Subodh Gupta: “A small village, around the corner, up in the mountain”

Aparajita Jain and Peter Nagy (co-directors of Nature Morte) are proud to announce the opening of a permanent space for the gallery in Mumbai, occupying the entire third floor of Block A of the historic Dhanraj Mahal at Apollo Bandar. Joining the family of contemporary art galleries in the Colaba neighborhood, our windows look directly upon the Bombay Yacht Club and the new tower of the Taj Mahal Hotel.

Artist: Subodh Gupta
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subodh_Gupta)

The gallery will open with a solo show of new works by the celebrated artist Subodh Gupta, who was born in Bihar in 1964 and is based in the New Delhi suburb of Gurgaon. This is the seventh solo show that Nature Morte is hosting with Gupta in India, and opening our Mumbai space with him is particularly appropriate as we opened our Neeti Bagh space in New Delhi (home to the gallery from 2003 to 2020) with his solo show. Entitled “A small village, around the corner, up in a mountain,” Gupta’s exhibition will include sculptures, paintings, and wall reliefs, all created in the past few years. The works in the exhibition continue with Gupta’s provocative investigations into the associations of common objects, realized as complex free-standing sculptures, wall reliefs, and paintings. Vessels used for cooking that are ubiquitous throughout India remain the artist’s basic vocabulary but a wide range of other objects now join in the mix, most of which continue to allude to the social stratifications of Indian society. Gupta’s use and depictions of these humble objects act as metaphors for the passage of time, our human condition, the bonds of family and community. His titles for many of these works speak of the discoveries and mysteries associated with travel and the theatre of life.

Subodh Gupta’s works have been exhibited in solo exhibitions in prestigious museums and venues such as Monnaie de Paris (2018); Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry, UK (2017); Art Basel, Switzerland (2017), The Smithsonian Museum of Asian Art, Washington DC (2017); National Gallery of Victoria, Australia (2016); Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany (2014); Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland (2013); Kiran Nadar Museum, New Delhi (2012); and the Sara Hildén Art Museum, Tampere, Finland (2011). His mid-career survey, curated by Germano Celant, was held at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi in 2012, where his monumental sculpture “People Tree” is permanently installed on the front lawns, facing the India Gate. Solo shows of his works have been hosted by the gallery Hauser & Wirth in London, New York, and Somerset UK and by the Galeria Continua in San Gimignano, Italy and Paris, France.

 

NATURE MORTE

Founded in New York's East Village in 1982 and closed in 1988, Peter Nagy revived Nature Morte in New Delhi in 1997 as a commercial gallery and a curatorial experiment. In the early years, Nature Morte became

synonymous in India with challenging and experimental forms of art; championing conceptual, lens-based, and installation genres and representing a generation of Indian artists who went on to international exposure. Today, Nature Morte is the leader in its field in India with increasing visibility around the world, representing many of the most accomplished contemporary artists working in India today, fostering the most promising new talents, and introducing the works of international artists to the country.

The gallery now has two exhibition spaces in New Delhi: the main gallery is located at the Dhan Mill complex in the Chhatarpur area, in a 400-square-meter space on the ground floor at the center of the complex. In addition, a secondary gallery is in the neighborhood of Vasant Vihar, measuring 70-square-meters and used for smaller shows. The Vasant Vihar space also houses the gallery’s offices, private viewing rooms, and expanded storage. Mumbai is not the first space for Nature Morte outside of New Delhi: previously the gallery has maintained multiple branches in various locations: Berlin (2008-2014), Kolkatta (with BosePacia from 2006-2009), and at the Oberoi Gurgaon hotel (2011-2014).

