Art News: Ochre and the Iris by Mridul Chandra

A Visual Travelogue

“Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy – your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself.” Annie Leibovitz

Inspired by nature, artist Mridul Chandra paints the world around her. Vistas of landscapes from her travels are translated on canvas. She says, "Painting from this vast canvas has been the ultimate challenge, expressing what is in front of me in a personalised semi abstract expressionist manner. The eye searches for a way to depict the real in an unreal suggestion, leaving you in a state of being in the ‘here-and-now’."

She explains that this exhibition is a celebratory expression of experiencing the joys of nature and marvelling at its beauty.  The watercolour paintings capture the atmosphere and the soft romantic moods of nature. "Ochre is the first colour on my palette; Iris the vehicle in the eye for seeing the world.", she says.

"My ode in this series is in celebration of well-being. Much like the practice of yoga, or meditation."

Mridul elaborates on how she gravitated towards watercolours,"Transition from oil /acrylic to watercolours came out of sheer curiosity. As time elapsed, I realised how immersive and captivating the medium of watercolours is. Employing a minimal palette, letting the colours flow, creating accidental splurges, enabling the painting to evolve with tonal gradations. Along with light and shadow playing a key role in creating the mood and atmosphere. By attempting small and medium sized works, the show in parts is like a travelogue."

As a result, a deeply meditative world emerges in her landscapes.

About Mridul Chandra:

Mridul has studied from ‘Sir JJ school of Art ‘Mumbai. Hailing from Kolkata, she now lives in Bangalore. Having worked with architects for the Asian games of 1982 to dabbling in graphics, she is now full time in painting. Spanning two decades of a creative journey, she has held solo shows in ‘Jehangir Art Galley’ Mumbai. Duo show in ‘Habitat Art Gallery’ Delhi. Besides several Gallery group shows in Bangalore. Participated in an all-Women’s’ Artist Camp in Gulbarga organised by Karnataka Lalit Kala Academy. Her works are with collectors in India and abroad.

At present besides studio work, she conducts water colour short sessions for the public to generate interest and well-being.

Inauguration - Saturday 19th October 2019, inauguration 3pm-8.30 pm.

All works can be viewed on https://www.mridulchandra.com/

Ochre and the Iris, solo show by Mridul Chandra, from 19th - 10th Nov 2019 at MKF Museum of Art, 55/1 Isha Villa, Lavelle Road, Bengaluru 560001

Timing 11-7 pm.( (Monday closed.) ph: +91 9845736550 +91 7373887557

All images courtesy the artist
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Also read,

• Art News: apexart NYC Open Call 2020-21
• Art News: Of Life and Landscape
• Timeless Narratives by Veteran Artists
• Linear Perspective by Shirley Mathew
• The Melancholy State of Happiness
• Interview: Kiran Nadar on #chalomuseum
• ART COLLECTION: Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore
• ART COLLECTION: Jaganmohan Palace, Mysore
• ART COLLECTION: NGMA, Bangalore
• 5 Reasons a Good Catalogue Text is Essential for Your Art 

Art News: apexart NYC Open Call 2020-21

apexart NYC Open Call 2020-21

Accepting proposals: October 1-31, 2019, 11:59PM EST

apexart is accepting exhibition proposals for its NYC Open Call from October 1-31, 2019. Four winning proposals will become apexart exhibitions presented at apexart’s NYC space as part of its 2020-21 exhibition season. Curators, artists, writers, and creative individuals, regardless of experience level or location, are invited to submit a proposal online.

The submission process
Proposals should describe focused, idea-driven, original group exhibitions. No biographical information, CVs, links, or images will be accepted. Submissions cannot exceed 500 words and must be submitted in English. Jurors rate proposals based on their content and the organizer’s ability to communicate, rather than by familiar names or past accomplishments. See examples at https://apexart.org/opencallwinners.php

The selection process
Rather than convene a small panel to review hundreds of ideas, apexart’s crowd-sourced voting system allows hundreds of jurors to individually review proposals. An international jury composed of 300+ individuals from a wide variety of professional backgrounds—including students at over 10 international universities—will jury the proposals. Proposals are anonymous and randomized to make sure each submission receives the same consideration. apexart staff does not influence the results of the jury in any way.

The results
The four winning proposals will each receive an exhibition budget of $10,000 staff support, and be part of apexart’s 2020-2021 exhibition season. Working closely with the apexart team, curators will realize their original ideas into apexart exhibitions. Exhibition curators are expected, encouraged and challenged to work within the funding provided to transform their winning proposals into small, focused, noteworthy exhibitions. 

