Art Scene India

28 Jan 2020

Art News: India Art Fair 2020

All Roads Lead To Delhi For The India Art Fair

The India Art fair 2020 combines cutting-edge contemporary visual art with modern masters, vernacular artistic traditions, and an expanded performance and talks programme

Ai Weiwei

Ai Weiwei, Martin

Cast iron, 230.5 x 352 x 238 cm / 90 3/4 x 138 1/2 x 93 5/8 in. © Ai Weiwei Courtesy of Lisson Gallery

and neugerremschneider Berlin

The India Art Fair previews on 30th January in New Delhi with 81 exhibitors spanning 20 different global cities. In its 12th edition, the fair has evolved into a significant exhibition of modern and contemporary art in the country, combining cutting-edge contemporary visual art with modern masters, vernacular artistic traditions, and an expanded performance and talks programme.

Fair Director Jagdip Jagpal elaborates, “The fair’s programme draws together galleries and artists, private foundations and arts charities, artists’ collectives, national institutions, cultural events and festivals. This enables international audiences to engage in innovative ways with the cultural history and development of the region. Each year, we introduce new elements to the fair that invite and interest audiences of all ages and backgrounds.”

B.Prabha. Fisherwoman 1979. Courtesy of Dhoomimal Gallery

The IAF Selection committee evaluates applications and makes selections based on quality of proposals. Jagpal explains, “2020 will see a diversity of international blue chips, with Indian galleries still in the majority – a defined 70% India, 30% international split – with international galleries showing works not previously shown to Indian audiences. IAF is committed to work closely with galleries to develop India Art Fair’s on-site experience, ensuring the fair is the first place to see and discover artists from the region."

The idea is to develop a stronger and expanded public programme, to create a truly distinct cultural experience that reflects and is inspired by India’s cultural heritage, and constantly - developing modern-day identity. And, continue to place the artist’s voice at the centre of the programme.

Olafur Eliasson. Dew Reflector 2019. Partially silvered glass spheres paint black yellow stainless steel ©Studio Olafur Eliasson. Courtesy the artist and neugerriemschneider Berlin

In this edition, new entrants include Art Explore, Arts of the Earth, Gallery White, Pichvai Tradition & Beyond from India and 4 new international participants - Saskia Fernando Gallery (Colombo), Gallery Tableau (Seoul), PSM (Berlin), Marc Straus (New York).

BMW Group India continues its association with the IAF and will showcase the BMW Art Car by Andy Warhol – one of the nineteen prominent artists from across the world to have created Art Cars using contemporary BMW automobiles of their times, all offering a wide range of artistic interpretations. This will be complimented by The Warhol Talk.

Andy Warhol's BMW Art Car, 1979. Courtesy of BMW Group India

The Performance Art Programme has been successful in bringing new audiences, and this year will present a strong line-up of leading artists including -Maya Krishna Rao, national-award winning theatre performer and social activist; Lagos based multimedia artist Jelili Atiku whose works address political concerns for human rights and justice; multi-disciplinary artist Piyali Ghosh following from her recent exhibition at the Venice Biennale; and Raisa Kabir, an interdisciplinary artist exploring the politics and cultural anxieties around globalised neo-colonial textile production and nationhood.

Priyantha Udagedara Orientalism XII 2019 Mixed Media on Canvas 122cm x 183cm Courtesy of Saskia Fernando Gallery

6 large-scale installations by high profile Indian and international artists will be showcased as Outdoor Art Projects and will include pieces by Anita Dube, Farah Mulla, Martin Parr, Rathin Burman, Sameer Kulavoor and Vijay Pichumani.

Idris Khan. The Old Tune 2019. Digital C print mounted on aluminium.

Courtesy of Galerie Isa

Jagpal reiterates, “India has some of the world’s strongest curatorial exhibitions, whether it is Kochi Muziris Biennale, Serendipity Arts Festival or Chennai Photo Biennale, which have a significant profile internationally, especially within the arts scene. While issues relating to display and curation may be similar, the challenges of organising a 4-day exhibition across a 12,000 square meter venue are unique. The biggest challenge, however, is to build and de-install temporary exhibition tents in order to give our exhibitors and visitors the best possible on-site experience.”

The fair ensures accessibility for all and will include tactile artworks, braille signages and fair guides, offering personalised accessibility tours for visitors.

