London-based Grosvenor Vadehra hosts a solo exhibition of recent paintings by Anjolie Ela Menon, one among India’s topmost contemporary artists, who has made a name for herself in the country’s as well as international art scene. Her artworks are a part of several significant museum, private and corporate collections across the globe.
A press release elaborates: "Though she usually prefers to work with oil on masonite, the versatile artist has also experimented with other media such as glass, acrylic, computers, ceramics and painted junk. Desolation is a quality that is palpable in many of her paintings and again, one may infer that a sense of loss imbues some of her work a certain profundity.
"Anjolie Ela Menon evokes that which is hinted at but not quite visually stated even as the unsung ode wafts across disturbing landscapes. While the window, the crow or the chair recurred through the 1980s, slowly allegory gave way to more direct engagements with subjects close to the artist. The small miniatures in this show are the result of the period of experimentation that began in 1992."
Her conviction and courage in leaving the safety of her preferred medium - oil on masonite – was fraught with considerable uncertainty. In an ongoing engagement with Kitsch, Bollywood posters and street art, Menon imparts objects appropriated from so called “low art” with an aesthetic identity and autonomy. In her inimitably impish manner, she coalesces the traditional and post modern with rare panache creating a pastiche with collage and paint.
Underlying the slick surfaces of the totally new compu-pictures are echoes of the artist’s earlier work, reinforcing those elements that have been associated with the Menon idiom while achieving a new visual language of intriguing complexity. Anjoile Ela Menon is also a social activist, who supports the education of disadvantaged children. Based on her life and work, a book “Anjolie Ela Menon: Paintings in Private Collections” has been published and several films have been made on her.
The exhibition will run from 7 – 27 June and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog.
A press release elaborates: "Though she usually prefers to work with oil on masonite, the versatile artist has also experimented with other media such as glass, acrylic, computers, ceramics and painted junk. Desolation is a quality that is palpable in many of her paintings and again, one may infer that a sense of loss imbues some of her work a certain profundity.
"Anjolie Ela Menon evokes that which is hinted at but not quite visually stated even as the unsung ode wafts across disturbing landscapes. While the window, the crow or the chair recurred through the 1980s, slowly allegory gave way to more direct engagements with subjects close to the artist. The small miniatures in this show are the result of the period of experimentation that began in 1992."
Her conviction and courage in leaving the safety of her preferred medium - oil on masonite – was fraught with considerable uncertainty. In an ongoing engagement with Kitsch, Bollywood posters and street art, Menon imparts objects appropriated from so called “low art” with an aesthetic identity and autonomy. In her inimitably impish manner, she coalesces the traditional and post modern with rare panache creating a pastiche with collage and paint.
Underlying the slick surfaces of the totally new compu-pictures are echoes of the artist’s earlier work, reinforcing those elements that have been associated with the Menon idiom while achieving a new visual language of intriguing complexity. Anjoile Ela Menon is also a social activist, who supports the education of disadvantaged children. Based on her life and work, a book “Anjolie Ela Menon: Paintings in Private Collections” has been published and several films have been made on her.
The exhibition will run from 7 – 27 June and will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalog.
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