THE GUILD AT ART HK
Booth 3C04

May 17 - 20, 2012

Hong Kong convention and exhibition centre, HK

AMITABH KUMAR   CHARWEI TSAI    G.R. IRANNA    PRAYAS ABHINAV

RAVI AGARWAL    RIYAS KOMU    SATHYANAND MOHAN    T.V. SANTHOSH

AMITABH KUMAR

1984

As Hongkong became part of the Chinese Republic, there were murmurs of it losing its image of a 'global city' and its place in the global financial world. As a response to these rumors, came Brand HK. A reminder that it is still  "cosmopolitan, secure", "connected", "diverse", and "dynamic". The global city rode on the dragons back.

Global City. 

NEW Delhi heard it recently as part of the drive towards the Commonwealth Games. Collective heads bowed to this sense of global and we watched as a city lumbered on trying desperately to gain momentum, some velocity, some coherence.  But no visions came afterwards. Instead, the unending promise of 'New' in Delhi was the mirage that was left.  And now here we are. 

Where are we? What is this sense of global that is borne out of anxiety for one and an enigma for another?  What are its secrets? What are its conflicts? What are its prophecies? Where do these two ideas and motivations for the global meet? What notes do they exchange during that meeting?  Are there any notes at all? Or just nervous giggles that stand as a gesture of cohabitation. 

As a shot in the dark we put together this letter and turn to the dragon. 

From the new to the brand. 

Amitabh Kumar is a designer/artist from New Delhi. He has graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU Baroda and has worked as a part of the Sarai Media Lab (2006 -2010) where he researched and made comics, programmed events, designed books and co-curated an experimental art space. He is visiting faculty to the Srishti School of Art and Design and Technology and is an initiating member of the Delhi based comics ensemble, The Pao Collective.

CHARWEI TSAI

1980

Charwei wrote numbers from her Taiwanese passport onto alien-like octopus.

“I am interested to explore how our understanding of the world is dominated by it: time, distance, temperature, size, money, population, religion, etc. For example, for the work Étrangère (which means stranger, foreigner, or outsider in French), I wrote my passport numbers onto alien-like raw baby octopus to express the alienation that I felt when I first moved to France. I was constantly identified through my passport numbers, the district number that I live in, the amount of money I have on me, which are all so impersonal, yet they somehow represent me. “– excerpt from an interview with Lesley Ma.

Charwei Tsai was born in Taiwan and presently lives and works in Taipei and Paris. Tsai graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Industrial Design and Art & Architectural History (2002) and completed the postgraduate research program at L’École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (2010). She has had solo exhibitions in Taipei, Paris, Sydney, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Beijing, Bogotá and Mumbai with The Guild in 2010 and her projects have been included in various international exhibitions, including the J'en Rêve at Fondation Cartier, Paris, France (2005),  inaugural Singapore Biennale (2006), Thermocline of Art: New Asian Waves at the ZKM Center of Art and Media, Karlsruhe (2007), Traces du Sacré at the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2008), the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial (2009), and Taiwan Calling at the Ludwig Museum, Budapest (2010), Yokohama Triennale and the Ruhrtriennale (both in 2011). Upcoming in May 2012, Tsai will have a solo presentation at Art Hong Kong and will participate in exhibitions at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum and the Herzliya Museum in Israel. Tsai’s works are in the collection of Mori Art Museum and Queensland Art Gallery. In addition to her art practice, Tsai has published an artist’s journal Lovely Daze twice annually since 2005.

G.R. IRANNA

1970

“Whether using his trademark "splotched surfaces" to offer an entry point beyond the spatio-temporal manifestation of images on the canvas, or his characteristically absent backgrounds, or his palimpsest layering of trace outlines, such as tree roots and branches or schematized cityscapes,and human figures, Iranna's visual language turns on the creation of what philosopher Michel Foucault called "heterotopias"—the "intersections between real and virtual spaces" that function as interstitial vectors allowing us to see ourselves in the "unreal, virtual space that opens up behind the surface." Iconically resembling a mirror, bridge, or boat, a heterotopic space "is a floating piece of space, a place without a place" that is contained within itself. Subsisting on the margins of society in a self-contained, ritualistic space constituted by shared notions of birth, death, life and transcendence, the Buddhist monk is a self-peripheralized being— a quintessential heterotopic subject.”
—Maya Kóvskaya, PhD

