2006
Destiny
Destiny
“Emotions, experiences, visions, rare moments of self-discovery, sepia memories, feelings and the quirks of destiny, all these are like shining beads, which an artist strings into the common thread that is life,” says Suhas Bahulkar, describing his present art exhibition. Featuring more than 35 paintings, most on canvas and some on rough-surfaced wood planks, the collection comprises four groups representing various phases - Rubbled Beauty, Down the Memory Lane, Divine & Human, and Ram Darshan.
“Most of these great artists were trained at Mumbai’s J.J. School of Art which was the hub of all art activity ever since its inception in 1857. Over the past decades, the Institute has spawned great art movements and great artists have studied, worked and taught here. It is a pity that many of the masterpieces of this bygone era have been left in lofts to be moth-infested. They have had to be rescued for today’s art lovers. I am determined to complete this task as a tribute to my great school – which is completing 150 years – my gurus and guides who have been my inspiration,” says Suhas Bahulkar with conviction!
Suhas Bahulkar is an artist with his own convictions. He loves his past, but also realizes the importance of the future! His belief is: “The future can be based only on the past. And the present should connect both!” His work also has the same quality. In his paintings, one finds fine Indian lines, colour and philosophy, blended with Western academic portraiture together with a tremendous command on anatomy and expression. A strong abstraction takes place when these Western and Eastern worlds come together. This form of painting makes a strange combination; but it also speaks eloquently about human life.”
One can’t forget the unique attributes and tremendous skills of Suhas Bahulkar as a painter. His command over Indian style and mastery over portraiture come to life through strong and delicate brush strokes. He displays a fresh sense of colour and textures, through which, he constantly struggles to represent human existence and its bondages!
(Jehangir Art Gallery: Sunday, December 10 to Thursday, December 14
Tao Art Gallery: December 26 to January 2)
Quanta
Solo show by Yusuf
Yusuf has been an integral part of the Graphic Department of Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal for twenty-five years. He was born in 1952 in Gwalior and studied Fine Art and Sculpture at the Gwalior College of Art. He was awarded at the Qingdao International Print Biennial of China.
The recent series titled Quanta represent the metaphysics. Yusuf shows a number of black and white line drawings which consist of several steps and distinctions – while it implies a possible objectivity for thought, but not necessarily imply substantiality or identity in the object. Like the installation, these lines of nothing and nowhere explore how we experience space. There may be ways in which the individual subject orders his experience, and hence restricted to the phenomenal realm. In other words Quanta may be used either in the sense of an abiding reality or in the sense of events and appearances as they have been ordered or categorized in the process of perception. The fact is he rejects the time-honoured distinction between substance, attributes and power. Yusuf believes that space is a phenomenal reality and relations between things keep changing while space itself does not change. This changing character of space is not for Yusuf exidence of its objectivity, an objectivity which he denies, but revelatory rather of the inherent nature of the mind. Space is a form of human intuition, it has no extra-mental reality. If we necessarily experience things in space, it is because of the nature of our sensibility.
Yusuf fills out true notion of being, unity, identity and causality His work manifests under the forms of space and time. The rectangular shapes seem to hover on the surface of the canvas yet perceptively they disappear towards a central vanishing point. The drawings draw attention to the way we attempt to articulate and measure both internal and external space. Yusuf grasps and fixes the temporal flow by timeless forms which give the abiding meaning of which the temporal movement is the bearer of expression.
Abhijeet Gondkar
(Monday, November 20 to Wednesday, November 29)
Ashok Bhowmik
Myth and folklore have many strings entwined within one another. They are passed on from generations, until they eventually become a ‘culture’. These innocent beliefs with their roots fixed in the ancient, have become heterogeneous in today’s age with modernity and globalization, until they are tapped nostalgically and portrayed lyrically.
Ashok has bridged this gap between the past and the present, between the modern and the ancient. His visuals appear to speak a dialect of a strange world, where exists a queen who guards the foliage, wearing a graceful crown of a leaf and sits on her throne of the earth.
