Saturday, March 31, 2012

‘Utopia of Difference’ by artist Vibha Galhotra

A new solo of recent works by artist Vibha Galhotra entitled ‘Utopia of Difference’ takes place at Jack Shainman Gallery, New York. She states regarding her work that it narrates the life of a disordered (or hyper ordered) society, with all the clashes and tensions that contemporary life brings.

“People tend to build walls around themselves as if to create order and borders. I’m interested in showing what goes to happen after we negotiate with so-called realities created through our visual vocabulary,” she elaborates. A new solo show of her work at Jack Shainman Gallery well testifies this.

She has shown her work extensively in India and abroad, including the events like Colombo Art Biennial in Sri Lanka; San Jose Museum of Art, US; Museum of Contemporary Art in Shanghai; Soros Center for Contemporary Art in Kazakhstan; Gutgasteil of Austria; and Europas Parkas, Lithuania. Her art features in several public collections like Devi Art Foundation; the Saga Art College, Japan; and the Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Italy.

Her new show marks her debut in the city of New York. The series on view includes pieces meticulously made of metal ghungroos that again are intricately sewn, plus new sculptures that continue to make use of industrial, natural and domestic, materials in order to examine sensitive gender and the environment related issues in contemporary society. She employs abstract forms and images of the crammed urban metropolis for addressing today’s radically shifting topography especially of her home country under the palpable impact of globalization and rapid growth.

The artist sees herself as being an integral part of the random restructuring of complex culture, society and geography, and not merely that of a specific region but in context of the whole world. Responding to the environmental changes as well as rezoning of land, Vobha Galhotra looks to embody jungles of steel and concrete leading to the dense urbanization through some unlikely materials. The idea is to draw our attention to the fast-increasing degradation of nature.

Vibha Galhotra currently lives and works in Delhi.

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