India Art Fair: NSIC Grounds, Delhi, India Fair Dates: 31 January – 2 February 2020 Preview: Thursday 30 January 2020

All images courtesy India Art Fair

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23 Jan 2020

Art News: apexart International Open Call 2020-21

apexart International Open Call 2020-21

Accepting proposals: February 1 - March 1, 2020

apexart will accept proposals for its International Open Call from February 1 - March 1, 2020. Four winning proposals will become apexart exhibitions presented in selected locations around the world as part of its 2020-21 exhibition season. Curators, artists, writers, and creative individuals, regardless of location, or past experience are invited to submit a proposal online.

apexart International Open Call 2020-21

The submission process

Proposals of up to 500 words should describe focused, idea-driven, original group exhibitions, and the country and city in which they are to take place. No biographical information, CVs, links, or images will be accepted and submissions must be submitted in English. Jurors rate anonymous proposals based on the idea only. See examples of winning proposals here.

The selection process

Rather than convene a small local panel to review hundreds of ideas, apexart’s crowd-sourced voting system allows hundreds of international jurors to review proposals on their own schedule. An crowd-sourced jury composed of more than 350 individuals from a wide variety of professional backgrounds—as well as many participating university classes—will jury the proposals. Proposals are anonymous and randomized to make sure each submission receives the same consideration. apexart staff do not influence the results of the jury in any way.

The results

The four winning proposals will each receive an exhibition budget of up to $11,000; have an exhibition brochure printed and mailed to over seven thousand international recipients; advertising in major and local outlets; and will 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 challenged, encouraged, and required 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 February 1 and March 1, 2020.

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21 Jan 2020

Art News: Juxtaposed by Vaman Pai and Gomathi Suresh

G A L L E R Y M A N O R A

J u x t a p o s e d

V A M A N P A I / G O M A T H I S U R E S H

C U R A T E D B Y G I R I D H A R K H A S N I S

January 23 to February 20, 2020

GALLERY MANORA presents Juxtaposed, a two-person exhibition featuring a series of new paintings by Vaman Pai and recent ceramics by Gomathi Suresh. The show opens on Jan 23 (Thursday) and runs through Feb 20.

Juxtaposed by Gomathi Suresh at Gallery Manora, Art Scene India

For both Vaman and Gomathi, creation of art is intrinsically linked with intuition, imagination as well as life experiences. Involved in different mediums, they create works that are not fixed on any particular notion or theme but imagery that is free and open to interpretation. Silent yet evocative, their abstract constructs and formations are coloured with introspective tones and designs. Their common interest in grasping contrasting and complementary views of nature and human feelings manifest in their work. At a particular level, their works seem like mindscapes searching for an unknown idiom and ineffable beauty.

Vaman’s dynamic work with free flowing forms and multi-coloured smatterings exposes his creative energy, fertile imagination and fearless approach to art making. Connecting the tangible with the abstract, his paintings seem to find life both in the fluctuating moods of vibrant spaces as well as the mysterious layers of darkness.

Gomathi’s ceramics with meandering shapes and gentle curves reveal a slow and studied process along with a personal and poetic handling of the delicate material. For this body of work, she has used organic hand-built and thrown forms in heavily grogged stoneware clay. One can see how by treating the surface of layered underglazes using multiple firing techniques, she has brought in both depth and texture to her intriguing works.

What appears central to both the artists is the natural response to the chosen mediums. There is also a craving to be part of the ‘give-and-take’ interplay of forms, ideas and actions. Most of all, it is interesting to see how the artists have inspired each other even while keeping their practices independent and non-intrusive on each other.

Juxtaposed opens on Jan 23 and runs through Feb 20, 2020 at Gallery Manora

Gallery Manora

55,100 Ft Road Off,9th A Main, Indiranagar-1st Stage, Bengaluru 560038, INDIA.
www.gallerymanora.com

*Excerpt from the press release
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All images are courtesy the gallery

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7 Jan 2020

A Journey Into The Past

Nostalgia in Stone

Manjunath Wali’s recent series of paintings depicts landscapes around prominent heritage sites, primarily those located in and around Karnataka, capturing their essence. He brings alive these landscapes that have withstood the passage of time, imprinted with narratives from a distant past.