The figures in Ashoks’ works seem to have sprung out of tribal patchwork quilts that reflect the mysterious rituals performed by the tribe. They have layers of thinking process, infused with fantasy and psychology of the artist, where they are less illustrative and more narrative.
His stylized forms retain a certain complex simplicity. A paradox. Either a riddle, waiting to be answered, a secret to be revealed, or an inner conscience waiting to be chased. Ashok pushes the picture plane to the surface of the canvas where the figures float silently, like nascent gasses. This visual is complemented by the tertiary palette he uses which comprises of grays, browns, blues and greens creating a lucid, dreamlike image overall. The solid background evokes an imagination to fill in the blanks. It creates a meditative ambience with passing thoughts and a million possibilities, like in Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’, where imagination overlaps imagination.
There is no one way that Ashok’s body of works can be described. There is a certain hazard of slipping into the psyche of his paintings where they can become a secret of your own, where they talk to you till you ask them to stop.
Kanchi Mehta
(Monday, November 20 to Wednesday, November 29 )
IBADAT
Solo show by Anwar
The question of soul for the body or body for soul is like the dilemma of whether art is for the soul or the soul is for art. I believe that Anwar's work leans definitively to one side of the argument. He is a soul that lives for art. He is deeply meditative in his work and yet manages to combine this quality with a certain discipline that is starkly amazing. His canvasses reflect the true nature of the full circle of life - being systematic and chaotic simultaneously. Being planned and unplanned at the same time. All of this seems to point to a sedentary characteristic to Anwar's work, yet his paintings are a multi-linear story of color and brush which leads to different interpretations from various perspectives, It is this specific yet universal theme and quality to Anwar's work that attracts one greatly. In this show in particular, his inspiration has been the beautiful and mysterious Ladakh Valley. It must be said that the magnitude of silence felt in the vastness of the peaks is one that is captured fluidly and expertly in Anwar's works. Anwar's colors are his anchor, linking him inextricably to the joys of the mountains, blues, greys and browns, and the surrealism portrayed is a true rarity. The silence, submission and unmovable faith that one experiences in the landscape of Ladakh is so truly represented in the show Ibadat, which is the purpose of life for Anwar.
Kalpana Shah
(Friday, November 3 to Wednesday, November 15)
BLACK & WHITE
An exhibition of Black and White works by 42 artist (young, & senior)
The Pluralism of the exhibition finds expression in the use of different materials, methods and schools of thought, from “minimalisim” to “postmodernism”, in confrontation with each other. The exhibition seeks to contrast the differences in personality and artistic direction of the various artists. The artists represented are young and senior artist different locales and art schools in India.
(Tuesday, October 17 to Tuesday, October 31)
Wash Brush
Solo show by Tapas Kanti Mitra
(Tuesday, October 3 to Thursday, October 12)
Monologues
Solo show by Arindam Chatterjee
Like the Shakespearean soliloquy, Arindam Chatterjee’s abstractions are a microcosm of the world order, a philosophy and a religion of life. The crags, crevices, cracks, and caves of silences that he has choreographed over the years into visual conundrums play a strange game of chiaroscuro with the eye and the mind in his current canvases. Few abstract painters in India, or for that matter anywhere in the world, communicate with so much power and glory, the lambent, incandescent, intrusion of light in a vale of darkness or the overpowering, omnipresence of darkness in a river of light. That at such a young age Arindam Chatterjee has been able to enter the world of arguably the most difficult of art forms, with such incredible maturity makes us convinced that he belongs to that rare breed of artists who not only paint with the skill of fingers but with the mind and of course the heart. It augurs well for abstract art in India.
Kishore Chatterjee, 10th August, 2006
(Tuesday, October 3 to Thursday, October 12)
Power of Pink
Femina X Tao Art Foundation
(Tuesday, October 3 to Thursday, October 5)
Metamorphosis
Solo show by Venkatesh Pate
(Friday, September 8 to Thursday, September 21)
The Drama of Life
Nisreen Moochala
A painter of lively colors and real light, Nisreen Moochhala, born in Surat, Gujarat, was deeply affected by her native province.
