THE GUILD

TAJ LANDS END, MUMBAI
 

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.

BALAJI PONNA 
Born in 1980

“Balaji’s works comprise a crucial relation between the painted text-phrases and the images. Written in a simple typography, this text does not intervene in the picture format but stays on the surface, by virtue of its flat, two-dimensional nature. When a viewer approaches these paintings, the sight is drawn towards deftly manoeuvred images, but quickly, the verbal text catches the eye, as if intervening between the pictorial image and the sight of the onlooker. This moment of rupture is also the moment of introduction of specific meanings to the work. The phenomenological and aesthetic experience of the viewer, in this context, is guided by the text-phrase, written in English. And in this moment of quick shifts between the textual phrase and the image, signification gets complicated and acquires a double signification which correlates each other – the text and the image. At one level the text-phrase puts forward a literal or direct meaning of it. When the signified or the meaning interacts with the image, this signified becomes empty and acquires a second level signification, whose signified belongs to the social and political realms.”  -Santosh S.

Balaji Ponna received his B.F.A in Graphics from Andhra University with Gold medal and M.F.A in Graphics from Visva - Bharati University, Santiniketan. He has been recipient of H.R.D. National Scholarship for young Artists (2004–05). His recent solo exhibitions include Monuments at India Art Summit 2011 with The Guild, Mumbai; The Things I Say, at Studio La Citta, Verona and Black Smoke, at Bose Pacia, Kolkata, in collaboration with The Guild. Ponna has participated in various group shows over the last couple of years including Art Celebrates 2010: Sports and the City, an Exhibition of Indian Contemporary Art curated by  Rupika Chawla; Contemporary Exoticism curated by Marco Meneguzzo at Studio La Citta, Verona; Art Basel by Studio la Citta, 2009;  A New Vanguard: Trends in Contemporary Indian Art, Saffronart, New York and The Guild, New York; The July Show at The Guild and Are We Like This Only? Curated by Vidya Shivadas  at Vadehra Art Gallery , Delhi . His works were also exhibited at the France Print Biennial in 2009.

CHARWEI TSAI 
Born 1980 

Lyrics of love songs that Charwei grew up listening to in Taiwan about loneliness in love are written onto bonsais, which are trees that are manipulated and dwarfed for a sense of beauty. Charwei Tsai’s art practice is strongly affiliated with Thoughtforms, the Buddhist notion of impermanence and the cyclical nature of human existence. Tsai’s art reflects and conserves her Thoughtforms, which in turn are platforms for viewers’ reflections and perceptions.

Charwei Tsai was born in Taiwan and presently lives and works in Taipei and Paris. In addition to her art practice, Tsai publishes, designs and edits Lovely Daze, a curatorial journal published twice a year. 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 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). Tsai is also a participating artist in the Yokohama Triennale and the Ruhrtriennale (both in 2011).

G. R. IRANNA
Born 1970

“G.R. Iranna meditates on human mortality and the fragility of our existence. Using the figure of the Buddhist monk and Buddhist iconography as a metonym for larger questions, he employs his characteristic visual language in “scaffolding the absent” elements present in our search for an understanding of Being against the backdrop of its incompleteness in our mortal journey.

Scaffolding is typically used as a noun, referring to ad hoc support structures, such as temporary architectural platforms used during the building and repair of an edifice (structural or social), but can also metaphorically refer to religious belief, systems of social regulation, dominant societal norms, and so on. Scaffolding can also be used as the gerund form of the verb ‘to scaffold,’ and as a reference to the activity or process of building a temporary platform that supports the erection of an edifice. Thus G.R. Iranna offers a scaffolding of the absent; a temporary structural outline of that which is invisible within the frame, but contextually present in its visible absence, and in doing so, he asks us to reflect upon our human predicament.” Maya Kovskaya.

Iranna obtained M.F.A. from Delhi College of Art. He has had several solo shows the latest being  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.  

LAXMAN SHRESHTHA
Born 1939

Shreshtha's abstract works are both sensuous and meditative in their shifts and balances of colour. Sometimes echoing the mountain peaks of his native Katmandu, the pristine white light of rarefied heights sears through the dense opacity of colour creating dazzling effects. One can observe a palpable movement from chaos to spiritual peace, in his work. Shreshtha's canvases are an intermingling of vivid browns, yellows, reds, oranges and blues. These capture and emote passions dramatically, whether these passions are brooding, fierce or cheerful. His work is intricately related to the events in his life and the struggles he has had to face. His journey, from being a member of an aristocratic family in Nepal, to a struggling art student on the brink of starvation, made him embark on a spiritual quest, which has been reflected in his work He looked for answers to his early existentialist dilemmas in books on Western philosophy. Later he turned to the Upanishads and to Buddhism. His paintings are a reflection of these experiences. Though abstract, his paintings have a sense of intrigue in them, that leaves the observer, and Shreshtha himself, as he confesses, trying to understand the shades of meaning they present.