The artists represented by the gallery are active throughout the world and their works have been exhibited in and acquired by many of the most prestigious museums: in New York (Museum of Modern Art, P.S. One, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim); London (Tate Modern, Hayward Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, Courtauld Institute, The Serpentine Gallery); Paris (Centre Pompidou, La Monnaie, Musee Guimet, Palais de Tokyo); Tokyo (Mori Art Museum); Chicago (The Art Institute, Museum of Contemporary Art); Hong Kong (M+); Venice (La Biennale, Fondazione Prada, Punta della Dogana, Palazzo Grassi); Australia (National Gallery inCanberra, Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney), among many others. Nature Morte was the first gallery from India to be included in the most important international art fairs (starting with The Armory Show in New York in 2005) and has participated in Art Basel, Fiac Paris, Art Basel Miami Beach, Paris Photo, Art Dubai, Tokyo Art Fair, Art Basel Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi Art Fair, and Frieze London and New York, among others. Nature Morte has also organized projects and exhibitions with international artists coming to India and combining their works with those of Indian artists to foster cross-cultural communications. In addition to its own programming, Nature Morte has collaborated with institutions in India such as the British Council, the Alliance Francais, the Sanskriti Foundation, the India International Centre, the India Habitat Centre, Max Mueller Bhavan, the Italian Culture Institute, Khoj International Artists Association, the Kochi/Muziris Biennial, Pro Helvetia, the National Gallery of Modern Art in both New Delhi and Mumbai, the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum and the CSMVS Museum (formerly the Prince of Wales Museum) in Mumbai, and the Museum of Art &Photography (MAP) in Bangalore.

 

The Owners

 

C (born 1959, Bridgeport, CT, USA) was co-founder (along with Alan Belcher) of Gallery Nature Morte in New York's East Village in 1982, where it continued until 1988. Nature Morte represented artists such as Steven Parrino, Gretchen Bender, Not Vital, Ken Lum, Julia Wachtel, and Jennifer Bolande, in addition to mounting solo project shows of important artists such as Vito Acconci, Louise Lawler, Sherrie Levine, Keith Sonnier, Ross Bleckner, Richard Pettibone, Allan McCollum, and Laurie Simmons. The third gallery to open in what was then New York’s frontier art neighborhood, Nature Morte exhibited the work of many artists early in their careers including Robert Gober, Haim Steinbach, James Welling, and Cady Noland.

 

A graduate of Parsons School of Design in New York (1981) with a BFA in Communication Design, Nagy's art was represented in the 1980s by International With Monument in the East Village and later with Jay Gorney Modern Art in Soho. Solo exhibitions of his art in the latter half of the 1980s happened in Los Angeles (Margo Leavin Gallery), Cologne (Jablonka Galerie), Milan (Studio Guenzani), London (Edward Totah Gallery) and Paris (Galerie Georges-Phillipe and Natalie Vallois) and his works have been included in important group exhibitions in museums such as the Whitney Museum and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and Tate Modern in London. Currently, he is represented by Magenta Plains in New York, who collaborated with Jeffrey Deitch to mount a survey exhibition of his black-and-white works made in New York from 1982 to 1992 at Deitch’s New York gallery space in 2020. His art works are in the collections of the Whitney Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, and the Brooklyn Museum in New York and the Menil Collection of Houston, among other institutions. Based in New Delhi since 1992, Nagy’s writings on contemporary art have been published in a wide variety of publications, from international magazines to museum and gallery catalogs.

 

Aparajita Jain (born 1980, Kolkata, India) is the co-director of Nature Morte since 2013, when she bought a controlling interest in the gallery, assimilating into its roster some of the artists represented by Seven Arts Limited, the gallery she previously owned that focussed on discovering young talent, among whom were Asim Waqif and Martand Khosla.

Aparajita, along with her husband Gaurav Jain, was a founding/council member of Harvard University's South Asia Arts Council, representing Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, established to connect South Asia's curators, museum administrators, artists, and art educators with Harvard faculty. She was listed as one of 50 iconic Indian gallerists by Platform magazine and played an active role in the Vogue Women's Empowerment Campaign. She was listed as one among eight influential women in the Indian art world by ARTSY, one of 30 influential women in the art world by ELLE magazine, and amongst the top 100 creative by Harper’s Bazaar. She was recently awarded Entrepreneur of the Year by FICCI FLO for her contribution to art and is currently on the advisory board of Indian Council for Cultural Relations. She has anchored, along with Peter Nagy, a television series called Art Insider on NDTV.

