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K. P. REJI
1972
“This work in many ways marks a continuation of my
longstanding engagement with the politics and poetics of the
everyday. At the same time my attempt is to engage with the ‘hidden’
dynamics of human action. The performative acts in this work travel
from the free play of children to the constitutive order of power.
They attempt to deconstruct the boundaries between the natural and
the cultural (artificial), order and free play, and innocence and
betrayal. At the same time, the work opens up the possibilities of
co-existence of multiple worlds (a possible world in the dream of
the sleeping kid vis-a-vis a betrayed world of togetherness). A
world of wonder and surprise (the normative dream of / about
childhood) is disfigured into the world of callousness by the act of
hiding the frog in the lunch-box. Parallel to the actions in the
foreground, there is a lateral in-activeness in the background
through which the title of the painting Fishes under the Broken
Bridge acquires resonance. What is common in the actions depicted in
this work is the presence of certain deceitfulness - the very act of
fishing, hiding the frog in the lunch-box, playing prank with the
stringed cockroach and the sleeping boy and so on. In a broader
sense, this work attempts to expose various technologies of power
which constitute our notions regarding the self and the other.”- K.
P. Reji.
K. P. Reji received his MFA from MSU Baroda. Reji was
awarded the prestigious Sanskriti Award for the Young Artist-2007,
Sanskriti Foundation, New Delhi. He was invited for the Kochi-Muziris
Biennale, Kochi, India, 2012-13 and Jogja Biennale – ‘Shadow Lines’
curated by Suman Gopinath and Alia Swastika, 2011-12. Reji’s
selected group exhibitions include ‘Tolstoy Farm: Archive of
Utopia’, curated by Gayatri Sinha, New Delhi, 2011; ‘Roots in the
Air, Branches Below: Modern & Contemporary Art from India’, San
Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, 2011; ‘Tough Love’, curated by
Shaheen Merali, Plataforma Revólver, Lisbon, Portugal, 2010;
‘Snow’ curated by Ranjit Hoskote, The Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi
in collaboration with Tao Art Gallery, Mumbai, 2010; ‘Horn Please:
Narratives in Contemporary Indian Art’, curated by Bernhard Fibicher
and Suman Gopinath Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland, 2007. His solo
exhibitions being ‘With a Pinch of Salt’ at Nature Morte, New Delhi
in collaboration with The Guild, 2009 and ‘Just Above My Head’, The
Guild, Mumbai, 2006.
NAVJOT ALTAF
“‘Listening to the earth is one of the 7 sculptures
from a series titled ‘In Response To’. It signifies that the earth
transmits continuous sound frequencies but unlike animals we don't
hear it.”
– Navjot Altaf.
“The
video installation 'Touch IV', whose central protagonists are sex
workers and members of the third gender community, is a culmination
of Navjot's three-decade-long preoccupation with representing the
voice of the subaltern in art. I would contend that at the core of
Navjot's practice lies her unceasing awareness of being a linguistic
subjectivity, an image-maker who nonetheless forms her social and
political associations through language. Navjot has a deep
commitment to language in all its various manifestations, its
ability to unmask power asymmetry and the occlusion of truth, with
its wager on multi-pronged articulation. But her commitment to
language is held in counterpoint by her apprehension of being
stalled by word-induced aporia, of being interpellated or otherwise
reduced by language, of being trapped by language.
…In
'Touch IV', unlike earlier video installations like 'Mumbai Meri
Jaan' or 'Pavan Kumar', Navjot's subaltern protagonists discussed
and even at times dictated the terms of how they wished to be
represented. In the Spivakian sense, Navjot has traversed the
journey from the difficulties of inter-subjective communication, as
immortalised in the question 'Can the subaltern speak?', to clearing
the ground to make such speech-acts possible. This should not
mislead the viewer into thinking that if the subaltern speaks, s/he
will be automatically heard. As in Navjot's earlier works, the
viewer has to make an effort to understand what is being enunciated,
with 22 voices available on the headphones of television monitors.
