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Sudhir Patwardhan
Route Maps
THE GUILD
November 2 – December 11, 2012
The Guild Art Gallery is proud to present ‘Route
Maps’, a
solo exhibition
of Sudhir Patwardhan’s work, previewing on Thursday,
November 1.
“In ‘Route Maps’, 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 traveller sinks into thought and multiplies
herself internally; the window reflects her and multiplies her
externally for the observant eyes of fellow travellers,
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. He
moved to Mumbai in 1973 and worked as a Radiologist in Thane
from 1975 to 2005. His first one person show was held by Ebrahim
Alkazi’s Art Heritage Gallery in New Delhi in 1979. Since then
his work has been seen regularly in exhibitions in India and
abroad. 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). His recent solo shows include ‘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.
In 2008- 2009 Patwardhan curated an exhibition of
Indian Contemporary Art ‘Vistarnari
Kshitije’ / ‘Expanding Horizons’ which travelled to eight cities
in Maharashtra. His second curatorial project, in 2011, was an
exhibition of the drawings of ten artists, shown in The Guild
Art Gallery, Mumbai and Sudarshan Art Gallery, Pune.
Patwardhan’s works are in the permanent
collection of National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi and
Mumbai; Roopankar Museum, Bhopal; Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New
Delhi, 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. |
