Quick glance at the oevre of India's top performance artist

Known to be an unconventional art practitioner, Nikhil Chopra follows a distinct mode of creation but situates himself firmly within the Indian context. Having participated in the 53rd Venice Biennale; the Kunsten Festival Des Arts in Brussels; a group show at Marina Abramovic; Serpentine Gallery, London; the Pompidou Centre in Paris; and so on, he has already received immense recognition internationally as a dynamic and unique performance artist.

Live performance is critical to Nikhil Chopra’s practice. The score or script for it usually revolves around making of a drawing. His idea is to question the level of engagement in terms of intensity with the performer – swinging from his presentation as an object on display to narrator of his character’s life tale.

His lavish outfits are made by a costume designer who works exactly to the artist’s specifications. A ubiquitous performance at one level and an unusual work of art at another level, the artist will make us contemplate and get involved in his tableaux created with a mix of painted backdrops and vivacious video, he himself inserted into the picture.

His art looks to explore the fine boundaries existing between performance, live art, theatre, photography, drawing and sculpture. He is walking the thin line between two contrasting worlds - fictional and autobiographical, the real and theatrical. He merges these fascinating reflections with serene, seductive, multi-disciplinary allusions. His aloof role-playing means when playing a character, he won’t utter a word or make any eye contact. His multiple personalities silently but surely make us to reassess our pre-defined notions and assumptions about history as well as our immediate milieu.

Duration has become an important aspect in his work. Elaborating on it, the artist states, “What does the cycle of day & night do to a performance? When I wake up in the morning and realize I’m in the middle of a performance in public view, what choice will I make? What indeed is real and what is theatrical? And how do I project this transformation?” Nikhil Chopra feels that performance art as a genre has ‘a huge space’, which is still unchartered.

Talented artists to watch out for

With prices having reached attractive levels, most market participants expect a positive development in 2013, indicating the overall optimism that prevails in the Indian art market. In this context, it is advisable to go for a mix of artists - the modern and contemporary, established and emerging ones - as each segment has its own strength and potential.

• Besides Subodh Gupta, Bharti Kher, Akbar Padamsee, Badri Narayan, Atul Dodiya, TV Santhosh and Jitish Kallat, several others like NS Harsha, Jagannath Panda, Baiju Parthan, Rashid Rana, Shilpa Gupta, Paresh Maity, Tejal Shah, Jayashree Chakravarthy, Arpana Caur, and Jayashree Burman have carved a niche for themselves.
  
  
• Works by the second generation moderns including Manjit Bawa, Ganesh Pyne, Laxma Goud, Prabhakar Barwe, Nalini Malani, and Gulamohammad Sheikh can be considered for investment, as they hold immense value and importance, both historically and also in terms of the market.
• You may reserve part of your portfolio for the young and emerging contemporaries in the form of George Martin, Nitish Bhattacharjee, Hindol Brahmabhatt, Jagannath Mohapatra, Rahul Chowdhury, Jagdish Chander, Prasanta Sahu, Nikhileswar Baruah, Amarnath Sharma, Rahul Arya, Inder Vir, Prajjwal Choudhury, Anu Agarwal, Heeral Trivedi, Jignasa Doshi, and Meetali Singh.
• There are a host of other names like Suhasini Kejriwal, Chitra Ganesh, Susanta Mandal, Rahul Chowdhury, Suryakant Lokhande, Viraj Naik, Justin Ponmany, Thukral & Tagra, worth a consideration.

Working with ideas, which are highly personal, simultaneously representing the shifts and complex changes occurring worldwide, highly talented artists from the country are treading new paths that blend the historical past with the present, strike a balance between fact and fiction, fuse old and new identities, and raise socially relevant issues during a challenging period of societal flux, evolving a new visual and thematic idiom, in the process.

In essence, look for artists who have gradually built their reputations, backed by renowned galleries - local and international.

Fusing theatre, photography, drawing and video for a live performance

His varied interests encompassing theatre, photography, drawing and video drew Nikhil Chopra to performance art. He infused elements of ambiguity and intensity with a touch of drama, to make them gripping.

In a scintillating series of photographs, he transformed himself into the character of Sir Raja III (2005). His body of work ‘What will I do with all this land?’ journeyed through his vast estate. It was an extension of his effort to explore through surrounding tableaux the very theatrics of posing.