To submit an exhibition proposal, visit https://apexart.org/opencalls.html between October 1-31, 2019.

Sep 28: Updated: Three winning proposals to Four

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• Guide To Exhibiting Your Artworks

Art News: Of Life and Landscape

Of Life and Landscape by Shivani Dugar

Shivani Dugar’s recent suite of works, which developed in her city of residence New York, extends her abstract vocabulary, painting expansive vistas of life and its moments.

The immersive landscapes are derivatives from nature, as well as expanses of emotional and psychological terrains, expressed through color contrasts, translucent zones and vivid textures. Scale plays a pivotal role in Shivani’s works, an expression of the extent of the stream of consciousness and the immensity of the cosmic universe. The vertical format emphasizes  the distance between the earth and sky, while multi-panels build the narrative employing time as a motif, its fluency, inevitability, and the range of emotions and events it encapsulates with its passage. Size also contributes towards accentuating the disparity in scale between man and nature and natural forces.

Using ‘gestural’ lines, demarcating space and summarizing the elemental feeling of the subject, and allowing the painting to evolve organically, lie at the core of Shivani’s art practice. Fluidity of space and tonal gradations, along with abundant use of ‘light’ as a predominant motif play a vital role in creating the mood and atmosphere.

Shivani’s abstract expressionist discourse, relies on amorphous shapes and contours, while a gentle, subtle energy permeates her works. The unhurried calm reflected on her canvas, emanates from her working style - applying paint in layers, reducing the excess and reapplying - a process of building the essence and stripping the redundant. In her creative practice, the process occupies central posit and the end result is often accidental.

Excerpt from the catalogue text by Nalini Malaviya

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• The Melancholy State of Happiness
• Interview: Kiran Nadar on #chalomuseum
• ART COLLECTION: Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore
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• ART COLLECTION: NGMA, Bangalore
• 5 Reasons a Good Catalogue Text is Essential for Your Art 

Timeless Narratives by Veteran Artists

Veterans’ Vision, as the name suggests, presents paintings by three senior artists from Bangalore. The collection featuring recent works by CS Krishna Setty, Chandranath Acharya and U Bhaskar Rao, encapsulates their unique visual vocabulary and individual voices, ranging from intimate and societal fantasies and apprehensions to vignettes from mythology and tradition. 

Krishna Setty’s metaphorical visuals interlace complex narratives around contemporary concerns. The forceful surrealistic imagery from his previous series has undergone transformation and depicts a perceptible shift towards abstraction. The hybrid creatures have receded and the recurring motifs and symbols have acquired ambiguous connotations, and are often hieroglyphic.

The mix-media works display significant textures and patterns, employed as an aesthetic device, and are remnants of the artist’s printmaking practice. The ambiguity of the hieroglyphs allows multiple readings into humanistic and existential angst, at the individual and a larger societal level. Fossilized remains or perhaps birthing grounds of indistinct forms, represent dreams or desires to form crucibles of compound visuals and narratives. The intense landscape generated, eerie and ethereal is disquieting, an infinite cauldron of life and consciousness with its associated anxieties.

Chandranath Acharya’s satirical commentary on the present political, social and psychological spectrum is situated at the threshold of fantasy and reality. His visual idiom combines a rare witticism with playfulness and surrealistic imagery. Royal figures, resplendent and clad in jewels and finery, indulge in ordinariness, a juxtaposition of opulence with the mundane, with undercurrents of satire and humour. 

Larger than life figures, surrounded by fantastical objects and creatures, form imposing portraits filled with pomposity, absurdity and grandeur. Decadence and mortality come together in a single frame with incongruous imagery, in incredibly sumptuous detail. Human conditions and emotions in all its exuberance, transience and intricacies, are portrayed adeptly with an underlying sense of mischief and tenderness. His extensive work in illustration and printmaking are clearly evident in the paintings.

Bhaskar Rao’s protagonists are primarily derived from mythology and visual and performing culture. These often narrate specific and recognizable instances and episodes, chronicling fragments of oral traditions and culture. Rooted in realism, with stylised and illustrative forms, vignettes from native landscapes, myths and mythology and traditions and rituals, etched in memory through time, are represented on the canvas.

The puppets form a popular leitmotif in his narration, a juxtaposition of the inanimate with the sentient and as an instrument of storytelling. Performance as an expression of human nature, culture and experience, and its associated connotations with social, philosophical and spiritual perspectives acts as a symbol of representation. 