Later she joined Sir J J School of Art, Mumbai and learned the necessary techniques, to which, however, she was never bound. Attentive to the rigour of strokes and to the precision of shapes, she finished her training. She knew that unmastered emotions and technique lacking in feeling are worthless. Thus, finally in 1990 Nisreen devoted herself to oil painting before graduating to painting boxes toyed with dry pastels, Chinese inks, and acrylic on craft paper.
Social themes came to Nisreen's attention in a completely natural manner. A homemaker, she is inspired by this freedom in movement and controlled power. As a painter, she loves to touch all these aspects in her work, it's the dramatic and theatrical aspect of society in action which stirs her desire to paint or sculpt. She says, her works are actual scene of life. Matter and color, both in painting and in sculpture, hide emotional charges within themselves which are directly linked to the incarnation and the human feelings that derive from it Seduction, Passion, Love, Death.... As in life, there is a struggle between impulses and the desire to control them. She observes, and obtains a mental image of the subject, from which she composes the painting, applies colors, and juxtaposes masses in the process without losing the original emotion.
Unconstrained by the details of morphology, Nisreen is primarily concerned with the representation of the life-forces and conflicts at hand. She conducts her work over time, spurred on by her creative dissatisfaction, revising it as many times as necessary to obtain satisfaction. In sculpture Nisreen reaffirms her attraction towards matter. Her vigorous gesture masters the paper-maiche, infusing them with her full sensuality.
Abhijeet Gondkar
(Tuesday, September 5 to Friday, September 22)
Tate Britain, London
(Thursday, May 11)
Ingrid Pitzer
Ingrid has always looked around for unusual surfaces to cast her paper sculpture. She is fascinated by the give and take between the paper and the surface, rejoicing in its chemistry and the compositions they yield. The surface could be a meadow, pieces of bark or even a sheet of iron bleeding its rust into virgin white paper.
However subsequent grants to work in Japan and the exposure to high quality fibres like bamboo, cotton, hemp or even mulberry have helped her create works which are sheer poetry in paper. Layering and juxtaposing the various fibres, she arrives at a medley of texture which have a lyrical quality about them.
Ingrid is no stranger to India having traveled through Rajasthan on her last trip. Echoes of her sojourn found their way later in paper works like Jantar Mantar II. Intrigued by the stairways she saw in the observatories in Jaipur and Delhi, she transformed the solid, heavy stairs into delicate paper staircases, giving them a feel of weightlessness by suspending from the ceiling. The grist for Ingrid’s creative mills can come from anywhere: the rain falling into a well or a line from a poem.
(Friday, April 7 to Saturday, April 15)
His Signatures
Solo show by Amit Mehra
“If you could get rid,
Of yourself just once…
The secret of secrets,
Would open to you.
The face of the unknown,
Hidden beyond the universe
would appear on the
Mirror of your perception…"
His Signatures - the photographic exhibition of Amit Mehra, is an expression of the divine interaction that he sees at work everywhere. “ If you watch the sand on the shore as it meets with the tide its like they are at play, there is a romance between them, the water rushing to meet the sand and the sand chasing the water as it leaves, yearning for it. God leaves His Signatures everywhere.” A photographer, whose visuals are seamless canvases, and not just images of an existential beauty but a transcend of reflections that are omnipresent of an alchemy of artistry and his faith.
The photographs depict His existence in the undulating ambiguity of the lone ravine stretch. It is His hand that coaxes the sun out of its crimson altar and smears its stain across, dipping his fingers in the shimmering expanse of the sky and sea. Amit in his images captures the wind swept silhouettes on the breadth of sand, a catch in the throat of the river, the fall into the abyss to spiral heavenwards, HIS reflections in the shimmering water and glass become reflected in his love.
(Friday, March 24 to Friday, March 31)
LASALLEA - IIFA SINGAPORE
Sculpture Square Gallery
The exhibition is conceptualised to convey the idea and form of Indian art beyond its historical borders and into the contemporary, modern world, both east and west of its sources. We aim to curate the exhibition emphasizing the significance of contemporary Indian art, whilst at the same time documenting the role of artists in India and abroad.
