An ever going debate between tradition and modernity

It would not be entirely correct to state that Modern & Contemporary artists from Indian were not untouched or unaffected by forms of 'tradition'. For instance, The Bengal Revivalists Movement that tool roots during the period from 1907 till 1947 witnessed the Tagore brothers making an organized effort in terms of reviving and revisiting the miniatures.

Another noteworthy name was that of artist Jamini Roy who left his imprint by trying to reinvent, on his part, the captivating Kalighat Pats. The Tamil Nadu based Cholamandal artist village, founded by KCS Paniker in the mid sixties, was considered the cornerstone of the Modern Madras art Movement, evolved an international dialogue initiated around community-based art that was astutely placed within the local idiom of stone, bronze batik and terracotta.

And then in the 1970s, KG Subramanyan worked with tireless zeal to break down the perceived barriers between high art and craft. The renowned artist tried his hand at weaving and toy making.

We also though know how the Progressive Artist Group (PAG) was very much strident about making a move 'forward'. This prominent group of artists formed in Mumbai in 1947 was very vocal about embracing Modernism. This meant there was no chance to look at the past through a nostalgic viewfinder. They refused the idea of harking back to tradition.

Ironically enough, MF Husain himself was a billboard artist and a furniture designer prior to donning the mantle of high art. He still draw on folk elements trying to reinvent them into his work. Many 'Modern' painters of his era or those of the subsequent generations like Ganesh Pyne or Amirta Sher - Gil have sought inspiration in the glorious traditions of India.

In essence, many renowned Indian Modern & Contemporary artists are not isolated or cut off from their roots or traditions even as while traditional artists are showing keenness to imbibe newer formats and media like video in order to express traditional themes like the miniatures.

‘A glass of water’ by Subodh Gupta

A significant show at Hauser & Wirth (New York) incorporates recent works by Subodh Gupta, who now turns his attention to instruments of measurement - those related to the food & drink that all humans measure through either daily consumption or desperately thwarted hunger – as metaphors in a chimerical visual poem about global appetite.

Comprising a group of sculptures, optically incandescent paintings and two slyly illusionist installations, the new work on view further extends his ongoing investigation into the sustaining and even transformational power of everyday objects and activities.

A succinct curatorial essay encapsulates his practice to state: ”Comprising a group of sculptures, optically incandescent paintings, and two slyly illusionist installations, the new work on view further extends Gupta’s ongoing investigation into the sustaining and even transformational power of everyday objects and activities. Buttons and cans, steel cups of water, simple bread dough, and the forks and smears of sauce left upon plates after a meal has been consumed, all serve as elements in the artist’s complex choreography of meaning and oppositional values.

In the world of Subodh Gupta, the most quotidian objects and experiences lie in perfect equipoise between artistic, cultural, and spiritual abundance and emptiness, the twin companions of all who reside in the era of globalization and Diaspora. the trompe l’oeil installation work ‘Atta,’ a simple, found wooden table bears a mound of dough that appears to have been measured out and lovingly prepared, but abandoned in the midst of kneading. Daily bread is the staff of life, but Gupta’s dough is inedible: sprinkled and surrounded by real flour, it is a painstakingly painted bronze simulacrum.

The complement to ‘Atta’ is an installation work from which the exhibition at Hauser & Wirth New York takes its name. ‘A glass of water’ presents another wooden table topped only with a single metal drinking cup. Inside this cup but just barely contained by it, is fresh water that mysteriously remains in a constant and unyielding state of brimming.

Filled beyond capacity and threatening forever to spill at the slightest vibration, his simple but precarious offering serves up a rich metaphor for the almost unbearable tension between luxury and depletion, accumulation and deprivation, acquisition and exhaustion that are the daily diet of exploding international culture.

Blending mythical with the real elements

His central subject and concern is man, through whose aspirations and tensions, desires and disappointments, lusts and unending endeavors, the larger issues of life are deeply introspected. Here, God remains distant or indifferent, whereas the human 'other' is felt by its absence; the solitary male turns the sole site for conflict and resolution.