The exhibition continues till September 22 at Fidelitus Art Gallery, Bangalore

All images courtesy the artists and gallery

Excerpted from the catalogue text by Nalini Malaviya

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Also read, 

• The Melancholy State of Happiness
• Interview: Kiran Nadar on #chalomuseum
• ART COLLECTION: Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore
• ART COLLECTION: Jaganmohan Palace, Mysore
• ART COLLECTION: NGMA, Bangalore
• 5 Reasons a Good Catalogue Text is Essential for Your Art 

Linear Perspective by Shirley Mathew

Perspectives on Urbanization

Shirley Mathew's recent series of paintings 'Linear Perspective' is in response to the changing landscape of Bangalore. Watching the rapid pace of urbanization and the receding green cover, she wonders about the collateral damage which is happening at the cost of development. 

Living in Bangalore, Shirley has watched how the city has transformed over the years – from the Garden city that it used to be, to where it is now. The paintings are an effort to highlight this concern and to draw attention to the transformation, and at the same time mobilize citizens towards positive action. It is also an ode to those green warriors who strive hard to save the remaining trees, and to those who actively take up greening initiatives.

Shirley’s works are based on abstract expression, deploying bold lines and varying the intensity of colours to demarcate the linear outlines of trees and foliage. She employs mixed media in her works to delineate perspectives and accentuate textures. The collection of black and white works highlight the fragile state of the environment, its negative connotations and to raise the question of survival of trees and of foliage in any urban space.

The artist elaborates, “I invite the viewer to imagine the lines of nature created on handmade paper along with mixed medium on paper and canvas. With intermingling tree lines, I have attempted to express the angst of full grown old trees being endangered, in the name of urban development yet shown rays of hope in brush strokes and composition, as a message for more awareness to save green in nature.”

Shirley hopes to raise awareness about this issue, which is critically placed now, and has far reaching impacts, ranging from climate change to availability of water. The collection of works is as much about painting a grim picture of reality as it is of optimism, affirming hope of immediate actions which can positively affect the future.

She offers an ode to the groups of concerned citizens from all walks of life who have dedicated their time and immense efforts to save existing trees and to those who have initiated planting of saplings. The linear perspective of trees alludes to the undeviating passage of time and its metamorphosis.

Linear Perspective, solo show by Shirley Mathew, from 3rd - 18th August 2019 at MKF Museum of Art, 55/1 Isha Villa, Lavelle Road, Bengaluru 560001

All images courtesy the artist

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Also read, 

• The Melancholy State of Happiness
• Interview: Kiran Nadar on #chalomuseum
• ART COLLECTION: Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore
• ART COLLECTION: Jaganmohan Palace, Mysore
• ART COLLECTION: NGMA, Bangalore
• 5 Reasons a Good Catalogue Text is Essential for Your Art 

Art News: Art in the City

An eclectic collection

The recently concluded art exhibition, curated by the well known Harish Kumar Sejekan, was held over the weekend at Phoneix Kessaku, Bangalore. It comprised of an eclectic collection, which included works that were part of a private collection with artists like Jamini Roy, Nandalal Bose, Abanindranath Tagore, and Ram Kumar whose works speak volumes about the rich history of Indian art. These were presented along with contemporary artists with an attempt to give equal importance and at the same time give contemporary and emerging artists their own space. 

Painting by Jamini Roy

Landscapes by Gurudas Shenoy and Milind Nayak, the two well known names in Karnataka were presented. The other artists included Kantharaj N, Ganesh Doddamani, Santosh CH who are unique in their representations of the mundane life. Bharat Thakur has made his name as one of the more well known painters of the past few years due to his adeptness in abstract as well as figurative work.

Sujata Sah Sejekan’s works lay emphasis on the human spiritual and subconscious minds and their experiences with nature. Sujit Mandya’s Bulls were strongly defined. Runa Biswas, Kadambari Mehta and Ajnaba Kiev were the other artists. Soumya Chakraborthy’s depiction of Aghoris was interesting. Harish Kumar Sejekan displayed his new series of art for the first time after a decade.

Painting by Harish Kumar Sejekan

The exhibition was presented at Phoenix Kessaku in association with Mayin Art and curator Harish Kumar Sejekan.

Based on the press release

All images courtesy Harish Kumar Sejekan

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Also read, 

• The Melancholy State of Happiness
• Interview: Kiran Nadar on #chalomuseum
• ART COLLECTION: Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore
• ART COLLECTION: Jaganmohan Palace, Mysore
• ART COLLECTION: NGMA, Bangalore
• 5 Reasons a Good Catalogue Text is Essential for Your Art