In 2010, Aparajita Jain founded The Saat Saath Arts Foundation, envisioning it as a not-for-profit initiative meant to foster a platform for creative dialogue between Indian artists and the international art world. The foundation has received international acclaim for its Curatorial Research Grant program, conceived along with Diana Campbell, artistic director of the Dhaka Art Summit, which endows international curators with resources to extend their research on the Indian art scene, thus nurturing a vital exchange of knowledge between India and the rest of the world. The first recipients of the grant, Laura Raicovich (Director of Global Initiatives, Creative Time, NY), Mari Spirito (Founding Director of Protocinema, Istanbul/New York), Lauren Cornell (Curator, 2015 Triennial, Digital Projects and Museum as Hub), and Dr. Helen Pheby (Senior Curator, Yorkshire Sculpture Park,UK) visited India in 2013 and 2014. The foundation helped customise their itineraries to suit their research interests,while providing them with resources to ensure an efficient and productive trip. In 2015, Catherine David (Deputy Director, Centre Pompidou, Paris) and Dieter Roelstraete (at the time on the team of dOCUMENTA14) were awarded the grant to nurture their ongoing research on contemporary Indian artists. The foundation also supports exhibitions by Indian artists, most recently responsible for the mounting of Jitish Kallat's poetic piece, Covering

Letter, at the CSMVS (formerly the Prince of Wales Museum) in Mumbai and the exhibition "Matter," featuring the work of Bharti Kher at Vancouver Art Gallery. SSA launched India’s first public Sculpture Park for contemporary art in collaboration with the Government of Rajasthan in 2017, where it continues inside the Nahargarh Fort of Jaipur today.

January 19th to March 9th, 2024

 Gallery Hours: Monday through Saturday, 11am to 7pm. Closed on Sundays.

---------------

Mumbai

Dhanraj Mahal, Block A, Third Floor Apollo Bandar, Colaba, Mumbai 400 001

Monday through Saturday: 11am to 7pm

Website: www.naturemorte.com

Instagram: @naturemorte_delhi

Facebook: Nature Morte

X: @Nature Morte

“MEDITATION” Art An Instrument Solo Show of Paintings By Renowned artist Sanjay Sable in Jehangir

Meditation – Art An Instrument

Recent work of a versatile renowned contemporary artist, Sanjay Sable in Acrylic colours on canvas will be showcased in a solo art exhibition in Jehangir Art Gallery, AC – 2, M.G. Road, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400 001 from 23 to 29 January 2024. It will be open for free public viewing there daily between 11 am to 7 pm.  This exhibition will reveal the outcome of the painstaking efforts taken by the artist to incorporate subtle nuances of Meditation – as an instrument in his creative endeavours in order to enlighten the viewers with newer perspectives of the thematic peculiarities in the relevant arenas of visual fine arts. This will be his 5th solo art exhibition in Jehangir Art Gallery.

Artist: Sanjay Sable

This show will be inaugurated on 23rd January 2024 at 4pm by Chief Guest Mr. Chandrashekhar Sudhakar Deshmukh Sectional Engineer, High Court Section, P.W.D. Mumbai. Guest of Honour Mr. Vishwanath Sabale Dean of Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, Mrs. Hina Bhatt Founder/Director: Hina Bhatt Art Ventires / Hina Bhatt Art Foundation, Nitin Jadia Art Collector.

Sanjay Sable hails from Osmanabad (now called Dharashiva).  He had his art education at Chitrakala Mahavidyalaya Latur, Abhinava Kala Mahavidyalay. Pune and Sir J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai. He has been a faculty member at Chitrakala Mahavidyalay, Nashik since 2003. He has showcased his earlier thematic works in various art galleries at Mumbai, Pune, New Delhi, Alibaug, Chandigarh, Nashik, Kolkata, Aurangabad etc., and received overwhelming public response and appreciations for his work.  He is a proud recipient of several prizes, awards and appreciations from prestigious art promotional institutions at Pune, Mumbai, Nagpur, Dhule, Amritsar, Ratnagiri etc.  His works are in proud collection of many renowned art collectors in India and abroad.  An active participant in several art camps, workshops organised by reputed art promotional institutions all over the country, he has also showcased his thematic work in some International art exhibitions at Dubai, Bangladesh, Washington – USA etc., and earned warm public appreciations from the art fraternity for his thematic work.  He has presented 54 works in this exhibition for public viewing and the largest sizes of artworks in this show are of 15ft x 4.5 ft and 12ft x 6ft.