These
voices belong to people who are part of a movement of resistance
against societal norms that consider their sex-work as a social
aberration and their sexuality as deviant behaviour. Their
solidarity has been manifested in a large 5000-member organisation,
Sangram, which has been working with women's collectives on
prostitution for the last 15 years…”
(Excerpt from an essay by Nancy Adajania)
Navjot Altaf’s works have been shown in
Yamuna.Elbe
A
public art project at the Yamuna in Delhi and the Elbe in Hamburg,
curated by Ravi Agarwal (Delhi) and Till Krause (Hamburg);
Lacuna in Testimony, Patricia
and Phillip
Frost
Art Museum, Florida,
2009;
Public
Places Private Spaces, Newark
Museum, New
York
and
Minneapolis Institute of Arts,
Minneapolis
2008,
curated by Gayatri Sinha and Paul Stern Berger; Tiger
by the Tail: Women
Artists Transforming
Culture, Brandies
University / Museum
Boston and New Brunswick
Rutgers University, Douglass Library, Newark, 2008,
curated by Wendy Tarlow Kaplan, Elinor W.Gadon and Roobina Karode;
INDIA NOW: Contemporary Indian Art between Continuity
and Transition,
Provincia
di Milano,Italy, 2007,
curated by Daniela Palazzoli;
Zones of Contact,
15th Biennale of Sydney Australia, 2006, curated
by Charles Merewether;
Groundworks, Carnegie
Mellon University,
(RMG) Pittsburgh,
2005;
Another Passage To India, Theatre
Saint-Gervais and Musee d’ Ethnographie, Geneva, Switzerland, 2004, curated
by Pooja Sood;
Zoom – Art in Contemporary India,
Edificia Sede de Caixo Garal de Depositos,
Lisbon, 2004, curated
by Luis Sepra and Nancy Adajania; Century
City - Bombay/Mumbai: City
Politics and Visual
Culture in
the 90’s, Tate
Modern, London,
2001,
curated by Geeta Kapoor and Ashish Rajadhyaksha; subTerrain:artworks
in the cityfold, ,Haus der Kulteren der Welt, Berlin; 8th
Havana Biennale, Cuba, 2003; Liminal Zones, Apeejay Media Gallerry,
New Delhi, 2003, curated by Pooja Sood,;
Solo exhibitions include:
‘Touch IV’,
Video Installation,
Talwar Gallery, New Delhi and The Guild, Mumbai, 2010;
‘Touch-
Remembering Altaf’,
Video
and motor based sculpture
Installation,
Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, 2008;
‘Water
Weaving’, Video
Installation,
Talwar Gallery, New York, 2005; ‘Junctions
1 2 3’, The
Guild, Mumbai,
2006 and
Jagar Multimedia Installation, Sakshi Gallery
Mumbai,2006; ‘A
Place in New York’
an interactive photo based project, The Guild, Mumbai, 2010;
‘Bombay
Shots’, an interactive photo based project, The Guild, Mumbai, 2008,
among others.
PRANEET SOI
1971
In his
recent works, Praneet Soi explores the relationship between
figuration and pattern formalism.
The
works exhibited here approximate the artist’s studio wall, where
this exploration brings into proximity seemingly disparate subject
matter. Each work and their accumulation brings into play a series
of forces and currents that generate new thoughts and images. The
landscape, architecture, media and portraiture mesh together
through this effort of image-making.
Image
#1 - A study of building under construction in Mexico city. The use
of architecture, reduced to a formalistic image and then inserted
into what seems to be a human form. They are painted in Acrylic on
linen.
Image
Ia and Ib - These are views from the Brooklyn studio the artist
rented when he first left India for the United States. The view is
of the lower East Side of Manhattan. The sizes are reminiscent of
the photograph,
IA is a
Drawing in Silverpoint on paper and IB in Oil on Canvas
Image 2
- This is a composition made by fragmenting details from the Nokia
Tower in Vilnius. Soi visited this city in 2010, when it was
suffering from the economic downturn that began in 2009. The shiny
new towers, built during the period before 2009, were now empty and
for Soi this shiny edifice became a symbol of unchecked urbanism.
Image 3
- A further exploration of architectural space, this time as a free
standing object. Acrylic on linen mounted on wood.
