THE FOLDING CLOUD by VANITA GUPTA

किसी ने अपनी साइकल बड़े बादल के नीचे लगायी थी

पर अब पता नहीं वो बादल कहाँ गया

और वो साइकल छोड़कर बादल दूंद्ता रहा

Kalakriti gallery welcomes you to drift through the latest collection of works

Paintings | Sculptures | Multimedia | Installation 

by 

Vanita Gupta

on

13th August 2022

Artist: Vanita Gupta 

If one were to focus on the look of Vanita Gupta’s oeuvre, it would encompass characteristics of sculpture, installation and drawings, interspersed with quotidian and provocative videos that loop in melancholic shifts - the stuff of workshop experiments that test the plasticity and strength of natural materials - metal, wood, or rubber. 

Vanita's artistic position is fluid with regard to the categories of materials she places before us but for the certitude and temperance, she grants to every object she composes.   By conflating genres and pictorial means where the deadpan demeanor (literally a frozen stillness) of assembled figure objects and structures of installations stand assertively, she fundamentally forges a singularity of form and dimension as the concrete and visible profile of the constructed artworks. They are independent of each other carting aloneness as a votive relationship with an invisible audience; taut with a kind of prowess, corresponding with the dry fragments of aphoristic phrases running on the wall.   By and large, one is led to a pivotal standpoint: that of circuiting pictorial elements to favor diverse material constituents.. The sleeping life of the hardened sculpture seems to swell into wakefulness in its striving for organicity. It is a key aesthetic ingredient that the sensibility of this artist enfolds. Gupta, in this manner, is driven to imbue a degree of weightage that clothes her soft and solid objects. We see then, that urge to revive and manipulate material from a state of stillness to that of an anthropomorphized entity. This can prod and tease the mind into believing in the artist’s wizardry. For her, the worn, decrepit condition of castoff debris offers endless opportunities to consecrate such stuff into untitled statuary, icons, and calibrated videoed performances that disclose her formal intentions.

Gallery View -  Kalakriti Art Gallery 

Introductory poem by Vanita Gupta

Concept note by Roshan Shahani

VANITA GUPTA - BIO- PROFILE 

Vanita Gupta’s practise deals with the minimal, most relevant and perennially compelling forms. She 

confounds us by enlarging the definition of art, conflating genres and pictorial language.She began as a painter, concerned with coordination of movement and balance, juxtaposing existence and non-existence, empty vacuums and solid spaces. If one were to focus on the look of Vanita Gupta’s oeuvre, it would encompass characteristics of sculpture, installation and drawings, interspersed with quotidian and provocative videos that loop in melancholic shifts – testing the plasticity and strength of natural materials – metal, wood or rubber.Vanita was awarded J D 3rd Rockefeller Fellowship Grant, 2014-15 by the Asian Cultural Council, New York, to observe the contemporary art practice in New York, visit museums and galleries and meet curators. She was invited for a residency at ‘Residency Unlimited’ New York, 2015. Vanita’s video work, the “Balloon Trilogy: Liberation”, was featured at the 16th International Media Art WRO Biennale 2015, Wroclaw, Poland. In 2014, she was awarded the Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant, New York. The same year she was at an artist residency in Vermont Studio Centre, USA. In 2012 her video works were selected by Videoholica International Video Art Festival, Varna, Bulgaria. Vanita was also a recipient of the Raza 

Award 2008, India for excellence in art. Vanita’s drawings on large scale canvas were presented in a solo show at Red Church Street Gallery-London (2008) by Pundole art Gallery and Rob Dean Art. In 2006 Gallery Threshold represented her in solo show at Singapore Art Fair’, Vanita’s work transitioned towards sculpture through explorations with balloon and metal, which were exhibited in solo show at Pundole art gallery, Mumbai (2013), Art heritage gallery, Delhi (2015). Her experiments with silicone rubber presented as an architectural scenography of 250 sculptural pieces that was chosen as a special project at India Art Fair, Delhi 2017, Presented by Art Heritage Gallery. Her experience in New York translated into a light+glass sculpture, “Window without a wall, presented in Delhi by Art Heritage Gallery. In 2019 her intervention with architecture which lead to a collaborative work with Architect Naveen Mahantesh which was presented as ‘An act in three scenes’ by Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai. In 2020 her sculpture/videowork/performance was at Waterman’s Gallery, London.

Vanita lives and works between Mumbai and Bangalore.

Exhibition on view till: 10th September 2022

CONTACT

Address: Kalakriti Art Gallery 

Plot 8-2-465/1,

Road No 4, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, Telangana,

India. PIN 500034.

Hours: All Days(11 AM - 7 PM)

E-mail: artsales@kalakriti.in

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