 Acrylic on canvas

The present series in Acrylic colours on canvas illustrate s his transformative thematic perceptions on Meditation – Art An Instrument in the unique expressive style and techniques. He has assimilated various transformations in his style and techniques during the experimentations at different stages and ultimately incorporated their transformed versions in his work in order to render perfection in visual perspectives and various forms of ingredients to accommodate the desired visual effects in them. As a result, his works in these norms and perspectives do represent his newer aesthetic prerogative and    conceptualization along with the technical excellence achieved in artistically and aesthetically adorning the works with desired visual parameters in the apt perspectives of fine art.  His paintings reveal an outcome of the total human involvement in his work with free and relaxed mind that is totally unbiased and unprejudised. The fruit of meditation of an artist in achieving unbiased results and outcomes from his endeavors bear true testimony to his sincerity, total dedication to work and an inherent urge to adorn the outcomes with the desired perspectives of divine effects of sublimity, rhythm and ecstasy in the apt arenas of visual fine arts.  With these instruments of meditation along with an experience of about 2 decades in rendering his yeomen services propagation of visual fine arts, Sanjay Sable has created and presented this unique series of artwork that truly illustrates his complete command over the medium and techniques used as well as his positive and optimistic as well as rational approach to incorporate numerous supportive ingredients on a divine and spiritual plane in the work so as to enhance its visual glory and picturesqueness in the desired perspectives. 

Acrylic on canvas

All works in this series in abstract forms reveal his sound and firm mindset and an eagerness to enlighten all with the newer perspectives of his transformative forms of art work which have the peculiar effect of divine sublimity, eternity and rhythmic ecstasy in them at strategic arenas. 

 Press Release

From: 23rd to 29th January 2024, “MEDITATION” Art An Instrument

Solo Show of Paintings, By Renowned artist Sanjay Sable

VENUE:

Jehangir Art Gallery161-B, M.G. Road, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400 001 Timing: 11am to 7pm

Layered Meanings - Ten leading Contemporary Artists Gallery Beyond Curated by Vibhuraj Kapoor

Layered Meanings - Ten leading Contemporary  Artists 

 

“The Legacy” An Exhibition of Photographs by veteran photojournalist Mukesh Parpiani

Legendary photojournalist Mukesh Parpiani’s need to chronicle the unusual began at a very young age when he first began to help his brother. His elder brother who was fascinated by photography, had a darkroom at home, and Mukesh used to wash his prints. Gradually, he began to work towards achieving this dream. He enrolled at the Pillai School of Photography (1969-1970), after which, he worked in wedding and travel photography. During this brief stint, he realised that his city has so many intermingled narratives to offer, whose ever-evolving nature is simply waiting to be chronicled.

Mukesh Parpiani

In 1981, Russi Karanjia, the Editor of The Daily, a morning newspaper in Bombay, offered him a job as their photographer.At The Daily, Parpiani photographed many political leaders and celebrities. Due to this, he became a familiar name in the journalism fraternity. Viveck Goenka, the Chairman and Managing Director of The Indian Express, who had been following Parpiani’s work and career, saw potential in his vision. Eventually, he decided to recruit Parpiani as the photo editor of The Indian Express’ seventeen editions. During his time there, he covered historical events of significance nationally and internationally.Mid-Day, an afternoon tabloid, who noticed Parpiani’s work as a photojournalist and editor, decided to offer him a job as the photo editor. It was the beginning of many things - the turn of the century as well as the tectonic shift of photographic technologies. Tariq Ansari, the Managing Director of the newspaper, gave Parpiani the liberty to develop the department as he needed. Parpiani, upon recognising the dawn of DSLRs, requested Ansari to acquire them for the photo department. Under his tutelage, many young individuals became renowned documentary photographers and photojournalists.

Parpiani curated his first photo exhibition in March 1989 at Piramal Art Gallery of NCPA. His penchant for curating photography exhibition gave him the opportunity to continue even after his retirement at the age of 58.

