Tracing a veteran artist's career graph

“In my compositions, I’ve always tried to capture human emotions, and not make life studies," Krishen Khanna has once revealed. Born in Lahore in 1925, he learnt art at evening classes conducted at the Mayo School of Art, Lahore. In the wake of India’s Partition, he moved to Simla, and thereafter to New Delhi. The young artist came into prominence after he started exhibiting his work at the Bombay Art Society, and was invited in 1949 to show with the Progressives. In the mid-fifties he became a full time painter, giving up his career as a banker.

Apart from over 40 one-man shows at several leading galleries in India and abroad, his selected group exhibits are 'A Collection', Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai (2010-11); '10 x 10', Gallery Threshold, Delhi; ‘Black is Beautiful', India Fine Art, Mumbai; 'Essential, Eclectic,...Ephemeral', The Harrington Mansions, Kolkata (all in 2010); 'Bharat Ratna!', Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; 'Master Class', The Arts Trust, Mumbai; 'Kalpana', courtesy ICCR at Aicon Gallery, London (all in 2009).

He won the National Award of the LKA, Delhi in 1965 and the Gold Medal at the First Triennale of Contemporary World Art, Delhi in 1968. He was also awarded the Padma Shri in 1990. Art is his potent medium of communicating apparently ordinary cultural happenings that he make noteworthy through his acute observation and execution. His drawings give the everyday observations their due like in the Bandwalla series.

A strong bond marks the artist’s relationship with his subject matter as part of a quest to unravel the mystery of existence. Summing up his philosophy as an artist, he narrates: “Art can provide you with the metaphysical answers you have been looking for even whilst you are involved in its creation. They call it drawing. I really have no name for it. It's a compulsion, an itch. The more I scratch, the more I want to continue. It is enjoyable but it can also hurt when nothing emerges but an incomprehensible mess. Yet, for me, art is the ultimate bliss...”

In 2011 he was honored with the Padma Bhushan, the country’s second highest civilian award, for his exceptional and distinguished career.

‘Gift of Tongues’ by Hetal Chudasama

New-Delhi based Seven Art is pleased to present a solo exhibition of works by Baroda-based artist Hetal Chudasama, entitled 'Gift of Tongues'.

It includes a number of representational and more abstract wax sculptures, sensual forms that may be read as body parts or orifices. The show also includes drawings, video, performance and a large sculpture crocheted in black wool which, taken altogether, are to be seen as part of a larger whole. An accompanying note states, “Construed as a meandering series of installations, the entire exhibition is intended to operate as large organic life form, a sort of underwater coral reef."

"The black crocheted form functions as a key to the rest of the exhibition, signifying the entire belief system upon which society is constructed which at the same time can be dismantled through the power of resistance. If we pull the single thread from which this metaphorical construction is composed, everything returns to formlessness. For the opening evening, the artist will stage a performance in several parts involving nine people in a number of different situations within the space of the gallery.”

This suite of new works by the talented artist takes Ovid’s account of the rape and mutilation of Philomela at the hands of Tereus as its point of departure, integrating a number of other concerns into its reading.  In focusing on the myth of Philomela, the exhibition explores the victim’s strength and creativity after the fact of trauma. Resistance is seen as a tool for breaking down existing structures and demands that we go beyond the notion that an actual or metaphorical rape inevitably leads to destruction.

If Tereus brutally cuts out Philomela’s tongue after raping her, the tongue comes back to life in this exhibition. Significantly here, the tongue can be symbolic of that which is childish and playful, something sexual, and it is of course also the vehicle for language and expression.

What makes this young Indian artist stand apart?

His practice and pieces represent the dynamic contemporary currents and tendency that marks the thriving art scene of India, rightfully grabbing the worldwide attention. 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 underlines his unconventional practice that can defy the set notions and boundaries, to surprise the viewer.

We are referring to Prajjwal Choudhury whose socially sensitive oeuvre is primarily marked by its harking back to a particular concern. 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. His art moves beyond the confines of canvas or sculpture and rather attempts at framing within his aesthetic space, uncanny phrases and visual assortments of the byproducts of recycling.