Image 4
- This image is a painting that was inspired by a Hussain drawing
that adorned the facade of Pundole gallery in Mumbai. On an earthen
ground, gridded out with faint white lines, the artist has placed
images that are a part of his process and underline his concerns.
The use of line and silhouettes is augmented with images that are
fleshed out by the use of gentle pin-stroking, a technique created
by the artist after observing frescoes in Italy. The floral detail
in miniature on the right-hand side is a detail from the tomb of the
Sufi Saint Bul Bul Sha in Srinagar, while the figures, in
their source, range from the media,to linked photo-shoots in the
artist’s studio.
Images
A, B, C, D & E are from the artist’s archive.
A & B
are images from the series Kumartuli Apprentice, in which the
artist worked with a printer in North Kolkata, drawing upon his
collection of old plates in the making of composition to understand
the working of an anachronistic Treadel Press that the printer
operated daily.
RAVI AGARWAL
“The technology of progress archives the debris of
the past.”- Ravi Agarwal.
Ravi
Agarwal is a photographer artist, writer, curator and environmental
activist. He explores issues of urban space, ecology and capital in
interrelated ways, working with photographs, video, performance,
on-site installations and public art. Agarwal has participated in
several international exhibitions including Documenta XI (Kassel
2002), Sharjah Biennial 11 (2013); ‘Zones of Contact propositions
for the Museum’, co-curated by Vidya Sivadas, Akansha Rastogi,
Deeksha Nath, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, Noida, 2013; ‘The Needle on
the Gauge: The Testimonial Image in the works of Seven Indian
Artists’,curated by Ranjit Hoskote, Contemporary Art Centre of SA,
Adelaide, Australia, 2012; ‘Newtopia’, curated by Katerina Gregos,
various Museum venues, Mechelen, Belgium, 2012; ‘Critical Mass,
Contemporary Art from India’, curated by Rotem Ruff, Tel Aviv
Museum of Contemporary Art, Israel, 2012; ‘ZNE!, Examples to
Follow’, curated by Adrienne Goehler, traveling exhibition, Berlin,
Mumbai, Adis Ababba, Beijing; ‘Horn Please,’ Kunstmuseum, Bern,
2007; ‘Indian Highway’ (2009); ‘Generation in Transition,’ National
Gallery of Art, Warsaw & Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius,
Lithuania; ‘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. 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.
SUDHIR PATWARDHAN
1949
“Patwardhan’s brush appears sometimes to move faster than the image
it is meant to render, leaving a swirl or swipe of paint across the
picture surface. In consequence, many of his figures now emerge at
the cusp between photography and abstraction.”
“Circling between the solitude of the studio and the sociality
demanded by any engagement with humankind at large; immuring himself
in the archive yet also launching forward on journeys of
exploration, Sudhir Patwardhan has built for himself (and for us,
his viewers) a mobile observatory of human affairs.” - Ranjit
Hoskote.
“Sudhir
prefers
to tell his stories through images. But moving into his sixties he
now knows that the desire to tell stories and to pass on one’s
experience to the next generation is an innate human need rather
than an individual trait. Transmitting stories is like transmitting
one’s DNA; it keeps a part of us alive through a chain of memories
we inscribe onto the minds of those who come after us.”
“With
the mechanization of transport, travelling has also become periods
of bodily inaction — the inactive body is carried through the world,
and the world travels by but it is not seen. The world becomes a
blur and the window becomes a mirror. The inactive traveler sinks
into thought and multiplies herself internally; the window reflects
her and multiplies her externally for the observant eyes of fellow
travelers, sometimes clearly and sometimes as a blurred element in a
madly overwritten image of the world.” – R. Siva Kumar.
Sudhir
Patwardhan was born in 1949. He graduated in medicine from the Armed
Forces Medical College, Pune. His selected museum shows include
‘Social Fabric’, curated by Grant Watson, INIVA, London; Lunds
Konsthall, Lund, Sweden; Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai (2012);
‘Modernist Art from India’, curated by Beth Citron, Rubin Museum,
New York (2011); ‘Modern Indian Art- The Ethos of Modernity’,
Sichuan Museum, Shenzhen Museum, Zhejiang Museum, China (2010);
‘ReVisions, Indian Artists Engaging Tradition’, curated by Susan
Bean, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, USA (2009); ‘Horn
Please – Narratives in Contemporary Indian Art’, curated by Bernhard
Fibicher and Suman Gopinath, Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland (2007).