In 2009, Khushroo Suntook, Chairman of the National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), offered him to head the Piramal Art Gallery. Suntook had been familiar with Parpiani’s work and entrusted him with the running of the gallery. For 14 years, Parpiani has single-handedly nurtured and educated the next generation of photographers. He has organised over 250 talks, workshops, exhibitions, and seminars to disseminate photography.

Parpiani has touched countless lives with his photographs while reforming countless more as a mentor. His strengths and humanity lie in his ability to mould the way we perceive Bombay, while his sensitivity and perceptiveness conquer the hearts of those fortunate individuals who have, knowingly or coincidentally, crossed paths with him 

Press Release

From: 17th to 30th January 2024

“The Legacy” An Exhibition of Photographs by veteran photojournalist Mukesh Parpiani

 

VENUE:

Jehangir Art Gallery,

Terrace Gallery,

Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400 001.

Timing: 11am to 7pm

Contact: +91 8108003311

Transient Landscape_Retrospective Show of veteran artist Late Yashwant Shirwadkar

When we first look at Yashwant Shriwadkar's painting, we are drawn to a vibrant, expansive canvas, that capture the fleeting light and ever-changing atmosphere in nature. The tactile strokes play with the viewer's senses, delivering an effect of spontaneity and effortlessness while masking carefully constructed compositions. Each time you look at his canvas, a new feature appears, as if purposefully hidden by the artist under the masterfully blended colors. Deep yellow flashed in the night, pastel blue fading into midday, and pink melting in the morning sky. 

Veteran artist Late Yashwant Shirwadkar   

Shirwadkar perceived our world quite differently. For him, the seemingly mundane sights became compelling experiences,as a cascading waterfall or a majestic mountain peak. He simply painted the things he saw and felt, surrendering to the experiences and situations of the moment. He had no interest in depicting history, mythology, or the lives of great individuals. Instead, he attempted to capture how a landscape or an object appeared to him at a particular instant. Varanasi held a special fascination for him, leading to more than 18 visits to the mystical city. The gentle waters of the Ganges, the boat rides, the morning worship at the Ghats, as well as the majestic architecture has been aptly arrested by the artist. His artistic journey also encompassed landscapes from Kerala, Rajasthan, Kashmir, and Goa, along with large commission canvases like Hyde Park and the Gateway of India. 

Painting - RAJASTHAN - 36 x 60 in

Shirwadkar's approach of using a palette knife and building up layers in oil-on-canvas aligns with the textural and vibrant qualities often associated with impressionistic art. It's a technique that can evoke a sense of movement and atmosphere in landscape paintings. Each layer was painted on top of the previous without waiting for the earlier layer to dry completely. Rather than worrying about the technical accuracy of the painting, he went with the flow of his mood and created a sense of movement in the work. Seeing him work on the colors with palette knife is a sight to behold, almost beyond words to describe. The colors seemed to merge one into another, slowly shifting: yellow to orange and then red, and at times blue slowly turned into green and vice versa. 

Color and light played a profound role in Shriwadkar's painting process. Before painting on the canvas, he made several sketches on site, in the open, using sunlight as the only source of light. By using low chroma variations and rendering shadows in color, the artist skillfully captured the fleeting nuances of natural light.He also tried to emphasize the passage of time in his works. The paint was left unmixed, producing a contrast between strokes that didn’t blend completely on the canvas but appeared so to the eye. The deliberate choice to forgo intricate details in favor of bold paint strokes added to the overall impact of portraying the essence of the subject. 

Shirwadkar's oil-on-canvases garnered widespread acclaim, resonating not just with Indian audiences but captivating hearts globally. He received invitations to prestigious international platforms, such as sponsored exhibitions and notable events like the 42nd Anniversary Leadership Summit in Washington in 2017, showcasing the artist's recognition on a global scale. His path in visual art, however faced several obstacles, stemming from initial resistance within his family against pursuing a career in the fine arts. Undeterred by opposition, his passion for painting prevailed, leading him to stand firm on his decision despite strong familial objections. Eventually, Shirwadkarwent on to study at the renowned Sir J. J. School of Arts in Mumbai, marking a crucial step in his artistic journey. 