For instance, his series ‘Drift’ at Project 88 in Mumbai (2008) had works, which were a mockery of the beauty that a consumerist attitude aspires for, in actuality. On the other hand, his work that formed part of 'Re-claim…' (Bose Pacia, Kolkata 2009; curator: Bhavna Kakar) tried to document artistic imaginations and representations of recycling. Its latent idea, as stated above, was to perceive the process as an all-pervasive phenomenon, encompassing nearly every aspect of modern life - right from our desktops to the writing pads and bottles.

His work is not only a visual delight but also a thought provoking experience. It makes for a sharp and subtle commentary. Though he is not necessarily judgmental or critical, his displeasure over the turn of things is something that he does not hide. The idea is to make the viewers 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.

Career trajectory of Thukral and Tagra

Thukral and Tagra have shot to fame in the international art scene in the past decade or so, having exhibited extensively worldwide. In 2011, their pieces were included in the ‘Indian Highway IV’ exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Lyon in France (which later traveled to the MAXXI Museum, Rome) apart from ‘Paris-Delhi-Bombay…’ exhibition at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris.

Both Jiten Thukral (born in 1976 in Jalandhar, and Sumir Tagra (born 1979 in New Delhi) studied at the Delhi College of Art in the mid 1990s. It was a decade of marked change as the country experiencing an influx of several new ideas, images, products, and media. In the backdrop of this social milieu and personal motivations, this is how the duo’s career was shaped: 

Their foray into the domains of graphic & product design, commercial interior design and advertising continues to influence their art, and still remains at the core of it. As T & T aver, ‘the graphics and design field teaches one exactly how to present an idea. It’s an essential aspect of our work - a blur between an artistic expression and a solution.’

The two have created installations especially for Beijing-based Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (2010); the Asia Pacific Triennale at Brisbane’s Queensland Art Gallery (2009); and the Art Statements section of the 2007 Art Basel. Their work has also been featured in many other large survey showcases of contemporary Indian art at prestigious institutions such as Denmark’s Arken Museum of Modern Art (2012), the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo (2008), and Vienna’s Essl Museum (2009). They were artists in residence at the Singapore Tyler Print Institute (2010).

Various top galleries in India and abroad have presented solo shows of their unconventional work. These include Nature Morte (New Delhi and Berlin); Hilger Contemporary (Vienna); Bose Pacia (New York);  Barry Keldoulis (Sydney); Arario (Seoul); Chatterjee & Lal (Mumbai); and Tokyo Gallery (Tokyo). They are presently working on projects with the Italian fashion house Etro and the German porcelain manufacturer Meissen.

The artist duo lives and works in the New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon.

Capturing impermanence of life and people through Bhakti poets’s prism

V Ramesh is fascinated by the Bhakti poets that led haim on a vivacious visual journey, capturing their spirit in a series of artworks recently showcased at New-Delhi based Gallery Threshold. His ‘Sanctum Sanctorum: A Corner For Four Sisters’, was executed through the intense prism of fervor, intimacy and devotional passion, appropriating four visionary mystic women poets and their voices, namely Lal Ded from Kashmir, Akka Mahadevi f Karaikkal Ammiyar and Andal. Critic-writer Georgina Maddox in an accompanying essay meticulously examined the artist’s musings over mortality, corporality and divinity.

• The artist was touched in particular, by the transgressive nature of their acts; they all left home to wander as poet-saints, spreading their poetry and musings on divinity. They all eschewed earthly ties like marriage in the face of great opposition often at the cost of their lives. In assuming their tone and voice, V Ramesh has tried to break gender binaries and embrace a genderless position from which to enunciate his devotion. In many ways his paintings could well be seen as a self portrait as they are really about the self that he is speaking.
  
• The central image was of a large Banyan tree. The gigantic diptych of the tree spread its roots and branches onto the ground creating a fortress. Flanking the central canvas on either side of the Banyan tree was a canvas with four blooming lotuses afloat on a dark pond of brown, while another emerald green canvas catches crows taking flight. Both these images were indirect tributes to the poets, but also denoted a celebration.
  
• Next was the terrifying image of Karaikkal Ammaiyar over-laid by a supplicating skeleton, a flaming tree and lines from a poem that extols Lord Shiva as the supreme creator. If the canvas glorified how terrifying devotion could be, the canvas dedicated to Akka Mahadevi celebrated the calm and beauty that this poet was known for.