We are referring to Rameshwar Broota’s practice and process. Analyzing it further, art critic Gayatri Sinha has mentioned in an insightful essay: “The artist imbues his work with undiluted simplicity even as he firmly locates himself within the ordinariness of the burgeoning Indian middle class. A practitioner of meditation (dhyana and yoga) he also felt the contrary pull of the human world. In the early 70's, he was probably the first artist from India who turned outward with severely satirical paintings. Earlier, he had forayed into geometric forms, followed by stark figures of emaciated men, suggestive of the labor in New Delhi's growing streets.

“Soon, the sharp geometrically defined spaces and massive figures evaporated under the insistent scraping and nicking of the blade. The artist realized that a figure need not be imposed on a canvas. Instead it could be coaxed, revealed or evacuated from its depths.” This process unique to him involves the over painting of the canvas with layers of paint. It’s more intuitive, and draws on his love for photography and the intriguing complexities of the photographic process.

A significant transition in the 1980's in his imagery was marked by the ape’s mutation into the Man - essential, transitory, and firmly athletic. He typically employed degrees of sexual suggestion in them to denote erotic potential. A few years ago, he turned to technology to sift through images and explore the various compositional possibilities. This gave way to the extreme close up of the bodily frame that emerged as the locus for his philosophy of man that exists outside the purview of traditional morality or even the possibilities of expiation.

His metamorphosis into a photographer is indeed intriguing. Known for his strong masculine forms - actually intricate monumental drawings – Rameshwar Broota now infuses his photographs with a similar sensibility, albeit with a twist. "The caveman used to scratch & draw the movement of his fellow beings and animals on those dark walls. I believe I must have existed even then as an artist…," so he states of his painterly passion.

A solo of recent works by artist Rajan Krishnan

New York based Aicon Gallery presents a solo show of artist Rajan Krishnan. 'Ancestry' is essentially a logical extension of his past two noteworthy projects, namely ‘Enroute’ (2006) and ‘Memoir’ (2007).

The new large-scale works are akin to a visualized homage to intriguing cultures in gradual transition. He here looks to revisit his native place, only to find the Nila river that once thrived there, nurturing the people around it, now devastated sans its past glory. The placid shimmering currents and golden sand of his memory are not anymore there. Instead what now has remained are dark debris, stark shrubbery and crumbling structures in place of the life-giving waters and luscious foliage.

‘Ancestry’ is a heart-touching panorama of portrait-like paintings of peculiar elements from the once lovely landscape that surrounded the river, rendered against a foreboding grey backdrop without any foreground or background. They tend to focus our attention directly upon his chosen subjects, themes and settings. Masterful detailing is contrasted by the darkly flattened and mystifying milieu, devoid of time and its aftereffects, yet ethereally stirred by an ongoing sensation of both serenity and chaos.

In the collective memory of the flourishing region and so of the artist – the river stands for more than just flowing water. For generations it shaped the lives and culture of the people in South Malabar, and the artist’s home state of Kerala. The Nila River was a lifeline to a vast arena, offering sustenance to the countless villages and cities.

However, the bleak present existence to which this once magnificent icon of India’s rich natural and cultural history has been consigned to leaves Rajan Krishnan’s images – like the river itself – stranded somewhere between our shared past perceptions and the tangible yet continually shifting realities of our today and tomorrow. The solo of recent works by Rajan Krishnan presents poignant images to present a grim reality.

The Centre Pompidou presents ‘Paris-Delhi–Bombay

Today’s India is a leading world economic player. The country is also the second most populated and the largest democracy in the world. No surprise, it arouses interest but is still far away for the western and European audiences. ‘Paris-Delhi-Bombay...’ tries to correct the lacuna by inviting viewers to discover the various facets of contemporary Indian society.

The Centre Pompidou, one of Europe's leading and most prestigious modern art museums, has launched an ambitious project that throws light on complexities and subtle undercurrents of contemporary Indian society, now more dynamic and creative than ever, still full of contrasts.

The idea behind ‘Paris-Delhi–Bombay’ is to create awareness of the Indian art and culture scene to the people of France, and to bind two contrasting streams of thought, in the process. Several French and Indian artists through their works explore profound changes taking place in the dynamic social-scape, to offer a pointed perception of religious beliefs, spirituality, issues of identity (linguistic, sexual, caste-related, national, regional etc), urbanization, heritage, history etc), and domestic concerns.