 Iranna obtained M.F.A. from Delhi College of Art. He has had several solo shows like limnig Heterotopias, Gallery Espace, New Delhi 2012; Scaffolding the absent, The Guild, Mumbai 2011;  Ribbed Routes, The Guild, Mumbai 2010 and ‘Birth of Blindness’, The Stainless Gallery, New Delhi and Aicon Gallery, London and New York in 2008. Iranna is a recipient of National Academy award in 1997 and the M.F.Husain and Ram Kumar award. G.R Iranna has been nominated from India for the ABPF Signature Art Prize 08, Singapore Museum. He has widely participated in many significant group exhibitions and workshops in India and abroad, including 'Finding India: Art for the New century', Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan, by Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, Go See India, curated by Amit Mukhopadhyay and Oscar Aschan, Gothenburg, Sweden, Cultura Popular India y mas alla, la presidenta de la comunidad de Madrid Museum, curated by Shaheen Merali (2009), and Arad Biennale, Romania(2005) among others.

PRAYAS ABHINAV

1982

Books shelter desires. Masqueraded with words, empty or full, inscribed or blank - the desires leak through sometimes as invitations to do the impossible. The installation offers three invitations: “Money for nothing,” “Instant death” and “Flight.” Each invitation has its own paradox to consider - they are like sinful pleasures: attractive as well as feared.

A dispenser represents the pervasiveness and the unlimited nature of supply - of goods, of progress, of growth. Without the supply, it is difficult to imagine the everyday and the ordinary. Consumption might be interrupted, supply should not be. Infinite money is available, for nothing. But it remains untouched. We want money - but as a reward, as an outcome of a process, not for nothing.

Death is the moment when it all comes together. Death is another low-hanging fruit - always possible but never desired. An invitation to “Instant death” walks this tight-rope. The shrodinger’s cat - how can I fill-in my own death certificate? How can I live to see the documentation of my own death?

Flight is the flip-side of living day to day. It is the exit-route, the passage-way to the eventual escape - in popular media and mythology. Here framed in a sarcastic as well as a database form, flight is the outcome of thought experiments formulated by philosophers and spiritualists.

Artist, Faculty at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, Center for Experimental Media Arts (CEMA). Prayas Abhinav lives in Bangalore, India. Presently he teaches at the Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology and is a researcher at the Center for Experimental Media Arts (CEMA). He has taught in the past at Dutch Art Institute (DAI) and Center for Environmental Planning and Technology (CEPT). He has been supported by fellowships by Sarai/CSDS (2005), Openspace India (2009), TED (2009) and Center for Media Studies (CMS) (2006). He has presented his projects and proposals in the last few years at Periferry, Guwahati (2010), Exit Art, New York (2010), Futuresonic, Manchester (2009), Wintercamp, Amsterdam (2009), 48c: Public Art Ecology (2008), Khoj (2008), Urban Climate Camp, ISEA (2008), Sensory Urbanism, Glasgow (2008), First Monday, Chicago (2006), The Paris Accord (2006) and PSBT/Prasar Bharti (2006). He has also participated in the exhibitions Myth ←u8594 Reality (2011) at The Guild, Mumbai, Continuum Transfunctioner (2010) at exhibit 320 in Delhi, Contested Space - Incursions (2010) at Gallery Seven Arts in Delhi and Astonishment of Being (2009) at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture in Kolkatta. In July 2011, he curated a residency and exhibition project on time called, "On the Sidereal" at The Guild (Mumbai).

RAVI AGARWAL

The vast forest lies in the centre of the city, presenting pristine nature to the massive urban sprawl. It confronts our outside/inside positions of nature, how we have come to think of it and how we ‘form’ and ‘perform’ it.  The forest walk, extends over continuous time, an exploration of human boundaries, limits and possibilities. The eternal question remains as a residue– “who are we?”

(The Delhi Ridge Forest, now existing in four separate massive patches of an urban forest, of a combined 8000 ha, is over a billion years old, and forms the topographical reason for the location of the thousand year old city of Delhi, with its current 17 million inhabitants. A strident citizen’s campaign helped save the forest from imminent urbanization in 1992. The forest is now legally protected. However immense pressure on its invaluable land, in a rapidly globalizing city, puts it under constant threat, making it future very uncertain.)

