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THE GUILD AT Art Chennai
Stall A
Art Chennai
BAIJU PARTHAN RIYAS KOMU
K. G. SUBRAMANYAN SUDHIR PATWARDHAN
K. P. REJI T. V. SANTHOSH
RAVI AGARWAL VIDYA KAMAT
BAIJU PARTHAN
Baiju Parthan is considered to be an important new media
art pioneer within the Indian contemporary art context.
Baiju Parthan’s art practice revolves around information
technology and its impact on perception and meaning generation. His art
explores how information streams alter our perception of reality and how
new categories of experience clubbed under the generic term 'virtual'
reshape our cherished ideas about the world. Technology in his work is
primarily used as an interactive space’, where each node is a choice
that branches out into an exploration of fluid boundaries of meaning,
that suggests the ever present local within the global, and the human
cogency. The
mediums of his works are a commingling of his training in various
fields.
Baiju Parthan has an eclectic academic background. Along
with degrees in Painting, Botany, Philosophy, and a Post-grad diploma in
Comparative mythology, he has done studies in computer game level design
at the Pratt Institute Manhattan USA. Some of his selected group shows
include ‘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; 'Constructed
Realities', curated by Gayatri Sinha at The Guild, Mumbai, 2010; 'Go See
India', part of India-Sweden Cultural Exchange Program; presented by
Emami Chisel, Kolkata at Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkatta, Vasa Konsthal
and Gallery-Scandinavia,Gothenburg; 'The
Intuitive: Logic Revisted', from the Osians Collection at The World
Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland; 'Looking Glass: The Existence of
Difference', Twenty Indian Contemporary Artists presented by Religare
Arts Initiative, New Delhi in collaboration with American Centre,
British Council, Goethe-Institut/ Max Mueller Bhavan, New Delhi; 'The
11th Hour: An Exhibition of Contemporary Art from India / Diaspora',
Tang Contemporary, Beijing. Parthan’s
recent new media installations include Arpeggio for Abbe Faria,-
Photography Installation, Benedictine Museum, Fecamp, France; ‘Liquid
memory’ new media Installation- Galerie Christian Hosp, Nassereith,
Austria.His recent solo shows are 'Dislocation:
Milljunction Part 2', Aicon Gallery, London; 'Milljunction:
Paintings and Photo-Works by Baiju Parthan', Aicon Gallery, New York; Liquid
memory + Rant - Inter-media show Vadehra Gallery New Delhi.
K. G. SUBRAMANYAN
Born 1924
K.G. Subramanyan born in Kerala and educated in
Santiniketan is a major presence on the Indian art scene. His
flexibility of expression and richness of visual language evolve from
the diverse materials he works with as painter, muralist, printmaker,
relief-sculptor and designer. In his recent work Subramanyan uses many
registers of language to slide from high seriousness to irony,
celebration to subversion, descriptive rendering to lyrical evocation,
fact to metaphor, and from real to surreal with the ingenuity of a
consummate craftsman and the alertness of a nimble thinker. A man of
multifaceted talents, Subramanyan demolished banners between artist and
artisan. The artist gave the human figure a new dimension. Drawing upon
the rich resources of myth, memory and tradition, Subramanyan tempers
romanticism with wit and eroticism.
He has received the Kalidas Samman in 1981, the Padma
Shree in 1975, D. Litt. (Honoris Causa) from the Rabindra Bharati
University, Calcutta in 1992 and became a Fellow of Kerala Lalit Kala
Akademi in 1993.
K. P. REJI
1972
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. Often political in inflection, his
canvases explore the connection between psychological states of mind and
socio-political behavior. He focuses on the way the nation state has set
up a seemingly coherent bio political order for its own legitimacy as a
sovereign power. The sites where Reji has chosen to work for the mapping
of the ‘national’ and ‘modern’ in India are of course the paradigmatic
sites of the family and the state, the domains of the private and the
public. Reji’s works map the order of life and the ways in which the
lives of various communities are imagined in it.
K.P.Reji received his M.F.A and B.F. A in painting from
the M.S. University, Vadodara. He is the
receipient of the Sanskriti Award for the Young Artist-2007, Sanskriti
Foundation, New Delhi. K.P.Reji has participated in several major
exhibitions and museum shows including include ‘Shadow
Lines’
curated by Alia Swastika (Indonesia) and Suman Gopinath (India) at Jogja
Biennale, Indonesia;
Tough Love, curated by Shaheen Merali,
Plataforma Revólver, Lisbon, Portugal; Snow curated by Ranjit
Hoskote; Horn Please: Narratives in
Contemporary Indian Art, Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland;
Tolstoy Farm: Archive of Utopia, curated
by Gayatri Sinha, New Delhi; Roots
in the Air, Branches Below: Modern & Contemporary Art from India, San
Jose Museum of Art, San Jose; CIGE 2009, China and SHContemporary
08’, Shanghai represented by The Guild, Mumbai; Art Asia Miami, 08,
represented by The Guild Art USA Inc. His recent solo exhibitions being
With a Pinch of Salt was held at Nature Morte, New Delhi in
collaboration with The Guild and ‘Just Above My Head’, The Guild,
Mumbai.
