Demystifying ‘dolls’ - II

Bangalore based Gallery Sumukha presents a group exhibition featuring artists Abir Karmakar, Anthony Roche, Archana Hande, Ayisha Abraham, Barbara Ash, Chintan Upadhayay, Jasmeen Patheja, Jayamma, KT Shivaprasad, Princess Pea, Pushpamala N and Surekha.

Since traditionally girls were perceived to be easier to shape, it is their doll images that display the richest as well as the most disturbing complexity. As gender equations are democratizing now towards a certain androgyny, boys and boy-dolls begin to participate in these mutations. The possibility of affirming the child there has to deal with the possibility of it becoming used and abused by mature purposes, sensibilities and idiosyncrasies, roles, desires and expectations.

The twelve artists in this exhibition, as its curator Marta Jakimowicz notes, relish and play with as well as analyze and critique the phenomenon, supporting some of its beautiful aspects, revealing the density of others, subverting or parodying those, sometimes transforming them into weapons of defiance and protest.

Echoing the layers within the subject, they mediate wonder, tenderness and affirmation, gravity, light humor and sarcasm, exuberance and revulsion, pleasure and sadness, ironic, at times conceptual, retorts and descriptive or narrative suggestiveness, natural and put-on behavior. Reference to the actual and the immediate comes with the recourse to elements of realistic rendering, photography, film and quotations from stylized popular imagery.

The direct and unadorned may bring unassuming, warm elements but also coarse, raw ones. Allusions to classical, folk and contemporary iconography and objects may anchor in graceful qualities, in twisted, shocking ones too. A dose of endearing or disquieting kitsch and commercial cliché surfaces along with the phantasmagoria, contradictions, hypocrisies and conflicts inherent to it.

Since many of the participants in slightly or drastically different ways deal with a number of manifestations and issues associated with the theme, their works together evoke the connectedness and the disjoint among its baffling and lucid traits, its richness and poverty, potentiality and limitations that remain evident as well as suppressed in the real world, ever fluctuating between the stability of ingrained paradigms and their simultaneous transformation towards things intuited but unpredictable.

(Information courtesy: Gallery Sumukha)

Passion of collecting art goes beyond the physical space

A recent survey by EBay, a leading online shopping site with 2.5 million registered users across India, underlines that it’s not just urban centers but also rural hubs of the country that are joining the online rush. Against this backdrop, gallery owners and dealers realize the need to create a niche space online. It’s an economically viable option. In fact, the recession could be considered as a blessing of sorts for the new-age breed of online art-entrepreneur.

Pushing beyond the physical space, exclusive online galleries are now exposing contemporary Indian art to a wider base of buyers globally. A perfect example of a marriage between art and technology was the recent VIP (Viewing in Private) Art Fair. An ambitious art dealer duo of James and Jane Cohan in New York teamed up with two visionary internet entrepreneurs to host it exclusively in the virtual realm. The event featured the best of works by several international artists from over 130 galleries.

There are skeptics though, who think that even 3D image technology cannot replace physical contact with art. Selling art is essentially a ‘high-touch’ business, depending on knowing whom you’re selling to, especially at the top end. In effect, the fundamental issue for online art sales is the comfort level of users with buying something they haven’t actually seen or touched. Pointing to the dilemma or dichotomy, curator-writer Sharmistha Ray states, “We want to hold onto the physicality of the art object in an age when many people are keen to buy high-value pieces (online) by merely looking at illustrative images on their computer screens.”

The internet is a new emerging platform, but it’s still not in a position to compete with major fairs or with the aura of an evening auction. Yet, viewing, buying and selling of art is going online - slowly but surely. Many private equity investors and market players see it as a logical step ahead in an increasingly global world of art. No surprise, some of the biggest players in the domains of art and technology are betting that collectors will spend millions on buying works online in the near future.

More collectors will buy art on the Internet

An increasing number of people now manage their bank accounts, book a holiday, buy books, select clothes, and pick electronic goods online. But then what about art? The UK Financial Times essayist Georgina Adam mentions: “Until now, apart from a few highly publicized sales, the business of high-priced art has remained largely in the ‘real’ world.