All works in this series have been rendered plein air, on site, in an effort to represent the ephemeral atmosphere, the changes in light and colour, and effects of light and shadow prevailing at the place. The vulnerability of the monuments and the locations are evident in the rendering; the onsite painting emphasizing the immediacy and transient nature of the event and locale.

The artist’s hometown Vijayapura, and Gadag, where he studied art, are important historical places with several specimens of Chalukya and other significant articulations in close proximity, which kindled Wali’s interest in history and architecture. Combined with his artistic sensibilities, these have formed a recurrent muse for him. Wali’s fascination with these locales has resulted in repeated visits to Hampi which have materialised in this body of work and form a large part of it.

‘Nostalgia in Stone’ captures the paradoxes associated with the sites - the fragility and notions of (im)permanence of the monuments constructed in stone, and the associations with culture and heritage as tangible artefacts. Wali adopts a naturalistic approach, with a focal point, and illusion of details in the foreground, allowing the backdrop to diffuse and recede into the distance.

The soft, sentimentalized atmosphere and the play of light form a sharp contrast to the stone monuments that heighten their frailty and vulnerability. The numerous surviving ruins of Badami, Hampi and neighbouring areas - the Agastya lake, Hemakuta hill, Virupaksha temple, the watch towers, Lotus Mahal and the famous Garuda Shrine are some of the historical landmarks depicted in the paintings.

The morning light, the glorious sunsets and the afternoon shadows frolic amidst the ruins to render an enchanted image, recapturing some of the lost grandeur of the place. The sparkling pools of reflection from the water bodies, dazzling temple gopurams in the sunlight, the view from the watch towers, the glorious Garuda Shrine in the form of a chariot in the Vittala Temple complex that appears to be monolithic, offer glimpses of a magical past.

Wali’s body of work, a visual artistic documentation, is a significant attempt to emphasize concerted efforts required for conservation and preservation of heritage*.

*Excerpt from the catalogue text by Nalini S Malaviya

‘Nostalgia in Stone’ is on at Reves Art Gallery, Bangalore till 12th Jan 2020

All images are courtesy the artist

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20 Dec 2019

Gandhi – Beyond Borders by K M Madhusudhanan

Artist K M Madhusudhanan’s solo show in Dubai is currently on at 1x1 Gallery, and it has melancholy and a sense of foreboding, as it explores the undercurrents of violence in today's times, writes Deepa Gopal

Gandhi IV

K M Madhusudhanan’s was part of The Radical Movement, an avant-garde movement of the 80s, which has gradually acquired a disparate meaning than that it had at the time of its inception. It was formed as a student body that wanted to be united to fight against the injustice and aberrations of the system at the time. They had just finished their studies and it was a significant phase for them, and friendship was an important unifying factor; to stay united for a cause and they unwaveringly discussed contemporary art. The social aspect of such a group, at any point of time, has a strong rooting. Art is meant to be social and should influence the mass all the same. It resonated with the philosophy of The Third Cinema, an aesthetic and political cinematic movement in the Third World countries of the 60s and 70s and the ideas propounded by its makers like Fernando Solanas that decried capitalism and neo-colonialism and emphasized on topics like national identity, poverty, tyranny and revolution, class and cultural practices.

As you enter the spacious and aptly lit 1x1 gallery the air becomes grave, all you can but see are the dark frames oozing with the history of a colonial past interspersed with the current times threatening violence and abuse of power which is still current as it was a century ago.

Arrival

A multi-faceted artist proficient in various mediums that seem to flow seamlessly into one another be it art, cinema that includes video art and feature film Madhusudhanan’s works are brilliant particularly for the colour scheme that strikes you - a mix of sombre charcoal works and dark tones with a touch of white, red and some light and fire. It has melancholy attached to it and a sense of foreboding, at the cusp of revelation. It does have the Hopperian feel of ‘something just happened or something is about to happen’ particularly in his newer series.

Refugees II

The Gandhi series (2019) are 10 in total; Gandhi looks despondent and immersed in his own world, often his head substituted for a globe, a lantern, a clock while in some other works his limbs are substituted with a goat, books, weapons etc. They are loaded with symbolism as with his other works and we are meant to put the pieces together as we gradually move from one to another. One can see the recurrence of lighted bulbs similar to the presence of an almost invisible thread/wire that perhaps has a chance to manipulate to what it’s attached to. Refugees series from this year stands out the most.

