democratic impulses of our systemic and everyday being and becoming.”  -  Santhosh S

“There are a set of metaphors that Lokesh Khodke employs to deal with the tumult of contemporaneity. One of them is that of the falling sky. This recurring image is significant in that through it he attempts to respond to the dilemma of individuals of the traditional elite class, especially the progressive minded among them, who find themselves caught between two worlds - an emerging world in which the hierarchies of the past are gradually being questioned and reframed, and a conceptual universe which is still fixed within archaic frames. The sky is falling because it was the remnant of a problematic past, an old sky that had needed some reworking. Lokesh is aware that this sky was the limit at which certain things closed off, for women, for dalits and other marginalized peoples. In spite of being painted bright every year by traditional scholarship, he is aware of the places where the paint is peeling off, revealing something bloodied and painful behind it. By placing the portrait of his mother under this sky, he tries to look at this event that is traditionally couched in terms of a disaster or tragedy from a woman’s perspective, and discovers that she breaks out laughing, for this tragedy is not so tragic for her, since as a woman she was already excluded in many ways from that sky of ritual power which had started falling now. What then were the indices that had framed this sky at the moment that it started to disintegrating?” - (Excerpts from the catalogue essay BEYOND APOCALYPSE: THE WORKS OF LOKESH KHODKE by Benoy. P. J.)

Khodke is an exceptionally talented and thinking artist and is also an aspiring poet and writer. The artist lives and works in Baroda.