Painting- SEASCAPE - 36 x 60 in

Creating art was a form of Sadhana—a daily practice, for the artist. He painted regularly, shaping a distinctive style that involved the use of a palette knife and occasionally unconventional mediums such as a shaving blade. Even after achievingmastery over his technique, he continued to paint with awareness, discipline and intention of growth. Like a spiritual practitioner (sadhaka) heworked to achieve control over ego, connect deeper, and realign with his’s inner self. 

Spanning over 45 years, Shirwadkar’s prolific artistic career was marked by an impressive legacy of around 100 solo exhibitions and over 260 group shows both in India and internationally. Through this extensive body of work, he not only established a prosperous art career but also earned a prominent reputation in the art world before his passing in 2020.The enduring allure of his works, continue to generate curiosity and awe in the younger generations of artists as well as viewers. 

It is interesting to note that in his inaugural solo exhibition in 1977, Shirwadkar showcased watercolorseascapes. Employing a technique of blending watercolors to achieve a bleed and bloom effect, he crafted misty seascapes with soft, faded edges. Carefully playing with light contrast, he diluted and highlighted specific areas while leaving others dry, inviting light into the artwork. This technique skillfully evoked a vaporous atmosphere, adding a unique dimension to his early watercolors. 

Shirwadkar's approach to painting landscapes went beyond mere depictions of sites or anonymous figures. His focus delved into capturing the enveloping warmth and color of sunlight, not merely the physical surroundings. His art aimed to encapsulate the transformative impact of sunlight on the specific moments, highlighting the soul of the scene and its evolution through time and atmospheric changes.

Transient Landscape

-          By Shraddha Purnaye – Curator and Writer

 

From: 9^th to 15^th January 2024

Retrospective Show of veteran artist Late Yashwant Shirwadkar

VENUE:

Jehangir Art Gallery

Auditorium Hall

161-B, M.G. Road,

Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400 001

Timing: 11am to 7pm

MGW 2024 | Areez Katki: As this melts on your knee at TARQ

About the Exhibition

The team at TARQ takes immense pleasure to introduce Areez Katki’s solo show titled As this chin melts on your knee. The exhibition presents a body of work created between 2022 and 2023, across the mediums of textile, paper and sculpture, delving deeper into Katki’s research and unfolding narratives. Exploring the tactile and sensuous nature of textiles has been a recurring focus in Katki’s practice over the past decade. As he gathers and repurposes old, found, and sometimes remnants of newer textiles, one can observe how each piece of cloth carries associations with material memory. These connections can be familial and deeply personal or, at times, reveal more political and historical threads.

Areez Katki Dream Valves, 2023 Kaolinite clay, raku, Caspian Sea sand Individual parts varied, total upon installation (base): 12.2 x 16.5 x 6.2 inches  Courtesy of Areez Katki and TARQ 

Through inquisitive research, Katki began studying the contents of Tablet IV from the Epic of  Gilgamesh, an ancient Mesopotamian odyssey. The narrative of the poem serves as the conceptual  tableau for Katki’s Oneiria series of embroidered panels, as well as their painted studies. Inspired by  Gilgamesh’s journey across an apocalyptic dreamscape with Enkidu, Katki exercised his own psychoanalytic dream-keeping journal where his anxieties of loss, death, and fear unfurled. 

Transcribing, illustrating, and embroidering these visions on khadi panels, Katki reveals his own surreal, often cinematic, visions interlaced with anxieties from a queer antecedent. Five Fragments, which precede the larger Oneiria panels, can be viewed as the artist’s early experiments with using Sumerian cuneiform—the language that the Epic of Gilgamesh was originally inscribed in four millennia ago. These panels are composed with cuneiform symbols which the artist has studied extensively, to form a glossary of unique phrases, made up of simple words that these compositions evoke both linguistically and pictorially. Extending his research around ancient Indigenous histories, Katki has closely examined what remains of Achaemenid art over the past seven years. The process began with an exploration of Persepolitan archives and propagated into a series of nine diptych works on paper. Eliminating scientific and archaeological precision, the works cite artifacts, architectural motifs and subjects from a destroyed and pilfered past, to now reframe and reimagine these histories in a series of enlivened polychromatic compositions.

