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K. G.
SUBRAMANYAN
Born 1924
Subramanyan has, like the traditional artists of the East
who were keen observers of nature and yet never drew from nature,
learned to supplant drawing from nature with astute looking, and to
transform perception into a form of ocular reception that allows the
world to inscribe itself onto the screen of his mind.
Most of these drawings are in the form of brush and ink
images on cards. The motifs usually appear single and vivid against the
whiteness of the paper. He does not attempt to render the atmosphere,
but only to give a suggestion of space, invoked by the tone and movement
of the brush strokes – which are always kept broad and few – and by the
illusory volumes they create. Small, economical in rendering, the
stillness of the image fused with the movement of the brush, and the
starkness of the motif juxtaposed against the white void of the paper
these are drawings as pithy as haikus.
His
coloured drawings, big or small, exhibit a dynamic tension between form
and movement, compositional coherence and gestural animation. Some of
them are marked by an overall animation and composed of a flurry of
stokes or marks.
( Excerpt from the essay Regarding The Drawings of K. G.
Subramanyan by R. Siva Kumar)
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.
Navjot
Altaf
On a
surface level what strikes me most about New
York is the distinctiveness of a man-made city filled with
people/ immigrants from all around the globe and being there always
gives me an ever-changing source of inspiration. This was my eighth
visit with a longer duration of eight weeks for a residency programme –
the outcome was an interactive project ‘A Place in
New York - New York ’, done shortly
after I had exhibited ‘Bombay Shots’ in Mumbai in 2008 and this can be
seen as an extension of that. Despite many political undercurrents, I
find both the cities have people from diverse cultures and backgrounds
making them vital cities, which I love.
Apart from the visibility of the architecturally
innovative and overpowering skyscrapers, the juxtapositions of old and
new designs and the diversity which New York is generally known for;
which I gradually started to keenly observe, and appreciate, is that
nature is considered an integral part of plans and the development of
the city. Open public spaces, playgrounds,
riverside parks, botanical gardens,
and waterfronts are accessible and lots of significant cultural events
otherwise absolutely unaffordable for many take place in public spaces;
my visits to such sites to shoot were extremely enjoyable as I could see
a large number of people of all ages having access to them.
Rewriting the landscape : India and China :
Contemporary Art from China and India, National Museum of Modern and
Contemporary Art, curated by Choi Eunju and Kate Lim, Korea, 2013;
Water: EuropaliaIndia Liege, Belgium, Germany, curated by Gayatri Sinha,
2013; Women In – Between: Asian Women Artists 1984-2012. Fukuoka Asia
Art Museum, Okinawa Prefectural Museum and Art Museum, Tochigi
Prefectural Museum of fine Arts and Mie Prefectural Art Museum, Japan,
curated by Raiji Kuroda, 2012/13.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,
curated by Gayatri Sinha and Paul Stern Berger,
2008;
Tiger by the Tail: Women
Artists Transforming
Culture, Brandies University
/ Museum
Boston and
New
Brunswick Rutgers University, Douglass Library, Newark,curated
by Wendy Tarlow Kaplan, Elinor W.Gadon and Roobina Karode,
2008;
INDIA
NOW: Contemporary Indian Art between Continuity and Transition,
Provincia
di Milano,Italy,
curated
by Daniela Palazzoli,
2007.
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), 2011;
‘IN CONTEXT: Public.Art. Ecology’, Project, Khoj International Artists
Residency, New Delhi, 2010.
Zones of Contact,
15th
Biennale of Sydney Australia,
curated by Charles Merewether,
2006;
‘Groundworks : Environmental Collaboration in Contemporary Art’, Carnegie
Mellon University,
(RMG) Pittsburgh,
curated by Grant Kester,
2005;
Another Passage
To India, Theatre
Saint-Gervais and Musee d’ Ethnographie, Geneva, Switzerland, curated
by Pooja Sood,
2004;
Zoom – Art in Contemporary India,
Edificia Sede de Caixo Garal de Depositos,
Lisbon, curated
by Luis Sepra and Nancy Adajania,
2004; Century
City - Bombay/Mumbai: City
Politics and Visual
Culture in
the 90’s, Tate
Modern, London, curated by Geeta Kapur and Ashish Rajadhyaksha,
2001;
subTerrain:artworks in the cityfold,
Haus
der Kulteren der Welt, Berlin curated by Geeta Kapur, 2003; 8th
Havana Biennale, Cuba, 2003; Liminal Zones, Apeejay Media Gallery, New
Delhi, curated by Pooja Sood, 2003.