“However, many feel it’s just a matter of time before collectors will buy it more vigorously on the Internet. This is not to assume that auction houses and dealers don’t use technology. You can already bid and buy in many online auctions. Dealers now directly sell an increasing amount to clients through their sites.”

Many new initiatives popped up as part of the internet bubble during the mid 1990’s. Market players scrambled to launch start-ups in the art & culture space. Auction houses poured money into websites at the height of the frenzy. But the bubble soon burst. Many online ventures launched in a hurry wound up or only barely survived.

Obviously, the technology was not foolproof, a decade ago. Image resolution was poor. Users were not at ease with the internet. Now a whole new generation of tech-savvy buyers is out there. So will the Internet ultimately take over from real world sales? Will it fundamentally change the way art world deals?

Renowned business publication The Economist notes: “Auction houses and dealers have approached it warily. In 2006 Christie’s launched an online bidding system, whereas Sotheby’s launched BidNow only last year after its two earlier forays into online auctions failed at the beginning of the last decade.”

The Dallas-based Heritage Auctions with $650m worth of annual sales claims that nearly 34 percent are happen online. Christie’s sold roughly $114m worth of art & antiques online, totaling 16% of its lots that represented 3% of total sales. According to the world’s leading fine art auctioneer, online bidding for now is just one of the platforms on offer. Eventually, they will be form a major part of their business once the technology gets more refined and transactions are more secured.

‘Labyrinth of Absences’ by Reena Saini Kallat

Nature Morte presents a solo show of latest works by talented artist Reena Saini Kallat. The series, entitled, ‘Labyrinth of Absences’, is comprised of a set of new paintings, depicting monument sites in the state of New Delhi. A press release by the gallery elaborates: "The surface of the paintings are marked with addresses of monuments listed as protected sites under the Archeological Survey of India, that have either disappeared or have been declared lost, swallowed up by the rapidly expanding urban fabric.

The works on paper are constructed from the names of people who have been denied visas on the basis of class, nationality or religion. In most cases, her images are fractured and deconstructed, creating maze-like maps - or as in the case of Synonym, a series of portraits crafted as mosaics of rubber-stamps, holding the names of people who are officially registered as missing - appear pixelated and fragmented.

Other works in the show include Crease/Crevice/Contour, a set of ten large-scale photographs tracing the fluctuating LOC between India and Pakistan from October 1947 to December 1948.

Two video works will also be exhibited: ‘Silt of Seasons-I’, projects the names of people who have signed the peace petition in 2004. The names are projected on to sand and are gradually blown away, suggestive of the vulnerability of the peace process itself. In ‘Preface’, she projects the text of the Preamble of the Constitution of India translated into Braille on to the surface of a large, opened book.

An artist of international recognition, she has participated in a number of group exhibitions including Maximum India at The Kennedy Centre in Washington DC; Samtidigt at Kulturhuset, Stockholm and the Helsinki City Art Museum, Finland; The Empire Strikes Back Saatchi Gallery, London; The Vancouver International Sculpture Biennale 2010; Urban Manners- 2 at SESC Pompeia, Sao Paulo, Brazil; View Points and Viewing points - 2009 Asian Art Biennale, National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and Chalo! India: A New Era of Indian Art at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo that travelled to the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Seoul and the Essl Museum, Vienna among others.

Artistic concerns of India’s leading contemporary artist, Reena Kallat

Reena Kallat’s practice spans a whole range of forms and mediums like painting, photography, sculpture, installation and video. It often incorporates multiple media and styles into a single piece. Peculiarly, she may opt to base her work on officially registered or recorded names of objects, monuments and people who have disappeared or vanished sans any trace, only to be noted down as forgotten statistics.

A recurrent motif in her artworks is the rubber stamp, utilized both as an imprint and an object, implying the bureaucratic apparatus that confirms and obscures identities, as well. The fragility of our existence is an oft-expressed sentiment across her oeuvre. To explain how it’s structured around dualities, which reverberate with ideas of loss and frail recovery, the artist has mentioned, “I seek to explore a sense of order within urban chaos; this suggests (to me) a state of permanent change."

Reena Saini Kallat completed her graduation from the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai. Her most recent solo show was at the Primo Marella Gallery, Milan (2009), whereas her last solo in India was hosted at Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai (2008). The artist has had ten solos in India and abroad apart from featuring in a number of important workshops and residencies across the globe.

