2014

Drawing the line is the oldest form of visual artistic expression known to man, from pre-historic cave drawings onwards. Every culture in the world, across continents and time-frames, has a rich store of traditional art which is drawing-based.

The ‘power of the line’ to enclose or open up space, create or suggest form, is almost infinite. And the artist uses drawing in an infinite number of ways. Some might draw as practice, to strengthen or develop technique, to keep private visual notes, as experimental and exploratory exercises; others make a drawing as a finished work in its own right. Rini Dhumal does all of the above. One only has to look through her sketchbooks to see this.

Piles of sketchbooks yield a forest of pages covered with drawings that cross years and continents—bold, stark, or delicate and nuanced; washed softly in colour, textured, or simple black and white; dreamlike, fantastical, or keenly observed in documentary detail. As one leafs through them whole worlds emerge. There is history here, and geography, nature and culture. Ornamental or religious motifs, mythical figures half-animal half-human, monuments and places of worship, human life in all its chaos, swirl and spill from these decades of drawings, a flood of memories undammed.

As one looks through the procession of sketches from her travels across the world—the outcome of visual and conceptual stimuli from a broad range of cultures—one enters a stream of thoughts, ideas and memories, jostling each other in a postmodern flux of images which are firmly rooted in an earlier modernist mode of art production.

Drawing upon a storehouse of historical details, the splendours of her childhood, and anecdotal references from various travels, she creates a vivid aesthetic in her art-making.

(Thursday, December 4 to Tuesday, December 16)

The curation is based on visual and philosophical interpretation of concept of Parallax, a displacement or difference in the apparent position of an object viewed along two different lines of sight. The works give socio-cultural perspective drawing references from juxtaposition of the history of art, politics, science and philosophy yet each has no overbearing presence. The two halves of Ratnadeep's works are across from each other in direct conversation, sometimes not visually similar, but conceptually related. Each piece remarks on an altered view, as the definition of the exhibition title “Parallax Views” suggests. The works subliminally remarks on Ratnadeep's polarized identity as an artist living between Mumbai and Berlin. Drawing visual references from both cultures, Ratnadeep comprises his work that together create a dialog with the unknown. This position enables the viewer to encounter scenes, encompassing both centre and periphery, which are ordinarily beyond reach. Resonating the three states, the mirrored reflection, changing imagery and perception.

"Looking and absorbing different cultures I realised that no way of seeing the world can be taken as definitively "true", but does not necessarily entail that all perspectives are equally valid, like the concepts of Anekāntavāda...", quotes Ratnadeep.

(Thursday, October 9 to Saturday, October 24)

Packaging of culture and tradition is a by-product of the present day global market scenario. In that context, an amalgamation of styles, designs and people is inevitably seen and the idea of origin is often a non-existent entity of any object. The aesthetic value of this visual image can sometimes be debatable, but it is the new which appears with a contemporary label that becomes most desirable and for that matter, the old is reborn as new. The small works which I have titled as," Handmade", "Camouflage", "Desi", "Foreign Made" and so forth, depict this intersection of diversity in many ways. The balance or imbalance, (anyway that one chooses to see), is now a way of life. With transformers, transformations and clones, how relevant is the original?

We are in a constant flux today, resulting into animated reactions, a warped sense of security, distorting reality to suit our image. A lost identity in a world where it is challenging to keep pace. The term "kitsch" is often coined to this style but in my mind, it goes beyond that bracket to become another genre by itself where popular becomes nouveau and so on.

Sometimes the only connection to our roots can be through our very own books of knowledge and with fantasies derived from history and traditions. And like ancient story-tellers, the sequence of images in works like, "Welcome Carpet", "Tales of a City", "Photos from family albums" "A tree from my backyard"etc., seem to appear.

Civilization today is ahead of its place from yesterday, and even in the past, civilization was always precedent of its place from its own history. Time will always look onward; it is memories which are relived in images of art structure and in words.

Arunanshu Chowdhury

(Friday, March 14 to Thursday, March 27)

For his second Solo exhibition at Tao Art gallery photo realist painter Nanda Das returns back to Bombay and Sky. Water is of course there   but now it is the city’s vast empty skyline.  A surreal juxtaposition of skyscape and waterscape is transformed in a sacred painterly scape.  Nanda’s approach to these series of paintings represents the exact opposite mental process of transition of his conflicted relationship to a world. The artist in this body of work is trying to come to terms with the dissonance and disorientation of urban life. ‘The loss of concrete connections to the objects of senses creates a void in the contemporary generation’. It unleashes a flow of new and elusive perceptions. Giving them the visual characteristics by painting skyscapes is his way to explore them. So Nanda buys a small amount of sky with a click of camera to create this series- SOLD OUT SKYLINE.

Nanda notes: “It was while flying at 35,000 feet; I fell in love with the sky. I wanted this Sky to be part of my sky on the earth. I wanted the sky that vertical Bombay is stealing away from me by erecting new skyscrapers and all mechanical constructions. And for me these paintings are to reclaim the sky. I want to bring the sky on this earth”

As a photorealist painter his works begins with a photograph that he takes, and in the painting he creates his own world. The borderline between a sense of reality and a sense of fabrication is essential in Nanda’s work. He manipulates and combine photographs to transforms his work.

This exhibition is also Nanda’s painterly tribute to great painters of landscape Turner, Constable and Gerhard Richter’s.

Dr. Ashish  Chadda

(Tuesday, January 14 to Tuesday, January 28)