RAVI AGARWAL
As the tides of globalization and privatization sweep
across the world, it sometimes appears as if the labourer has been
obliterated from public discourse. Thus while retrenchment,
contractualisation and casualisation push workers out from the so-called
formal sector to the largely non-unionized informal sector, millions
languish in squalor, poverty and misery. Not only does this situation
prevail in the developing world, it has also manifested itself in the
developed world in the form of the underpaid and exploited 'guest
worker,' many of whom are illegal immigrants.
These works are from ‘Down and Out: Labouring under
Global Capitalism’, Jan Breman, Arvind Das and Ravi Agarwal, OUP, 2000,
New Delhi.
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), ‘Horn Please,’ Kunstmuseum, Bern, 2007; ‘Indian Highway’ (2009
ongoing); ‘Generation in Transition,’ National Gallery of Art, Warsaw;
‘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. He is an engineer by training.
RIYAS KOMU
1971
Migration and identity play a pivotal role in Komu’s art
practice. He has been associated with and has been working with the
migrant labour in Mumbai, being himself very much a part of the
migration story to Mumbai. His works question the urban phenomena of
migration, politics, civic society and the identity issues of the
minority.
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.
SUDHIR PATWARDHAN
1949
Born in Pune, Sudhir graduated in medicine from the Armed
Forces Medical College, Pune. He moved to Mumbai in 1973 after
graduation and worked as a Radiologist in Thane from 1975 to 2005.
His first one person show was held by Ebrahim Alkazi’s
Art Heritage in New Delhi in 1979. Since then his work has been seen
regularly in exhibitions in India and abroad. A monograph on his work ,
written by Ranjit Hoskote, was published in 2004. This was followed in
2007 by a book on Patwardhan’s drawings. A monograph in Marathi, written
by Padmakar Kulkarni was published in 2005. In 2008- 2009 Patwardhan
curated an exhibition of Indian Contemporary Art ‘Vistarnari Kshitije’ /
‘Expanding Horizons’ which travelled to eight cities in Maharashtra.
Patwardhan’s works are in the permanent collection of National gallery
of Modern Art, New Delhi and Mumbai; Roopankar Museum, Bhopal; Jehangir
Nicholson Collection, Mumbai; the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, USA and
other prominent private and public collections. The artist lives and
works in Thane, near Mumbai.
T.V. SANTHOSH
1968
T.V. Santhosh’s associations are humanist and
metaphysically oriented without being detached from reality. They act as
conceptualist devices intended to break down the simple binaries through
which we perceive our complex and multi-layered milieu. Through this
lens he examines the distortion of science and technology into vehicles
of terror. T.V. Santhosh’s work deals with the overarching presence of
the notion of violence in contemporary societal life. His works talk of
socio-political and environmental dilemmas in a global context.
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 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; 4th 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);
Aftershoc’ at Contemporary Art Norwich at Sainsbury Centre, England in
2007 and ’Continuity and Transformation’ Museum show promoted by
Provincia di Milano, Italy.
VIDYA KAMAT
Contemporary cities and urban spaces have become sites
where the spectacular is staged relentlessly, saturating and overloading
our senses as though to drive us into incoherence. An incoherence that
helps us gloss over the disparities this excess is generating.
Spectacles of violence, greed, beauty, loss, hopes and dreams are played
out to entice and engulf you within the tidal wave of conspicuous
consumption. In this generated excess of images, visuals and other
stimuli, is there a possibility of discovering an aesthetic paradigm?
Or in pursuit of excess, has the search for meaning
become a futile act?
In her recent body of works, Vidya Kamat explores the
landscape of excess and the loss of coherence.
Vidya Kamat holds a degree in fine arts and a doctoral
degree in Comparative Mythology. She is associated with the University
of Mumbai as an adviser and research scholar for the subject of ancient
Indian myth and culture. Her art practice articulates the concern and
conflict of traditional Indian society that is coming to terms with
urban life. Kamat questions the role of myths and its implications in
current society that has instigated intolerance and violence in modern
India. Kamat’s select shows include, Palimpsests curated by Niru Ratnam,
Aicon gallery New York; Through Other Eyes: Contemporary Art from South
Asia, curated by Gerard Mermoz, Herbert Art gallery & Musuem,Coventry,
England; Indian Contemporary Art Palais Benedictine de Fecamp Paris,
curated by Ranjit Hoskote and Supriya Banerjee; Ethics
of Encounters, Contemporary art from India and Thailand, Gallery
Soulflower, Bangkok, curated by Pandit Chanrochanakit and Brian Curtin;
Changing Skin curated By
Marta Jakimowicz; I am a
Saint, New Delhi, curated by
Johny ML; Intimate Lives,by
Anupa Mehta. |