Ravi Agarwal is a photographer artist, writer, curator and environmental activist. He explores issues of urban space, ecology, capital in an interrelated ways working with photographs, video, performance, on-site installations and public art. Agarwal has participated in several international shows including Documenta XI (Kassel 2002),‘Z.N.E, Examples to Follow’, curated Adrienne Goehler, traveling exhibition, Berlin, Mumbai, Adis Ababba, Beijing; ‘Horn Please,’ Kunstmuseum, Bern, 2007; ‘Indian Highway’ (2009 ongoing); ‘Generation in Transition,’ National Gallery of Art, Warsaw & Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, Lithunia; ‘The Eye is a Lonely Hunter, Images of Humankind,’ at Fotofestival Mannheim_ludwigshafen_Heidelberg; ‘After the Crash’ at Museo Orto Botanico, Rome; his recent solo show being ‘Of Value and Labour’, The Guild, Mumbai; ‘Flux: dystopia, utopia, heterotopia,’ Gallery Espace, New Delhi. In 2012 he will be participating in ‘Critical Mass, Contemporary Art from India’, curated Rotem Ruff, Tel Aviv Museum of Contemporary Art and ‘Newtopia’, curated Katherina Gregos, various Museum venues, Mechelen, Belgium. Agarwal recently co-curated a twin city public art project, Yamuna-Elbe.Public.Art.Outreach. He writes extensively on ecological issues, and is also founder of the leading Indian environmental NGO, Toxics Link. He is an engineer by training.

RIYAS KOMU

1971

More than two decades of liberalization and globalization has brought India high growth, lifting millions out of poverty and providing an aspiring middle-class with goods, services and opportunities that they often witnessed longingly in developed western economies. Importantly, this period also saw fragmentation of the Indian polity and tremendous social churning accompanied by imported western cultures, workplace values and social mores. New fissures have formed as a tradition-dominated society battles with consumerist modernism. A jugaad economy, in whose DNA Nehruvian ideology is mixed up with modern capitalism, is struggling to hold its own. Transitory pangs are testing democratic edifices and structures of the republic, heralding new forces and influences that, if not handled with great care, could unwittingly fuel anarchic, fascist tendencies. 

Economic imbalance 

The foremost danger of capitalism is that it could become subservient to a few. That is precisely what has happened in India. Instead of being a market-oriented capitalist structure, what has evolved over the past 20 odd years is a system that favours a few. The government policies are more often than not business-friendly rather than being market friendly. An informal licence raj continues to be the norm. State power favours a few creating inequities at all levels. There is still no attempt to address this basic problem.

Social imbalance

The social fabric of the nation is stretched and torn in many places. Caste and religious chasms seem to have widened. Assertion of individual liberty is conspicuous (divorce rates, LGBT parades) in cities, yet regressive traditions (honour killings) clash with them routinely. Ironically, even economic growth has added to the fissures (affirmative action).

Political imbalance

The rise of the regions is an old story. But the rising influence of the non-partisans is new. The new force has occupied the vacuum created by a fractious and unimaginative opposition. Often enjoying official patronage, the new group enjoys enormous power without being accountable. None of them have enough backing to even win an election; their influence bordering on the illegitimate. However, there is no denying that a substantial minority in the country is tired of the lack of governance and increasing corruption but are presented with no alternative.

-Riyas Komu.

Riyas Komu graduated with Painting as his specialization and has since than extended himself to sculpture, photography and video installations. Riyas Komu was a participant in the 52nd Venice Biennale 2007 curated by Robert Storr. Other prominent museum shows include ‘Shadow Lines’ curated by Alia Swastika (Indonesia) and Suman Gopinath (India) at Jogja Biennale, Indonesia; Paris-Delhi-Bombay, Centre Pompidou, Paris;  Crossroads India Escalate, Prague Biennale5; Concurrent India, Helsinki Art Museum Tennis Palace, Finland; 'India Awakens: Under the Banyan Tree', Essl Museum, Austria; Finding India, Art for the New Century, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei; Emerging Asian Artists, as part of Art Gwangju 2010, KDJ Convention Center, Gwangju; Indian Highway Museum  of contemporary Art, Lyon; Herning Kunstmuseum, Herning, Denmark; Milan Museum show, curated by Daniella Polizolli and 'India Contemporary', GEM, Museum of Contemporary Art, Hague; ‘India Now: Contemporary Indian Art Between Continuity and Transformation’,Provincia di Milano, Milan, Italy, 'India Xianzai: Contemporary Indian Art', Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Shanghai''Modern India', organized by Institut Valencià d'Art Modern (IVAM) and Casa Asia, in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture at Valencia, Spain. His recent solo shows include 2010 'Subrata to Cesar', Gallery Maskara, Mumbai in association with The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai and 'Safe to Light', Azad Art Gallery, Tehran.