Contemporary popular culture invariably comes under her scanner. She may depict the glitz of the ad world that tends to act as a lid on shattered hopes, if the underlying thought is to be believed. Analyzing her work, art critic Nancy Adajania has once mentioned: “Her paintings and sculpture-installations portray the human body, and by extension the body politic, under perennial siege, wracked by mythic demons and unknown viruses that strike at it from all sides.

The beauty of the highly powerful and nuanced objects she employs is deceptively belied by their implicit violence as she deftly retrieves these as symbols, or even creates new ones to reposition them, resulting in irony viewers simply cannot escape.

High-end museology gains in importance

Exhibition design, it is slowly being realized, is a vital aspect – more about directing a concerted focus to the art on view sans any frills. With increasing awareness, a few specialists are emerging on the scene.

Vishal K. Dar, himself an artist, worked with a group of around 20 experts to install the Anish Kapoor show at the NGMA, New Delhi. Among the most noteworthy aspect of the world-famous British sculptor’s debut show in India was his ‘Shooting into the Corner’ exhibit in Mumbai.

According to many art viewers, its manner of display turned it into a new work altogether. The captivating cannon installation display was much impressive than that at the Royal Academy of Arts in its original avatar. In London, it happened to fire into a room, whereas the spacious exhibit space at Mehboob Studio gave it a raw, giant spectrum to deal with...

Anish Kapoor’s work blurs the boundaries between art and architecture, is known to be deeply invested in the layout as well as sequential ordering of his exhibits. He himself designed the layouts of his shows in Mumbai and Delhi along with project managers who handled the logistics of whole set-up.

There were representatives from the sculptor’s London studio and also the National Science Centre, who helped Vishal K. Dar in the task that was carried over a period of nearly three weeks. Dar terms himself a ‘scenographer’, attributing the description to 18th century French connotation for stage designer. According to him, it’s the science of ‘guiding viewers’ eyes to appreciate the works of art displayed to their fullest.

Having a background in product design and architecture, he first tried out exhibition design for the Binod Behari Mukherjee retrospective at the NGMA (in 2005). Since then he has worked on several art projects. The expert feels that the onus of implementing high-end museology is largely with public institutions who must take the concept seriously, and galleries will follow suit...

Indian artists at the Luce Gallery group show - I

A significant group show of Indian artists takes place in Italy. Luce Gallery presents 'Indian Rainbow' splashing colourful and captivating works of artists Atul Dodiya, Justin Ponmany, Thukral & Tagra, TV Santhosh and Jagannath Panda.

Jagannath Panda, born in Bhubaneswar in 1970, is known to paint his pet themes through motifs like mythical animals apparently banished from their natural environ and thus made to experience the unsavoury drama of cramped urban living. While setting up his favourite painting subjects - these animals in an enigmatic and magical atmosphere, he comes up with a critique of present-day trend of rampant urbanization that stands quite in contrast to his noble idea of the sacredness and purity of nature.

As part of his intense creative churning, the commonplace object tends to acquire subtle symbolic stature, representing aspirations or at times, rigid dogmas. Environmental and serious social issues concern this socially aware practitioner. Atul Dodiya, born in Mumbai in 1959, tends to explore historical, political and social realities. The artist often does so by experimenting with varied media, forms and styles.

The outcome is a ‘cultural patchwork’ at times laden with subtle references to Western literature and cinema that he juxtaposes with traditional and mythical elements drawn from his home country’s rich culture. Bringing out the essence of his practice, the artist has stated: “My works try to weave the past with the pressing present concerns, underlining ironies of the situation.”

Justin Ponmany, born in Kerala in 1974, employs a peculiar form of oleographic painting. The artist is known to do so in order to capture the very essence of contemporaneity. The chromatic richness of his artwork makes it particularly gripping. This facet of his work changes depending on the intensity of the lighting and also the viewer's vantage point. Using photos as core of his creations, the artist imbues the surfaces with a host of materials like resin, plastic, printer’s ink, holograms salt etc; this to conceive rugged stylistic effects. He also employs traditional acrylic paint, charcoal and smoke.