Artist Abhishek Chaudhary

Abhishek Chaudhary is an experimental, mixed media and collage artist based in New Delhi and he is but a nasty modem router teething on glorified images from the past to shake the present. His work explores the digital world, Internet aesthetics, gender, popular culture and re-contextualizing classical works of art/popular cultural references. His voice is witty, observant and is not scared to be provocative. There is always constant questioning, negotiation and understanding of our world right now.

Abhishek's work was recently featured alongwith other experimental artists at Galleries Lafayette, Paris and is also a part of the Wrong Digital Art Biennale 2013. More of his work, interests and interactions happen on his Tumblr, www.rangeenmakhee.tumblr.com.

Drop by.

Jitish Kallat | The Hour of the Day of the month of the Season

Anish Kapoor in Berlin

Kapoor in Berlin is the first comprehensive exhibition of Anish Kapoor in Berlin. The Indian-born British sculptor Anish Kapoor is known for his spectacular sculptures and installations, such as the Cloud Gate in Millennium Park, Chicago. For his exhibition at Martin-Gropius-Bau he uses the whole ground floor of the building, including the atrium. In this video, Anish Kapoor talks about the concept of the show and specific works, such as the huge kinetic installation in the atrium of the Martin-Gropius-Bau. Video by Frantisek Zachoval.

endocrine films | indian artist video portraits

Artist/Director Vaibhav Raj Shah documented young Indian Contemporary Artists T Venkanna, Chandni Vora, Sandeep Kumar Singh and more as part of artist video portraits. The series has been titled 'The Adjective' and produced by ENDOCRINE FILMS. For more, checkout his facebook page -- https://www.facebook.com/EndocrineFilms  

The Music Project : Adil and Vasundhara

Adil Manuel and Vasundhara Vidalur are a Jazz/Funk/Soul duo based in New Delhi. The duo got together in January 2009 and has put together numerous collaborative performances in India and abroad. Vasundhara sings Gospel, RnB , Funk, Jazz and Soul. Since 2004, she has staged over 70 concerts and a musical with Artistes Unlimited

Adil Manuel is an active musician in the Delhi circuit and a power-house guitarist. Adil has been playing professionally for over 10 years with bands like Asphyxia, MRP and Olio and the Rock Opera.

Adil and Vasundhara also spearhead a collaborative Jazz - RnB outfit Adil Manuel : GuitarsVasundhara Vidalur : VocalsSaurabh Suman : Bass

The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project | Enter Guerrilla Films

'Your script is larger than logic!'

Interview with Mr. Vaas coming soon.....

VOCTRONICA | British Council

India Art Collective

The online fair begins on November 19th, 2011.

Art of Collecting Art from Burgundy Art Pvt. Ltd. on Vimeo.

Khoya Khoya Chand | Suman Sridhar

Photo - Shiv Ahuja

The song that MASI was eagerly waiting to be released in the public domain is finally out! A timeless classic gets revamped and re-jazzed as 'The Bartender' album serves 'Khoya Khoya Chand' from Shaitan -- shaken, not stirred! The remix version of Mikey McCleary's Khoya khoya Chand in Shaitan was sung by Suman Shridhar.

BOLLYWOOD POSTERS | A dead art form

Bollywood previously employed over three hundred local artists to paint temporary art for the cinema. Now only one remains. Here is their story.

Paris-Delhi-Bombay | Contemporary Indian Art at Centre Pompidou

Paris-Delhi-Bombay is an exciting show on contemporary India, up at the Centre Pompidou in Paris until September 19th. The exhibition explores contemporary India through the eyes of both Indian and French artists.

Paris - Delhi - Bombay... by centrepompidou

INDIAN HIGHWAY IV | Lyon, France

Indian Highway IV

at

MAC LYON

February 24 to July 31, 2011

In the form of a road movie across 3 continents (Europe, South America, Asia), each stage along the Indian Highway is the occasion for a totally new episode. After London, Oslo and Herning, Lyon staged the fourth episode on 2000 m2, the exhibition presents a panorama of contemporary art in India and more than 30 artists.