Recently Patwardhan had a solo exhibition, ‘Route Maps’ at The Guild
(2012). His other solo exhibitions include ‘Exhibition of
Drawings’, Jehangir Art Gallery, 2012; ‘Family Fiction’, Sakshi
Gallery, Mumbai, Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi (2011); ‘The Crafting
of Reality’, The Guild, Mumbai (2008).
A
monograph on his work, ‘The Complicit Observer’ written by Ranjit
Hoskote, was published in 2004. This was followed in 2007 by another
book by Ranjit Hoskote on Patwardhan’s drawings – ‘The Crafting of
Reality’. This is tranaslated into Marathi as ‘Rekhachitravichar’,
published in 2012. A monograph in Marathi, written by Padmakar
Kulkarni was published in 2005. Anjali Monteiro and K.P.Jaysankar
have made a film on the artist, along with the work of the poet
Narayan Surve, titled ‘Saacha’, in 2001.
T.
V. SANTHOSH
1968
T. V.
Santhosh’s works are the outcome of his engagement with the images
of ongoing and changing nature of war, memory and perception. His
works employ the linguistic devices of color codes, positive
negative image inversions and are subsequently a mapping of social
unrest and its political implications through the constructions of
multiple layers of metaphors that investigate the evolving histories
of the nature of war, human rights and citizenship.
Born in Kerala, T.V. Santhosh obtained his graduate
degree in painting from Santiniketan and Masters degree in Sculpture
from M. S. University, Vadodara. Santhosh’s works have been shown
widely in Museums and Biennales. Some of the museum shows
include: ‘WAR ZONE – Indian Contemporary Art’, ARTEMONS
CONTEMPORARY, Das Kunstmuseum, Austria, 2012; ‘Critical Mass:
Contemporary Art from India’, curated by Tami Katz-Freiman and Rotem
Ruff, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel, 2012; 11th Havanna
Biennial, 2012; ‘INDIA- LADO A LADO’, curated by Tereza de Arruda,
SESC Belenzinho Sao Paulo, Brazil 2012; ‘India’, curated by Pieter
Tjabbes and Tereza de Arruda, Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil in
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2011; 4th Moscow Biennale of
Contemporary Art, ‘Rewriting Worlds’, curated by Peter Weibel,
2011; ‘In Transition New Art from India’, Surrey Museum of Art,
Canada, 2011; Collectors’ Stage: Asian Contemporary Art from Private
Collections, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, 2011; ‘Crossroads:
India Escalate’, Prague Biennale 5, 2011; ‘Empire Strikes Back’, The
Saatchi Gallery, London, 2010; ‘The Silk Road, New Chinese, Indian
and Middle Eastern Art’ from The Saatchi Gallery at Tri Postal,
Lille, France, 2010; Vancouver Biennale curated by Barry Mowatt,
2010; ‘Dark Materials’, curated by David Thorp, G S K Contemporary
show, at Royal Academy of Arts, London, 2009; ‘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, Conflict, Violence and Resolution in
Contemporary Art’, Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, UEA Norwich,
2007; ‘Continuity and Transformation’, Museum show promoted by
Provincia di Milano, Italy, 2007. His solo shows include ‘The
Land’, Nature Morte, Berlin in collaboration with The Guild, Mumbai,
2011; ‘Burning Flags’, Aicon Gallery, London in collaboration with
The Guild, 2010; ‘Blood and Spit’, Jackshainman Gallery in
collaboration with The Guild, 2009; ‘Living with a Wound’, Grosvenor
Vadehra, London in collaboration with The Guild, 2009; ‘A Room to
Pray’ at Avanthay Contemporary, Zurich, in collaboration with The
Guild, Mumbai, 2008; ‘Countdown’, Nature Morte, Delhi in
collaboration with The Guild, Mumbai, 2008 and many more. |