The narrative woven around the central character did not relate to any specific place or moment in history. Built largely from and around personal memory, old family photographs, and an ancestral home, the artist himself became his alter ego, while adopting the Indian prince’s stereotype during the colonial era, prompting s viewers to notice the finesse and complexity of his photo-performance, involving the self on display even while enacting another.

His ‘Yog Raj Chitrakar: Eating’ (2007), quite unlike his earlier works, was conceived like an ephemeral event. Elements of silence, conversation and food were utilized for drawing a personal narrative – both engaging and haunting. Visitors were asked to share a meal in a homely ambience. Embodying a persona resembling his grandfather, he wore a Victorian costume. A video portrayed his character actively moving though the captivating city streets, juxtaposed with densely populated and modern scenes alongside mostly rural scenes displayed on a slide projector.

The spectacle tends to unfold in the ritualistic details embedded in mundane actions like eating, drinking, washing, bathing, sleeping, shaving, dressing, and creating a charcoal and chalk drawing. What often goes unnoticed, if observed and felt, turns into a heightened moment of revelation that mirrors our personal and social anxieties, he reveals.

The photographic images, which form part of the residue of his live performances, are aimed at re-igniting its concerns after the act is over. Though seduced by the tableaux he creates, which leads to our admiration of his social position and beauty, we remain aware of the farce. By desiring conscious identification with the being he has created, the artist exposes to us the complexity with which we tend to receive and revile icons.

What defines the crux of Suryakant Lokhande’s art?

Instead of employing the images drawn from various sources in the physical world as they are, Suryakant Lokhande prefers to rework and repaint them in an instinctive manner. This kind of artistic transition and transformation is critical to his work. In general, it underlines the physical phenomena omnipresent in each individual’s immediate realm. For him, it does not remain contextual only in the present since he absorbs as an artist - even those faded and non-existent memories, as well as the peculiar phenomena of dazed dreams and fantasy – relevant to the present.

Often a photo is chosen as the base medium. The crux of his artistic process lies in first disowning the conventional notions of photography.  For this socially sensitive practitioner, a photo is not merely an instrument to dispassionately record a physical phenomenon in the distant outer realm or to derive a certain aesthetic value.

It serves him as a mirror to look into his own self. He picks an image in such a manner that it gets transformed into an objective correlative of sensations, giving a deeper and even a different meaning. His strategic usage of borrowed imagery and source material, devoid of irony, traverses the visual codes and styles made pertinent by his chosen environ, skillfully reworking them in order to re-assess as well as challenge set vocabulary and perceptions of representation.

The artist was part of an off-air environmental initiative by CNN channel in 2008, and created an artwork using recycled rubbish - a life-size tiger sculpture. The idea was to artistically reinforce the message of inventing creative solutions to deal with environmental degradation and to underline how recycling could be a beautiful thing.

On the other hand, his much-acclaimed series ‘The War is Over’ slammed the uncertain situations post-war, and referred to the predicament of a sensitive artist trying to push boundaries. Many of his works in it evoked the iconography of war and effects, playing out in our subconscious akin to that of a desktop computer screen when neutrality twists, distorts its world, whereas his body of work, entitled ‘Koham (Who am I?)’, revolved around the theory of life cycle before birth and after death.

An artist who represents the dynamic contemporary currents and tendency

Prajjwal Choudhury’s work is not only a visual delight but also a thought provoking experience. It makes for a sharp and subtle commentary. Summing up the crux of his art practice, he states that the idea is to bring out the dilemma of urban life by opting for a non-conventional language. Though he is not necessarily judgmental or critical, his displeasure over the turn of things is something that he does not hide.

His practice represents the dynamic contemporary currents and tendency that marks the thriving art scene of India, grabbing worldwide attention. Born in 1980, the young and talented artist from Kolkata did his B.V.A. (Bachelor of Visual Arts) from The Indian College of Arts & Draftsmenship, Rabindra Bharati University, followed by his M.V.A. from the Department of Printmaking, Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda.