Artists - Ayisha Abraham, Ravi Agarwal, Sarnath Banerjee, Hemali Bhuta, Nikhil Chopra, Desire Machine Collective, Sheela Gowda, Sakshi Gupta, Shilpa Gupta, Subodh Gupta, N.S. Harsha, Abhishek Hazra, Shanay Jhaveri, Jitish Kallat, Amar Kanwar, Bharti Kher, Bose Krishnamachari, Nalini Malani, Jagannath Panda, Prajakta Potnis, Raqs Media Collective (avec Debkamal Ganguly, Ruchir Joshi, M. R. Rajan, Priya Sen, Surabhi Sharma (avec la collaboration de Gautam Singh), Kavita Pai / Hansa Thapliyal et Vipin Vijay pour Steps Away from Oblivion), Tejal Shah, Valay Shende, Sudarshan Shetty, Dayanita Singh, Sumakshi Singh, Studio Mumbai Architects & Michael Anastassiades, Kiran Subbaiah, Ashok Sukumaran & Shaina Anand, Thukral & Tagra, Hema Upadhyay

Curators: Julia Peyton-Jones, Hans-Ulrich Obrist, Gunnar B. Kvaran, Thierry Raspail.

Raghu Rai | Magnum Photographer

A JOURNEY OF A MOMENT IN TIME

a slide show and an Interactive Session with Raghu Rai

on 9th March 2011

Opening of the exhibition after the

Interactive Session at 5.30 pm at Dr. M. S. Randhawa Auditorium

Punjab Arts Council, Sector 16, Chandigarh

Exhibition open daily from 10 to 13 March Between 11 am and 7 pm

Raghu Rai was born in the Punjab in 1942, qualified as civil engineer, started photography at the age of 23 in 1965. He has been at the fore front of photography in India for more than forty years. He joined The Statesman newspaper as their chief photographer (1966 to 1976), and was then Picture Editor with Sunday—a weekly news magazine published from Calcutta (1977 to 1980).

In 1971, impressed by Rai’s exhibition at Gallery Delpire, Paris, the legendary photographer Henri Cartier Bresson nominated him to Magnum Photos, the world’s most prestigious photographer’s cooperative. Rai took over as Picture Editor-Visualiser-Photographer of India Today, India’s leading news magazine in its formative years from 1982.

He worked on special issues and designs, contributing trailblazing picture essays on social, political and cultural themes of the decade (1982 to 1991) which became the talking point of the magazine.

He was awarded the ‘Padmashree’ in 1971, In 1992 he was awarded “Photographer of the Year” in the United States for the story “Human Management of Wildlife in India” published in National Geographic. Recently he has been conferred the award of Officier des Arts et des Lettres by the French Government.His photo essays have appeared in many of the world’s leading magazines and newspapers - including Time, Life, GEO, The New York Times, Sunday Times, Newsweek, Vogue, GQ, D magazine, Marie Claire, The Independent and the New Yorker.

He has been an adjudicator for World Press Photo Contest, Amsterdam and UNESCO’s International Photo Contest for many times. He has done extensive work on the photo documentation of 1984 Bhopal Gas Tragedy and its continuing effects on the lives of gas victims under a special assignment from Greenpeace International. This documentation was compiled into a book with 3 sets of exhibitions traveling in Europe, America, Australia, India and South East Asia from 2002 to 2005, which created greater awareness about the tragedy and bringing relief to many survivors. A special exhibition and picture book was created on India and Mexico in year 2002 in which his work was published along with two renowned photographers Graciela Iturbide (Mexico) and Sebastiao Salagado (France). His works have been published in major books done by Magnum Photos including Exhibitions.

In the last thirty five years, Rai has specialized in extensive coverage of India and has produced more than 30 books including Raghu Rai’s India – Reflections in Colour and Reflections in BW, The Indians – Portraits from Album,Varanasi – Portrait of a civilization, Bombay / Mumbai, and Calcutta / Kolkata.

Also read an essay by writer Siddharth Dhanvant Sanghvi

Reena Kallat | Labyrinth of Absences

Reena Saini Kallat: “Labyrinth of Absences”
Opening on Tuesday, March 8th from 6 to 8 pm.
The exhibition continues to Saturday, March 26th


PRESS RELEASE

Reena Saini Kallat: “Labyrinth of Absences”
Opening on Tuesday, March 8th from 6 to 8 pm.
The exhibition continues to Saturday, March 26th

Nature Morte is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by Reena Saini Kallat, entitled “Labyrinth of Absences”, after a gap of six years since her last solo at the gallery.

Reena Kallat’s practice spans painting, photography, video, sculpture and installation, often incorporating multiple mediums into a single work. She frequently works with officially recorded or registered names of people, objects, and monuments that are lost or have disappeared without a trace, only to get listed as forgotten statistics. One of the recurrent motifs in her work is the rubber stamp, used both as an object and an imprint, signifying the bureaucratic apparatus which both confirms and obscures identities.