Indian Art a Global Perspective
Indian art continues to gain tremendous international recognition and awareness, as a result of being promoted by major auction houses like Christie's and Sotheby's. Consequently, IIFA, with its commitment to contemporary art, assists the viewer to experience and understand the visual language by broadening the thematic and stylistic spectrum of the works exhibited. The exhibition is representative of some of the finest works from established artists as well as from the most promising, emerging talent in India today.
Indian artists today are making their mark internationally, with exhibitions in major museums and art institutions: Tate Modern in London, Museum Reina Sofia in Madrid, Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam, Kiasma in Helsinki, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, The Japan Foundation in Tokyo, and the Kunsthalle in Vienna to name just a few. Also participation in art events such as the Documenta in Kassel, and the Biennales and Triennales of Lyon, Yokohama, Brisbane, Johannesburg and Fukuoka, has played a major role in the Indian art scene over the past decade. To the more recent record breaking sales of works by Indian Artist S H Raza and Tyeb Mehta at the Christies auction.
Contemporary Indian art is vibrant and eclectic, expressing various stylistic trends and influences and resulting in an idiom that is both modern and Indian in its ethos. We, at IIFA, not only provide a platform for the finest Indian art but also endeavour to address the larger concerns of society.
(Thursday, March 9 to Sunday, March 12)
Chelsea College of Art London
(Saturday, March 4 to Monday, March27)
Rang Raas
Solo show by SH Raza
Shree Krishna possessed the powers of Aksharatit Brahma while he lived in Gokul. He had manifested himself to show His dear souls the path of true, selfless love. Raas is not a physical dance of Krishna with the gopis. Its "Adhyatmik" or spiritual, meaning is the blissful union of the souls with their Supreme Lord. The entire Raas occurred in a Chinmaya (Celestial State).
Raza’s work represents such a time of spiritual evolvement of the self as he explores an altered state, a journey through time and space that transforms energy into substance. The inner self is re-aligned from being unconscious to conscious. With a spiritual evolvement in mind the artist has created paintings that explore a metaphysical cosmic energy. Rang Raas is an ecstasy of colors of purush (spiritual being) and prakriti (nature).
Raza’s art may be called sacred, as it expresses the Universe as an inter-connectedness with the energy-consciousness of sacred geometric shapes - a left and right brain experience, to the left brain it seems like logic whereas the right brain experience is an altered state connected to a celestial state. While creating these works he undergoes an emotional healing and with his soul he transcends time and space.
Living in France in relative isolation, he has been inspired to create a visual energy interpretation that explores moments of transformation in consciousness. Each work is a journey of the soul. It is a sacred geometric projection of a cosmic link between the third dimensional world and our own.
Abhijeet Gondkar
(Wednesday, February 8 to Wednesday, March 8)
Awakening
Solo show by Vijay Shinde
all around me is a membrane of sounds cratch colour
i am the seed i, the cosmos, i am made up of many many waters.
From the reservoir of memory, there emerges a shape for thinking, and thinking necessarily involves syntactic structures. In the mind. In _expression. For some artists, the schism between cognition and realisation is insignificant. Vijay Shinde is one such.
Over the years, Vijay has disciplined his line, exploded colour and measured spaces with theatrical movements. In his work, one is tempted to look beyond the given, meta. He is not a stylised painter. His work seems to fester and sprout roots from fossils which are deep rooted. There is resounding meditative churning in his lines. Lines meet, mutate, thwart, alter, expand, expose the innards of each _expression.
Vijay's abstracts are very real. They stretch their arms beyond the surface of the painting and seem to engulf the space for aeons before and after their conclusion. In that sense, there is no conclusive moment in his art.
Vijay Shinde's paintings are a categorical unravelling. The use of registers in his work is scrambled. The forms, however abstract and lean they may be, speak a language for those who can read and as many languages as those who do.
i am line itself squeezing myself out like toothpaste in measured rhythms in emblems of frenzy in elastic labyrinths unravel me, unstitch me, take me apart and breathe me
i am a thousand years old --- dry cracked violent sapless but full read me today and read me only if you can after all our love should be alert.
Anahite Contractor
(Friday, January 6 to Wednesday, January 18)