He has been devoting his creative power to an intense exploration of the developments and themes of tomorrow. The medium he has chosen to put across his point clearly underlines his unconventional practice that can defy the set notions and boundaries, to surprise the viewer. Its everyday matchboxes that he imprints with intriguing images of the works of several world-renowned artists, collated into a captivating collage. This exceptional mode of conveying his viewpoint exudes a realistic visual appeal, with a touch of wry humor, perplexing viewers. The idea is to make them pause and think on today’s undesirable pattern of recycling everything, including art.

Apparently, he is trying to convey that the works being showcased today have already been displayed in one form or the other, earlier and would again be there to see for us with some changes. His satirical approach and a sarcastic way of looking at the phenomenon through his peculiar medium is indeed unique and attention grabbing. For example, in ‘Who Will Be Next’, he collates the images by established artists acclaimed internationally - to suggest what you are seeing now will revisit you, albeit served in a different manner. The images are universally familiar, largely owing to their heavy dissemination in today’s mechanical age.

Some of internationally renowned artists from India

Sunil Gawde: The artist proficiently fuses his immense artistic sensibility and creativity with fine design and craft skills. His tools often include sophisticated paint materials and implements like trowels and scrapers for achieving a layered depth in his pigments. This results in textured surfaces - dynamic and dramatic in nature.

D Ebenezer Sunder Singh: The paintings of Paul Cézanne and his principles of Art influenced me immensely. From his work principles, the artist reveals to have understood the traditional Indian painting methods. His recent paintings revolve around Humanistic principles. The human figures (the central element of his pictures) shift time and space to locate the psychological characteristics and the principles of life.

Alwar Balasubramaniam: His artistic agenda is to reveal the omnipresent, albeit invisible, the essential yet overlooked, or the strong yet unnoticed. It unravels not only the immediate world but also one within us.

He lets us transgress the boundaries between elements, as they seamlessly connect and then converge, as if questioning the submissiveness of our own consciousness to them and their foundation, in the process. For more than a decade, he has assiduously kept challenging our notions; also pushing our pre-set limits of understanding and perception of material as well as experience of space.

Owais Husain: He is taking the legacy of his father, late MF Husain, ahead by walking into his footsteps and carving a niche for himself as a multimedia artist of immense talent and skill, Having identity as the maestro's son has been a matter of pride, on one hand, and a burden of expectations to carry, on other hand; the proud son has done so with élan. Mostly figurative, his work dwells on those transfixed moments between ubiquitous people and peculiar situations.

Prajjwal Choudhury: Its everyday matchboxes that he imprints with intriguing images of the works of several world-renowned artists, collated into a captivating collage. He touches upon the theme of a capitalist society driven by a consumerist attitude. It seems as if he is protesting the way we deploy and easily discard everyday objects.

India’s internationally acclaimed artists - II

Here are some of India’s most prominent artists internationally:

Atul Dodiya: His diverse and dynamic art practice, socially and politically responsible in nature, has evolved to become increasingly complex, with the subjects of his address, and his references more specific.

His striking imagery has invariably been packed with a stirring swirl of motifs: Bollywood, film stars, political icons, Hindu mythology characters, and so on. His canvases allude to everything - from the eccentric everyday India to high art elements from all over. They embrace issues ranging from exuberant Indian economy to the garish kitsch and disturbing disquiet of daily life.

Subodh Gupta: Though he often dwells on domestic themes, Subodh Gupta has become an internationally renowned artist. A multi-faceted practitioner - a sculptor, installation-maker, video artist and painter -all rolled in one, he incorporates in his works everyday objects such as bicycles, thali pans, and milk pails, as well as the mass-produced steel boxes used to carry lunch. Employing such ordinary items he can produce scintillating sculptures that even while acknowledging the reach of contemporary art, reflect and resonate with his homeland’s economic transformation..

Bose Krishnamachari: As a creator, curator and practitioner of art in various forms and domains, he likes to challenge and defy conventional concepts of visual art practices to set his own norms. An established artist, art collector, curator, and a gallerist, he plays different creative roles with élan. He has further broadened and deepened his curatorial vision with the Mumbai-based Gallery BMB.

Jitish Kallat: Counted among the most exciting and talented contemporary artists not just in India, but also internationally, Jitish Kallat has received recognition for his dynamic work that reflects an involvement with Mumbai. His practice derives much of its visual language from the artist’s immediate milieu, tacking his core themes centered around survival, sustenance and mortality in the contemporary urban environ.