Among the works in the exhibition will be a set of new paintings that depict monument sites in Delhi. 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 Line Of Control 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, the artist projects the text of the Preamble of the Constitution of India translated into Braille on to the surface of a large, opened book.

India Perspectives | Free Webzine on Indian Contemporary Arts

India Perspectives is a very rich and informative magazine published in 17 languages by the Ministry of External Affairs combining the best of culture and tradition of India. We devote this special issue of India Perspectives to an exploration of India’s contemporary art landscape. It has come about through a wonderful collaboration that we established with Delhi’s famed National Gallery of Modern Art

Open publication - Free publishing

Geeta Kapur & Vivan Sundaram | India's First Art Archive

AAA Symposium-

The Subject of Archives

10am – 6pm, Saturday 26 February 2011
School of Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Asia Art Archive presents 'The Subject of Archives', a one-day symposium hosted by the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) on 26 February 2011 at the School of Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium, JNU, New Delhi. This symposium is occasioned by the launch of 'Another Life: The Digitised Personal Archive of Geeta Kapur and Vivan Sundaram', the newly digitised personal archive of art critic and curator Geeta Kapur and contemporary art practitioner Vivan Sundaram.
When:	Saturday 26 February 2011, 10am – 6pm
Where:	School of Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
Language:	English
The first art archive in India to be digitised by AAA, the project brings to the public the broad range of material collected by Kapur and Sundaram since the 1950s. Originally established as a personal archive, the collection not only documents the artwork and writings produced and published thus far during Kapur and Sundaram’s prolific careers, but also documents events in India’s art community over the last 50 years, and includes exhibition catalogues, newspaper clippings, and artists' slides, some of which are entering the public domain for the first time. The symposium will reflect on a growing interest in the subject of archives around the world, coupled with an escalating anxiety about the custodianship of memory. Through presentations by internationally and regionally respected scholars and opportunities for open dialogue, The Subject of Archives will create a platform for the ongoing discussions that surround issues of archiving today, particularly with regard to India. The symposium will begin with introductory remarks by Claire Hsu, AAA Executive Director, followed by presentations from the following guest speakers: Sven Spieker, Professor, Comparative Literature Program, University of California, Santa Barbara; Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore; Parvez Kabir, Lecturer, Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, India among others. In addition, Vivan Sundaram will discuss his preoccupation with archives as an artist, and Sabih Ahmad, AAA Researcher for India, will discuss the digitisation process and share selected material from the project. Programme Schedule 10:30am Welcome + AAA Introduction Welcome address by School of Arts and Aesthetics Auditorium, Jawaharlal Nehru University Introduction to Asia Art Archive by Claire Hsu, Executive Director, Asia Art Archive 11:00am Session I Speakers: Professor Sven Spieker, Professor, Comparative Literature Program, University of California, Santa Barbara Ashok Sukumaran, Artist, CAMP and Pad.ma Discussant: Jeebesh Bagchi, Artist, Raqs Media Collective 01:30pm Session II Speakers: Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Senior Fellow, Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bangalore Parvez Kabir, Lecturer, Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan Discussant: Geeta Kapur, Art Critic/Curator 03:30pm Session III Speakers: Vivan Sundaram, Artist Sabih Ahmad, Researcher for India, Asia Art Archive Special thanks to the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Anupam Poddar and Lekha Poddar, Devi Art Foundation.

Shilpa Gupta | Half A Sky

SHILPA GUPTA | HALF A SKY
solo exhibition at
OK Center for Contemporary Art
Linz, Austria
26.11.2010 – 30.01.2011

A cross-section of Shilpa Gupta's works along with a new installation produced especially for the OK offer insights into the work of the young artist living in Mumbai. The new work "Skin Globe" is an interactive sound installation that visitors bring to life by touching it.

Shilpa Gupta was born in 1976 in Mumbai. In her work she uses interactive video, Internet, photography, object art, sound and performance to investigate themes like consumer culture, desire, religion, security, militarism and human rights, social injustice or power politics.

In this diversity of media Gupta blurs the boundaries between art and everyday culture, raising questions about how we think and who we are. She generates an interactive relationship with her audience, as it is the viewers who first complete the works with their reactions.