Laxman Shreshtha graduated from the Sir J.J. School of Art, Bombay in 1962. In 1964 he received a French Government Scholarship to Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts and the Academie de la Grande Chaumiere, Paris. In 1970 he received the British Council Grant to the Central School of Art and Craft, London and in 1971 was awarded the I.V.P. Grant by the U.S. Government to visit Baltimore and

San Francisco. Soon after graduating he held his first solo exhibition in Bombay-1963 and Khatmandu-1964. He has been invited to participate in exhibitions at Maison des Beaux Arts and Sal de la Press, Paris-1966; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh-1979; Gallery Surya, Freinsheim and Gallery F. Friendrich, Cologne, Germany-1980; Gallery Maison Fracaise, Nairobi, Kenya-1987; ‘Pioneers to the New Generation’, Calcutta-1992; ‘The Search Within’ an Austro-Indian traveling exhibition, Pernegg Monastery, Geras and Bildungshaus St. Virgil, Salzburg, Austria, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi and Bombay -1998-99

NAVJOT ALTAF

“Navjot asked participants to select a spot in the city they related to in some meaningful fashion. She photographed these sites independently, then introducing the individual into their chosen sites digitally; the palimpsest-like layering process, though digital, serves as a metaphor for the intersecting, overlapping, complex nature of memories of place, generally, and of urban life specifically.

The city is there in its monumental edifices and sculptures, no doubt, but also emerges through its cracks, resides in its concrete, lingers on its park benches. It straddles both, interiors and exteriors, bridging public and private spaces and selves. To capture these fragments in her frames, Altaf travels to each location, navigating and traversing the city herself. This dynamic engagement with the city transforms into an energy that is visible in the images themselves.

Discovering New York through its inhabitants, through those who consciously place themselves here, makes the city produced in this series local and real. The construction of each photomontage evolved through Altaf’s unique process, involving participant interviews that revealed their placed-ness in the city itself.” Uzma Z. Rizvi

A Place in New York is an outcome of an eight weeks residency programme in the city of New York.

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; 8^th 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  The Guild; 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; 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 among others.

PRAJAKTA POTNIS
Born 1980

‘The area of my work breeds between the intimate world of an individual and the world outside which is separated sometimes only by a wall. As much as a wall might be sealed there tends to be porosity that allows things from the outside world to come home or vice versa. In-between these public and the private spaces various elements transgress and remain as residues of this phenomena. I have always been intrigued by objects that have been once used but are no longer wanted, either because they don’t work or have lost their value. Often as one walks around building compounds one comes across a number of these used objects that have either been thrown/discarded or fallen. Objects such as broken combs, plastic bags, one also comes across body waste such as hair... nails, menstrual pads, condoms... These objects, which have been lying unattended for days, sometimes disfigured, sometimes mixed with soil almost start looking like fossils, narrating their own autobiographies. This sculptural installation attempts to address the viscous cycle of consumption and waste, the practice of use and throw’ – Prajakta Potnis.

Potnis received her BFA and MFA from the Sir J.J. School of Arts in Mumbai, India (1995/2002). She has been shown to critical acclaim in India and internationally in venues including Contemporary Art Centre, Vilnius, Lithunia; Zachęta National Gallery Of Art, Warsaw; Indian Highway MAXXI National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome, Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art, Paris, France (2011), Heart Herning Museum Of Contemporary Art, Denmark (2010), Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art Oslo, Norway(2009); The Essl Museum of Contemporary Art, Austria (2010);  Khoj International Artist Workshop, Delhi (2009); The ‘Kala Ghoda Festival,’ Mumbai (2007); Grosvenor Vadehra, London (2007); Khoj International Artist Workshop, Mumbai (2005); National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai (2002), and others, as well as solo exhibitions, Membranes and Margins, Em Gallery, Seoul (2008); Porous walls The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai (2008); Walls- In- Between, Kitab Mahal, The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai (2006). Her work has been featured in significant publications including ‘I’m Not There: New Art from Asia,’ Ed. Cecilia Alemani (The Gwangju Biennale Foundation, 2010); ‘Younger than Jesus: The Artist Directory’ (New Museum and Phaidon, 2009), as well as numerous catalogues and art magazines such as Art ETC, and others. Potnis is also the recipient of the major awards including the Sanskriti Award for ART (2010), the Inlaks Fine Arts award (2003-2004), and the Young Artist fellowship, from the Indian National Department of Culture (2001- 2003).  

T.V. SANTHOSH
Born 1968

“T.V Santhosh’s large-scale watercolors  continue  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 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); Aftershoc’ at Contemporary Art Norwich at Sainsbury Centre, England in 2007 and ’Continuity and Transformation’ Museum show promoted by Provincia di Milano, Italy.