BACK TO VIEWING ART, INTERNATIONALLY
Indian galleries participating in Art Basel celebrate returning to the physical world of art internationally.
Setting up at Art Basel was exciting for the Indian Galleries Experimenter and Chemould Prescott, especially after having only a virtual presence in 2020, and the 2021 edition had to be delayed until international travel was safe after the global vaccination program was allowed to take effect. It was indeed one of the most awaited international events to roll out despite all the challenges.
In the fair’s opening press conference, Art Basel’s global director, Marc Spiegler, voiced his appreciation for the galleries that made the trip “despite unprecedented challenges,” and noted the changes the fair had made to pull off this in-person edition. Even given all those difficulties, collectors, artists, gallerists and the general public seemed to be enjoying being back to viewing art at Messeplatz, Basel, Switzerland, at last.
Mumbai-based, Chemould, featured artists Anju Dodiya, Atul Dodiya, Jitish Kallat, Mithu Sen, N.S. Harsha, Rashid Rana, and Ritesh Meshram. Gandhy shares that while some artists went silent, and some were unable to access their studios, others sat by a desk and drew every day.
While Harsha painted Themis – the blind Greek Goddess of wisdom and good counsel –as the local Mysore schoolgirl, playfully dressed, Atul Dodiya presented a collection of six works translated from his everyday sketches. Mithu Sen made her return to the ‘purity of white paper’ and pricked at it relentlessly to create beauty through pinpricks.
Jitish Kallat seems to crystallize and acquire perceptible form only to dissolve back into abstraction. Rana and Meshram introduced new elements into their work. For Meshram it was paper sculpture while for Rana it was historical iconography upon which he built his narrative of space-time and tradition.
Prateek Raja, co-director of Experimenter, Kolkata, presented Transitory Forms, an exhibition of works by Ayesha Sultana, Bani Abidi, Biraaj Dodiya, Praneet Soi, Prabhakar Pachpute, Radhika Khimji, Rathin Barman, Samson Young and Sakshi Gupta at Art Basel 2021.
“Experimenter placed several works with institutional collections, as well as to private collections in Europe and beyond. Art Basel seems like a first major step towards a semblance of normalcy in the art world for a large public event. People are excited to meet of course with all hygiene precautions and physical distance,” assures Raja.
The exhibition that Experimenter presented approached the representation of the body as an emotive and political tool through ‘gesture, motif and exploration of material form’. The works employ an interplay between subversion and abstraction, architectural manifestations, anthropological enquiries and artificial intelligence. It indicates that the human body is a device for building structures of support and resistance.
Ayesha Sultana’s ongoing body of work, Breath Count, is in principle the study of her own breath, through a suite of scratch drawings on clay-coated paper. She probes her own body using count, distance, motion and removal of breath. Abidi’s work explores the current fractured condition of global politics through the bodily gestures of the hands of its leaders.
Biraaj Dodiya’s works reveal a layered and complex exploration of space and body while referring to nightscapes as a metaphor for what is easily visible and what is not. Khimji’s paintings and sculptures question how spaces are brought alive by people and explores the relationship between a ‘place and being placed.’
Prabhakar Pachpute’s practice continually engages with farmers, and miners. He has used folklore to address contentious issues of land and conflict, often incorporating lived narratives of farmers and mining workers who have used their own bodies as a last resort to register their protest.
Praneet Soi presents a painting diptych in silverpoint, informed by his travels in Palestine. The artist has layered beneath the textured surface of the painting, The Bridge and Sebastia, as a symbol of the ‘architecture of resistance’. He places the heron, at the centers of the composition as it is a bird known for its resilience and Soi encountered it in Sebastia, Palestine.
The other artists Barman and Gupta use the metaphor of architecture to refer to the human condition and form. The exhibition proposes a renewed understanding of the individual and its environment.
Text by Georgina Maddox
Images Courtesy: Chemould Prescott and Experimenter
Find more about the Artists and Galleries:
https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-10-best-booths-art-basel-basel-2021