In the most recent edition of the art magazine “DU”, the renowned curator Hans Ulrich Obrist listed Shilpa Gupta among the twenty-nine most important artists of the 21st century – artists that he thinks will mark the next decade with their work, their thinking and their visions.

I want to fly,
High above in the sky

Don’t push me away

We shall all fly
High above in the sky

I want to fly high above
In your sky

Can you let it be
Only your power
And not your greed

A part of me will die
By your side
Taking you with me

High high above
in the sky

While you sleep I shall wake up and fly

---

SHILPA GUPTA at INDIA ART SUMMIT
Vadehra Art Gallery presents two major works of the artist at IAS 2011, January 20 - 23, at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. Visit us at Hall 18, Booth A20 to view 'Singing Cloud' (Object built with thousands of microphones, multi-channel audio) and 'Untitled' (Motion Flap-Board).

Alwar Balasubramaniam | Sculptor

Alwar Balasubramaniam's sculpture plays with time, shape, shadow, perspective: four tricky sensations that can reveal -- or conceal -- what's really out there. At TEDIndia, the artist shows slides of his extraordinary installations.

Alwar Balasubramaniam's work aches to express the overlooked, the invisible, the inexpressible. Quiet white sculptural forms, hung on a wall, unlock philosophical questions as one watches the light pass over them. What is their form, and what is their shadow? What are those mysterious white hands reaching for, around the corner and through the wall?

Trained in painting and printmaking, Balasubramaniam has been experimenting with a range of materials (fiberglass, wax, gold) to create sculptural works that bring forth his ideas and his search process. His work is often very tactile, very physical, but it symbolizes an exploration of big questions: what defines the self? what confines us? how do light and shadow shape our view of the world?

"Mr. Balasubramaniam, self-taught as a sculptor, is young, savvy and in the middle of a spurt of growth. It could take him anywhere, but there’s already a lot here."

Holland Cotter, New York Times

Sculpture at Pilane | Jitish Kallat

Sudharak Olwe | Contemporary Photography

Artist Statement:

They live in a vicious circle. This photo essay depicts the agony and ecstasy of the forbidden lives of an unfortunate community. You'll find them at Sagar and Mangal theatres, Modnimb Village located in western Maharashtra, an overnight drive from Mumbai. Here, huddled in a 10 ft x 10 ft single room, about 10 people comprising young girls, their mothers, their younger sisters and brothers stay put. Their valuables are neatly stacked in rows of shining metal boxes. Pictures of their favourite stars and goddesses bedeck the white-washed walls. The luxuries include colour televisions and stereos. There are about ten such rooms and each room is inhabited by a cluster of people which comprise of one group. All these groups have a common kitchen or at times order from a nearby restaurant.

Come sundown and the girls and their mothers tie ghungroos (a leather strap with strings of metal bells that can weigh as heavy as seven kilos to create rhythm.) around their ankles, apply make-up, dress themselves in paithani sarees and get set for the show. The theatre is a 35 ft x 17 ft room with a single door and devoid of any windows. It has a wooden stage which often creaks with the weight of the dancers. The room is dimly lit. A couple of torn rugs are strewn in front of the stage followed by rows of wobbly wooden benches. They are the tamasha artists from the kolhati community Tamasha is a folk art of Maharashtra, where the artists sing, dance and enact in a very suggestive format. The men in the group play the dholki, tabla or harmonium as an accompaniment for the erotic music.

Presently there are about 3,000 such tamasha dancers. Usually each group has regular patrons who throw money at the dancers while they are performing. As night deepens, these groups settle for private recitals if any patrons demands it. The money that they get is distributed amongst the members of each group.

In the past, tamashas were patronised by Maratha chieftains and Peshwas during the pre-independence days. The patrons are now replaced by politicians and other such purse-holders and power brokers. Unfortunately, once the girls wore ghungroos, marriage was not possible as they were treated like pariahs. But still, most tamasha artists have children, adopting their mother's name, as they believe that they are their only hope for living and are some support to them in their old age. Over the years, what happens in most cases is that these children get initiated into the profession. A profession that their parents are not proud of, but because of a dearth of better options are sort of compelled to endorse it. Presently, they get a stipend of Rs. 300 once the women reach the age of 40. The state government has been promising them several socio-economic perks expected to better their condition and honour their art with prestige. Unfortunately the promises are yet to be realised. Till then, the tamasha artists bravely battle it out. Night after night. While hoping for a better dawn.

Source -- http://www.tasveerarts.com/artists/SudharakOlwe_01.shtml