Gandhi becomes a prominent subject in our times not only in India but globally due to several factors especially the prevalence of violence in our daily lives across media. From religious tugs, caste and creed, to amassing power and wealth; Gandhi remains the searing and indulgent spot and that’s what makes Gandhi a forever subject.

Madhusudhanan’s art is just not for the senses alone, it’s for the intellect as well. The artist is crystal clear when he says that everything we do is political whether it be in our home or in out street. Everything resonates to it and we can’t push it to the back drop.

Red Street, Arrival and Penal colony (2017) will unsettle you. Most of his works are multi-panelled where every section is a story on its own. Penal Colony though reminds us of Kafka’s title it’s a historical probe into the heart-wrenching tragedy, the ‘Wagon Tragedy’ that happened during the British rule in 1921 at Northern Malabar. It’s a reminder of the tortured death just like Colonization which was in itself a torture and a sport. The Archaeology of Cinema is placed diagonally opposite to where his movie History is a Silent Film (2008) plays. It reminded of lives that remained stuck in the mute net of forgetting. It was awarded the Outstanding Short Films from International Festivals, The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2007. It was at this point that I noticed the artist enter the gallery in his black dress and I thought that he might as well have descended from one of his displayed paintings. People flocked around him to converse and discuss.

Homage to Ustad Bade Gulam Ali Khan 2-2018

One of the participants of 2014 Kochi Muziris Biennale, Whorled Explorations where he displayed The Logic of Disappearance - A Marx Archive, one can see a similar strain of works in charcoal in 1x1 gallery as well. If it was 90 frames in the nostalgia-seeping walls of the Aspinwall, it was 8 frames here along with an oil painted Ustad Bade Gulam Ali Khan at the pinnacle in Homage to Ustad Bade Gulam Ali Khan 2. One could not help but notice the microphones, gramophone and megaphone invoking the sound as the Ustad himself is in the mid-way of his gayaki not to forget that he himself had borne the brunt of Partition.

'Gandhi-Beyond Borders' is on at 1x1 Art Gallery till 31st Dec 2019

All images are courtesy 1x1 Art Gallery

Deepa Gopal is an artist and author of the art blog, HuesnShades, an award-winning blog, she currently resides in Dubai.

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28 Nov 2019

Waves of Imagination by Humera Ali

Bangalore based artist Humera Ali presents her recent body of works in her second solo show at MKF Museum of Art. Employing abstraction as a tool to convey her concerns for nature and its conservation, Humera depicts landscapes as large expanses of textured colour fields. She says, “Unleashing years of latent creativity, the show is oriented from my love for nature that transforms my rendition in a natural leaning towards abstraction.”

Verge of Dawn

She attempts to capture the gentle gradients of the terrain, the glimmer of sunlight on land and water and the various movements observed in nature. “My brush strokes using acrylic medium are seen as ‘bold’ and pigments used as ‘strong’ while being inspired by pointillism and knife art as a medium and technique. Observing the veins of a leaf, the textures created in water on a pebble are details seen in my creations.”

Marine Collision

The lyrical movements, patterns and textures inherent in nature are translated on the canvas. “My series on water is to recreate the beauty of the sea in tranquillity or rippling waves on the sand as I observe and create forms through a rhythmic pattern. Every canvas translates into a meditative experience with the intention to take the viewer in a narrative that transcends into another realm of their imagination.” The tender approach to painting reflects in the serenity of the works and the light and shadow effects displayed through tonal variations.

Confluent

The series of works aims to also emphasize on the need for immediate action in cognizance of rapid urbanization, climate change and global warming. “I use the canvas to express my intense feelings with a strong message to conserve nature as global warming has given rise to water levels with repercussions of land that is fast receding.”

She emphasizes, “this show is a plea to all who respect the vagaries and strength in nature to continue the movement of protecting our planet.”

Humera is a self taught artist driven by passion, she was later mentored by the Bangalore based senior artist JMS Mani. Her works are part of collections in South Carolina, Sydney and Canada. She also does community service by giving art therapy to children with chronic illnesses providing them with a healing touch.

Meet the artist on 30th November 2019, 4 pm onwards

Waves of Imagination by Humera Ali, from 30th Nov - Dec 18, 2019 at MKF Museum of Art, 55/1 Isha Villa, Lavelle Road, Bengaluru 560001

Timing 11-7 pm.( (Monday closed.) Contact +91 7373 887 557

All images courtesy the artist

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