SATHYANAND MOHAN

1975

Sathyanand explores the relationship between language and representation, which is the underlying engagement of the set of works titled 'Abecedaire'. Borrowing a simple formal element from children's language primers, these works push the question of interpretation, - not just of the art-work, but also of experience itself, - to the foreground. We grasp the world through language, - or to put it another way, the world comes to us as a representation mediated through language which, far from being a pure or neutral medium, is always already ideological. Thus experience is always partial and the entry into language, which makes us subjects of the world, necessarily comes at a price.  One could say that the subject matter of the work is the question of interpretation itself and its relationship to subjectivity.

Born in Kerala, he has done his BFA in Painting from The Government College of Fine Arts, Trivandrum, 1994-1998. MFA in Printmaking from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Ms University Baroda, 1998-2000. He has been a part of Singapore Art Fair 2011, Dubai Art Fair 2011, India Art Summit 2011, KIAF 09, India Art Summit 09, 'Armory Show' 09, New York and  'ART HK 09', Hongkong  represented by The Guild, Mumbai. His solo shows include ‘Mirage’ in 2012 and ‘Reliquary’ in 2009 held at The Guild, Mumbai. Some of his group exhibitions include Alternate to Another, The Guild Art USA Inc., New York; A New Vanguard: Trends in Contemporary Indian Art, Saffronart, New York; The Guild, New York; Through a Glass Darkly: Reflections on the Self-Portrait, The Guild, Mumbai.

T. V. SATHOSH

1968

“T.V Santhosh’s large-scale watercolor continues his investigations into the human condition in an age of varied discontent. The large watercolors are a new direction that sees Santhosh change his process from sourcing imagery and text prevalent in the collective consciousness to images drawn from situating models on a pedestal in a studio, mirroring the act of putting the human center stage rather than addressing humanity through the images it manufactures of itself. An act that was previously self-aware becomes in the case of these works self reflective and subversive. The use of text asking pointed questions also indicates a change from the second hand text drawn previously from without, to first hand voice of the artist, asking existential questions, thereby seeking a crack in the fourth wall. 

The invocation of text in these works, and the refusal to adhere to language constructs in the formation of the texts is a return to the use of the colloquial in the structure of the texts. It is also a personal choice for Santhosh, whose activist background in Kerala has influenced all of his work. Historically, Santhosh speaks from a unique position as it relates to India, in that he is of the school of Kerala artists whose works are part activist, part a formation of a voice within the multitude of voices that form the cultural identity of India and partly a function of the communist political environment of the state of Kerala. In choosing to address these images of self reflection, media driven images, identity in the context of India, war and terror, from purely a philosophical standpoint, Santhosh makes a compelling argument that addresses the by products and the process of the human condition in the 21^st Century.”

-Renuka Sawhney

Born in Kerala, T.V. Santhosh obtained a B.F.A in painting from Santiniketan and Masters in Sculpture from MS University, Vadodara. Santhosh has had several successful shows with many international art galleries and museums. His recent sculptural installation from ‘Passage to India’ is in the Frank Cohen collection at Initial Access. Some of his prominent museum shows are 11^th Havanna Biennale,2012; INDIA- LADO A LADO, curated by Tereza de Arruda, SESC  Belenzinho Sao Paula, Brazil; India, curated by Pieter Tjabbes and Tereza de Arruda, Centro Cultural Banco do  Brasil in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; 4^th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art Rewriting Worlds, curated by Peter Weibel; In Transition New Art from India, Surrey Museum of Art, Canada; Collectors’ Stage: Asian Contemporary Art from Private Collections, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; Crossroads: India Escalate, Prague Biennale 5, 2011; The Silk Road, New Chinese, Indian and Middle Eastern Art from The Saatchi Gallery at Tri Postal, Lille, France; Vancouver Biennale; Dark Materials curated by David Thorp, G S K Contemporary show, at Royal Academy of Arts, London; India Xianzai, MOCA, Shanghai, China (2009); Passage to India, Part II: New Indian Art from the Frank Cohen Collection, at Initial Access, Wolverhampton, UK (2009); ‘Aftershock’ at Contemporary Art Norwich at Sainsbury Centre, England in 2007 and ’Continuity and Transformation’ Museum show promoted by Provincia di Milano, Italy. In 2012 he will be participating in Critical Mass, Contemporary Art from India’, curated Rotem Ruff, Tel Aviv Museum of Contemporary Art.