Artists who from part of Mapmakers at Aicon Gallery

The New York-based Aicon Gallery presents a new group exhibition, entitled ‘Mapmakers: The Evolution of Contemporary Indian Art’, which features works by Jitish Kallat, Bose Krishnamachari, Baiju Parthan, Justin Ponmany, Ravinder Reddy, T. V. Santhosh, and Chintan Upadhyay who together represent the vanguard of contemporary Indian art that burst onto the international scene in the mid-2000s, turning the heads of museums, critics and collectors.

The exhibition showcases the important large-scale canvases through which these artists, among others, redefined Indian Contemporary and set the compass points for a new generation to follow. For example, Jitish Kallat belongs to a new generation of artists and thought makers with no trepidations on the impossibility of today’s originality, with an equal lack of hesitation in accepting the derivation of cultural influences.

“My art is more like a researcher's project who uses quotes rather than an essay, with each painting necessitating a bibliography," says the artist; furthermore, the use of his own image introduces an autobiographical element. He chooses an economical, nearly abstract, form of narrative. Images float around the protagonist, like icons on a computer screen that resemble an intricate web. "Any visual material relevant to me" serves as the source of material. Images of the print media are photocopied and transferred on to the surface. Hence he draws a distinction between 'real', as opposed to the painted image which he considers fictional.

Known for his brightly colored larger-than-life heads, Ravinder Reddy uses sculpture as a primarily heraldic medium. Besides the fusion of contemporary pop art and Hindu sculptural tradition, Reddy provides a union of the archetype and the individual and like Cotter has noted, it feels more like “folk” art than “fine” art. Reddy currently teaches at the Department of Fine Art, Andhra University, Vishakapatnam.

In Justin Ponmany’s new photographs the artist digitally combines three views of his subjects, each taken from a different angle in order to create a disturbing panoramic view. The subjects range from men’s heads through to inanimate objects such as a tennis ball, each of which are expanded beyond the dimensions they are normally framed within. Ponmany has been inspired by the way internet mapping devices break down personal and geographical borders but these works suggest that the more we try to know or map something, the more elusive their form can become. Once more, the subject is split across different subject positions, none of which seem to cohere.