Mark Prime, a consultant exhibition designer from the UK, came to Mumbai about five years ago to work on art projects. For Anish Kapoor’s monumental India show, he was invited by Amrita and Priya Jhaveri, as a consultant. Within a month of this grand exhibition, he was asked to design Ranbir Kaleka’s solo show currently on view at Volte in Mumbai.
Giving a backgrounder to it, a news report in The Mint publication (‘A window for stories’ by (Himanshu Bhagat and Supriya Nair) mentions that it may lead art lovers to wonder why it took such a long time to bring his extraordinary vision to this city. That no more is the case, as the vibrant gallery space in the city finally brings together his recent works over the last decade. Peeping into his wonderful oeuvre, the writers elaborate:
“Phantasms rise from tables and walk through eerie, intimate hallways (Fables from the House of Ibaan); birth, growth and death become the thematical underpinnings to a montage about a bird (Man with Cockerel) history plays out along a railway line through a strange, half-alienating play on a film montage (Not From Here). The ethereal effect of his usage of media rests on strong emotional and structural patterns in each work.”The celebrated artist has continued a vibrant vocabulary of figurative painting that crosses from stark realism into whimsical, fantastical narrative. His paintings, both on paper and canvas - in oils as well as mixed media - are almost surrealist in their treatment of scenes from day-to-day life. The lines are suggested, rather than sharply traced, and the colors almost deliberately restrained.
The new retrospective show gives a comprehensive view of unsettling and truly fascinating trans-media art. Art critic-curator and scholar Ranjit Hoskote underlines the fact that his work is imbued with ‘epic disquiet’, a sense that is omnipresent through the concerns and themes of each painted work/ video projection installations on view.
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