‘Paris-Delhi–Bombay’ presents a new, exciting image of an emerging India, moving away from the stereotypes, to witness rapid transitions and transformations. Curated by Sophie Duplaix and Fabrice Bousteau, it’s the culmination of thorough research done over four years in order to understand the artistic phenomenon of globalization.

According to Centre Pompidou’s director Alain Seban, it made little sense to arrange a retrospective of Indian art because it’s not the past traditions but what the future trends hold that matter more. Close to 100 artworks, including paintings, installations, sculptures and photographs are on view, a large chunk of them commissioned for the show.

It doesn’t have a central theme though, and has been set up sans any continuity of styles, sights and materials. Justifying the look and feel of the show, Seban states, “The world no longer really functions thematically but works in a more haphazard way. The exhibit reflects just that.” In a way, it provides a unique visual interpretation of the modern India.

‘Live Your Smell’ at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin, Paris

A series of significant international shows present a mélange of works in diverse mediums, forms and styles with powerful themes by prominent Indian artists, who unveil new contemporary ideas and concepts. For example, Bharti Kher’s new solo, entitled ‘Live Your Smell’, takes place at Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris. It’s based on the premise of allegory.

An accompanying note elaborates: “The artist has used quotidian objects: a staircase, chairs, dressing tables, tea sets that are found in the domestic sphere and endows them with a dysfunctional momentum that eventually ends in their ceremonious shattering. Here these objects suggest remnants of prior acts underlining the idea that something is missing; an imprint perhaps that emphasizes the absence of a person. This fragile precariousness of domestic life, in her new works, turn into a microcosm of the world itself where objects, with their innate function and differences leave traces of and explore the ambiguities that exist within us.”

Writer Kanu Agrawal mentions of her art practice: “She creates fantastic fables populated by animals awash in a great primal wave of semen-shaped bindis, pantheons of female human-ape hybrids, and spectral hosts in dainty domestic settings gone awry. With the wit and irreverence of a prankster and a mad scientist, she brings a camp sensibility to her fables which unfold against the backdrop of a technological and ecological dystopia where machines, humans, animals, and nature are out of joint.

Bharti Kher’s hybrid creatures are fabricated from such a dystopian repository. Through her morphed objects and animals, Kher revels in the discomfort and comedy that result from her encounters with metropolitan and small-town India. She chooses to reside in-between. Firstly, she draws on her own dual identity as an Indian with a British background. Secondly, she locates her work in-between a society, entrenched in class divisions and prescribed gender roles, that retains a strong desire to be, but has never been, ‘truly modern’.

For her, morphing is a survival technique. It is a unique system of camouflage and deception engaged to resist old patriarchal regimes and to invent new hybrid worlds and hybrid creations. The artist’s creations poke fun at their own trajectory: rootless, as they traverse their in-between worlds.

Landscapes that tell the tale of times changing

His works, which represent a post-agricultural landscape, are quite often fragmentary visions of a dry, sterile landscape. It appears to be an echo of a bygone era that once throbbed with life. There is an unmistakable dark side to them.

When idyllic representations are subverted by his artistic perception, the landscape turns into a site of haunted desolation. Building up a sense of disturbance rather than evoking mere pictorial escapism, the artist’s Embryo constructs a space of silent and unfathomable devastation.

His hyper-realism draws from a sense of one’s shared inherited histories and the subjects may range from childhood ‘memory’ of local vegetation to imaginary landscapes. Keen to experiment and innovate, his sculptural materials/ constructions are often an extension of his paintings.

Explaining his evolution as an artist, he states, “More recently, I began to become aware of the impact wrought by the forces of change upon it. Both the disintegration of natural decay and destruction caused by the manmade development have hit it simultaneously and unsettled it. More than any outward scar, what this does is leave behind a massive lesion within...”

His practice reflects his extreme sensitivity to immediate environment, echoing the artist’s attachment to his socio-cultural ethos. He employs landscapes or the natural elements from his surroundings as his principle protagonist to put across his innermost aesthetic proclivities whether in protest, homage or celebration. In alluding to the curious crisscrossing vectors of space and time, the landscape clearly functions as a memorial passage: a recollection of things both imagined and witnessed.

In the process, Rajan Krishnan underscores the cyclical forces of creation and destruction as his images continue to oscillate between visions of the present, future and past...