Areez Katki Anointed 3: Saffron, 2023 Mixed media on Arches cotton paper 12.2 x 12.2 inches Copyright: Copyright Areez Katki, 2023

The newest addition to Katki’s visual language is his venture into three-dimensional earth-based forms where Kaolinite clay, a material sourced and processed from his mother’s garden in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, behaves as a cultural marker of geographic locationality. Katki’s fascination with archaeology and materials from the quotidian, often found and restored, has seen him venture into this arena of excavation and restoration that attempt to reframe the practice of archaeology as a pedagogy rooted in care.

Areez Katki Three clever boys, 2023 Watercolour on Arches cotton paper Top: 11.69 x 8.26 inches Bottom: 5.9 x 11.81 inches Diptych Copyright: Copyright Areez Katki, 2023

As articulated by Adwait Singh, who has written an essay accompanying the show, “Throughout the current body of work, we notice a use of history that can be termed queer. Katki deliberately hones  these unexpected and at times irreverent modes of accessing and mobilising the past perhaps as a  corrective to the differential resistance that the discipline has developed over the course of its established use. This resistance can prove particularly prohibitive to those in the margins who aspire to get their stories admitted into the high annals of history. Faced with systematic exclusions produced by inherent resistances that are as unforgiving as they are relentless, Katki seems to have come up with a reworked mandate: throw a wrench in history.”

Artist: Areez Katki 

About the Artist

Areez Katki's practice dwells around conceptual and material-based intersections which survey the phenomenology of postcolonial identities. Fragmentations of a migrant identity can be traced through objects and material culture, in the recesses of collective memories that host spiritual cosmologies and queering orientations. These relational embodiments and correspondences with materiality are underpinned in Sara Ahmed’s statement that, “Objects extend bodies, certainly, but they also seem to measure the competence of bodies and their capacity to ‘find their way’.” (‘The Orient and Other Others’ Queer Phenomenology 2006).

Navigating across disciplines and pedagogies, Katki’s practice looks toward generating deeper understandings of such affective material. His work also tends to pose questions around conditions such as hybridity, particularly through embodiments that have been subject to rupture. While investigative acts of gathering and conservation run throughout Katki’s nearly decade-long art practice, his writing contextualizes the repurposing of historic material through ongoing engagements with storied narratives and biomythography. Both practices examine the historic and the personal, using gestures which survey the nature of (our) relationships with sites and embodiments.

Katki's work has been exhibited across Oceania, Asia, North America and Europe. It is held in numerous public and private collections internationally. Katki has been invited to present a significant new body of work in ‘Personal Structures’ at the 60th Venice Biennale in 2024. He was recently appointed the Aotearoa NZ visual artist in residence at Künstlerhaus Bethanien Berlin for 2024–2025

As this chin melts on your knee

Areez Katki

TARQ

Preview: Thursday, 11th January 2024 | 5:00 – 9:00 pm 

Mumbai Gallery Weekend continues from Friday, 12th January – Sunday, 14th January, 11:00 am -

8:00 pm on all three days, Show continues till 24th February 2024 

Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 11:00 am to 6:30 pm 

For further enquiries contact: press@tarq.in | +91 98213 32108  #ArtistsAtTARQ.

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tarqmumbai/ Instagram: @tarqmumbai Twitter: @tarqtweets

Layered Meanings - Ten leading Contemporary Artists

 Beyond the dictionary definitions of 'Painting' and 'Sculpture', is something that the artists define themselves. They refuse to be tamed by the limitations of the mediums, and device their own sense-making strategies. From Collage to wall-mounted sculpture, they challenge the hegemony of 'oil on canvas'. This show enumerates 10 such artists and their works, diverse from each other but definitive in their own way.

Curiously, the chronologically first works in this show are oils on canvas! 

Sunil Gawde, back in the days when he was known as an abstract painter, sought the 'real' physical dimension of the paint he used. Eventually, it seems, he made the thick paint smile! Gawde's thick paint was a reminder that resulted from his action-oriented way to deal with his canvas. He first spread his paint on his canvas evenly, but was quick to unstable it with a large spatula. These works represent an important phase in the artist's career, before he took to conceptual works.