Summing up the series, the artist has been quoted as saying, “For the last decade or so, I’ve been interested in exploring impermanence, not just that of life itself but also that of people. I am fascinated by that defining moment of crossover wherein a personality becoming eternal and mythological from being ephemeral and human.”

Deciphering nuances of photo and abstraction

This is the last month of a year-long exhibit at MOMA, encompassing an extensive period from 1910 until today and offering a sort of critical reassessment of the role of photography in both avant-garde and neo-avant-garde art movements. Simultaneously, another show examines abstraction’s contemporary notions through an array of contemporary practices. (March 15–September 2, 2013)

MoMA’s photography collection

It has a special emphasis on the medium's relation to Dada, Bauhaus, Surrealism, Constructivism, New Objectivity, Conceptual, and Post-Conceptual art—and in the development of contemporary artistic practices. The shaping of what came to be known as ‘New Vision’ photography bore the obvious influence of "lens-based" and "time-based" works. El Lissitzky best summarized its ethos: "The new world will not need little pictures," he wrote in The Conquest of Art (1922). "If it needs a mirror, it has the photograph and the cinema."

Photographic history is presented as a multivalent history of distinct ‘new visions’, rooted in unconventional and innovative exercises that range from photograms and photomontages to experimental films and photobooks. Bringing together over 250 works from the museum collection, the show features major projects by Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy, Gerhard Rühm, Helen Levitt, Daido Moriyama, Robert Heinecken, Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, and Walid Raad, among others.

Abstraction’s contemporary notions

Since the early 20th century, abstraction has been associated with so many artistic movements, from Suprematism and Constructivism to Abstract Expressionism and Op art, that it can no longer be defined by any one style or tradition. Indeed, abstraction exists now as a rich and varied trove of formal languages and ideas—an open source of inspiration that extends well beyond the boundaries of art. This exhibition focuses on the print medium, highlighting ways in which abstraction has played a generative role in works of the past decade.

Featuring prints, artists’ books, and multiples from the Museum’s collection—by artists such as Cory Arcangel, Tauba Auerbach, Philippe Decrauzat, Liam Gillick, Wade Guyton, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, R. H. Quaytman, and Charline von Heyl—Abstract Generation examines contemporary notions of abstraction through a range of contemporary practices.

A fundamentally new interpretation of modern art

According to art researcher-scholar David W. Galenson, Pablo Picasso was the first ever artist to take real advantage of the new regime: he painted more portraits of dealers early in his career than any other artist had. He systematically created competition for his work. His research has changed our understanding of creativity, combines social scientific methods with qualitative analysis to produce that gives readers a far deeper appreciation of the art of the past century, and of today.

Throwing light on this thought behind his core argument in the book, titled ‘Conceptual Revolutions’ (Publisher: Cambridge University Press; $89-$99; Pages: 460),an introductory note mentions: “From Picasso's Cubism and Duchamp's readymades to Warhol's silkscreens and Smithson's earthworks, the art of the twentieth century broke completely with earlier artistic traditions.

“A basic change in the market for advanced art produced a heightened demand for innovation, and young conceptual innovators responded not only by creating dozens of new forms of art, but also by behaving in ways that would have been incomprehensible to their predecessors.  The book presents a systematic analysis of the reasons for this discontinuity.”

A series of insightful essays traces 20th-century art’s back story; its greatest male and female artists; the most important artworks; the greatest artistic breakthroughs;  new genres; the versatility of conceptual innovators; and the globalization of advanced art in the 20th century. There are some offbeat chapters focusing on the conceptual innovator as trickster and the conceptual artist as manufacturer; language in visual art.

Another interesting segment highlights ‘Artists and the market: from Leonardo and Titian to Warhol and Hirst’. Finally, he takes a succinct look at the state of advanced art: the late 20th century and beyond. Galenson believes that terms like ‘postmodernism’ and ‘pluralism’ are based on a complete misunderstanding of the broader 20th-century art trends.

In fact, the proliferation of new art genres of art, the fading out of dominant styles, and the elimination of style altogether by several leading artists were not really new practices in the 1970s-'80s. They were just a part of logical extension by young conceptual innovators of the practices initiated at the start of the 20th century by Picasso, Duchamp and a host of other young conceptual innovators.