Solo exhibitions include: ‘Horn
in the Head’,
Sculpture Installation with audio and video, Talwar Gallery, New Delhi,
2013;
‘Touch IV’,
Video Installation,
Talwar Gallery, New Delhi and The Guild, Mumbai, 2010;
‘A Place in
New York’
an interactive photo based project, The Guild, Mumbai,
2010; ‘Touch-
Remembering Altaf’,
Video
and motor based sculpture
Installation,
Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, 2008;
‘Bombay
Shots’,
an interactive photo based project, The Guild, Mumbai,
2008;
Junctions 1 2 3’, The
Guild, Mumbai,
2006 and
‘Jagar’
Multimedia Installation, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, 2006;
‘Water
Weaving’, Video
Installation,
Talwar Gallery, New York, 2005, among others.
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.
T. V.
SATHOSH
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. 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:
Making History, Colombo Art Biennale, 2014; Heritage
Transport Museum, curated by Priya Pall,
New Delhi, 2013; 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; Rewriting Worlds, 4th Moscow Biennale
of Contemporary Art, 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 select solo shows include
The Land, Nature Morte, Berlin 2011, Burning Flags, Aicon Gallery,
London 2010, Blood and Spit, Jackshainman Gallery 2009, Living with a
Wound, Grosvenor Vadehra, London 2009, A Room to Pray at Avanthay
Contemporary, Zurich 2008, Countdown, Nature Morte, Delhi 2008 in
collaboration with The Guild, Mumbai; Countdown, The Guild, Mumbai 2008.
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 Thought of the Day,
Kashi Art Gallery, Kochi 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
Heritage Transport Museum,
curated by Priya Pall, New Delhi, 2013,
Roots in the Air, Branches Below: Modern & Contemporary Art from India,
San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose , 2011; Time Unfolded, Kiran
Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, 2011; Finding India: Art for the New
century, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan, by Sakshi Gallery,
Mumbai, 2010; Go See India, curated by Amit Mukhopadhyay and Oscar
Aschan, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2010; Cultura Popular India and Beyond,
curated by Shaheen Merali, Alcalá 31,
Madrid, 2009 and Arad Biennale, Romania, 2005 among others.
Sathyanand Mohan
1975
His
works are private metaphors wherein he tries to evoke various aspects of
the self and attempts to work it out at the level of the visual in a
playful and ironic manner. Play and Irony are employed in his paintings
to draw attention to the language and its materiality. If we are at
present living under the sing of 'realism', then his works could be said
to be trying to obscure that notion by bringing into play different
registers of language(s) culled form different contexts and sources
which are like the uses of collage employed by the Surrealists are stuck
together in the work by some notion of the 'real'. The fantastic subject
matter of works allows him to suspend the gravity of the real, and
permits him the liberty of engaging in a play of his own.
Born in Kerala, Sathyanand received his BFA in Painting
from The Government College of Fine Arts, Trivandrum, 1994-1998. MFA in
Printmaking from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. 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 ‘The Secret life of
plants’, curated by Maya Kovskaya, Exhibit 320, New Delhi; ‘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.
BAIJU
PARTHAN
'Psuedopds'
is a series of mixed media works about shifting theoretical frameworks
or knowledge systems (epistemes) that rearrange our perception, but in
the process bring forth ontogical conundrums.
In
simple. terms these works depict situations where nascent knowledge
annihilates familiar and comfortable ideas about ourselves and the
world.
Pseudopods or pseudopodia are temporary projections or protoplasmic
appendages produced by unicellular amoeboids for locomotion and for
managing their environment.
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’,
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
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