Santana Gohain, builds spaces within a given surface with many smaller surfaces. The space-defining role of colour is negated in her works. The works are as much about austerity of expression as about abundance of mark-making.

Perhaps Vanita Gupta explored the same path of subdued expression in her large drawings but here, her works with strands of torn paper ruminate on the very existence of mark-making, the senility of paper. No wonder that Vanita, who is also a poet, took to installation art only after these works.

Another artist who has passed his mid-career stage- H. G. Arunkumar, is here with his works that are now one of a kind: Arunkumar chose to do newspaper collages, but went on to draw over it and also added another layer of collaged images onto it, before treating these works for longevity.

Pooja Iranna's works are, if we may say- 'De-Collage', as they refer to one image painted on the jigsaw-like pieces. A mural-like quality is inherent in these works, after which Pooja turned to sculptures.

Himanshu Joshi explores every possibility of wall-mountable three-dimensional works, while using the element of light in his meticulously crafted paper-fold works. Recently, Himanshu has also turned to photo-collages with light. 

Puneet Kaushik is known for his choice of colour as much as his use of beads and elements of embroidery. His wall-mounted works radiate the richness of his material, and at a closer look, evoke a melancholic joy.

Abhijit Pathak treats pieces of cloth as his terrain and marks his mindscapes over them. The transparency he maintains is flawless. Pathak provides a viewer with maps to her/his dreams.

Nilesh Kinkale, on the other hand, celebrates the ground reality; literally. He chooses a unique surface for art-making: Asphalt, commonly used for our roads. Nilesh's practice for nearly two and half decades has been based on celebrating the everyday, as many artists from Mumbai (since Prabhakar Barwe) have done. Yet, Nilesh works on his own terms and takes ample liberty to go beyond drawing-and-painting the everyday object. These objects are now embedded in Asphalt.

Smita Kinkale reconciles the mundane material with fantasy landscapes. She bends, burns and blurs plastic sheets for her wall mounted works. The potential of her works to challenge the aesthetic notions is acknowledged internationally.

What binds these works is the quest for meanings. While these works may not send some explicit messages to a viewer who is eager to 'get it and go'; the artists have explored possibilities of their surfaces and materials to an extent that they know what it means to handle such a surface. The term 'layered meaning', is typically used in postmodern parlance to denote the diversity in decipherment. The artists, through their diverse approaches and choices, have all deciphered the strengths of their choice.

Abhijeet Tamhane

Mumbai. December 2023

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Layered Meanings - Ten leading Contemporary  Artists 

Gallery Beyond

Curated by Vibhuraj Kapoor

Abhijit Pathak / Arunkumar H.G / Himanshu Joshi / Pooja Iranna / Puneet Kaushik /

Nilesh Kinkale / Santana Gohain  / Smita Kinkale/ Sunil Gawde  / Vanita Gupta /

Date: 9th to 15 th  Jan 2024  Time: 11am to 7pm 

Venue: Jehangir art gallery

AC -2 , Kala Ghoda, Fort 400 001, Mumbai - India

www.gallerybeyond.in

#jehangirartgallery #vibhurajkappor #gallerybeyond #kalaghodamumbai #mumbaiartweekend

Layered Meaning - Curated by Vibhuraj Kapoor

 

"Layered Meaning "

Curated by Vibhuraj Kapoor

Ten leading Contemporary  Artists 

Abhijit Pathak

Arunkumar H.G

Himanshu Joshi

Pooja Iranna

Puneet Kaushik

Nilesh Kinkale

Santana Gohain 

Smita Kinkale

Sunil Gawde 

Vanita Gupta

Date: 9th to 15 th  Jan 2024  Time: 11am to 7pm 

Venue: Jehangir art gallery

AC -2 , Kala Ghoda, Fort 400 001, Mumbai - India

www.gallerybeyond.in

#jehangirartgallery #vibhurajkappor #gallerybeyond #kalaghodamumbai #mumbaiartweekend 

mumbaigalleryweekend

 

Yellow: Weekend