Let’s Stay in Touch

A selected group of Galleries comes together to launch a collaborative online exhibitions platform – In Touch Edition 1

“Artists are actually solitary creatures by nature,” observes gallery owner Shireen Gandhy, when asked about the impact of the lockdown that has suspended everyday life as we know it for the past few months. Yet each artist responds in different ways. “While approaching our artists inquiring how they were doing in this time of isolation, we noted that several of them are unable to make art,” continues Gandhy. Instead, they used their ‘downtime’ to read, watch films, or make work that is a process between themselves and their drawing board. At the other end of the spectrum are other artists who have shared works where they have responded immediately to their (imposed) isolation and that “speak of and to this time.”

‘In Touch’ is a digital exhibition platform created in partnership between galleries to present online exhibitions. Its collaborative nature makes this a unique platform bringing together a diverse range of programs and artists.

Aditi Singh, Untitled, 2020, Chemould Prescott, Mumbai

Desmond Lazaro, Cosmos I, 2020, Chemould Prescott Mumbai

In its first edition, In Touch kicks off this April 24 – July 24, 2020, and presents ten galleries from India and Dubai. Participating galleries are Chemould Prescott Road, Mumbai; Experimenter, Kolkata; Gallery Espace, New Delhi; Green Art Gallery, Dubai; Grey Noise, Dubai; Nature Morte, New Delhi; In Photo Ink, New Delhi; Gallery SKE, Bangalore/New Delhi; The Third Line, Dubai; and Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi.

Shilpa Gupta, We are Closer Than we ever Imagined, 2008, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi

The platform enables the art community to connect with each other through organized and synergistic exhibition-making that challenges traditional formats of engaging with art and brings together a diverse range of online programs and exhibitions. The initiative was conceived as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused an unprecedented physical closure of public spaces and cultural institutions worldwide.

Prabhakar Pachute, The Bull, 2020, Experimenter, Kolkata

Prabhakar Pachute, Together We Survive, 2020 Experimenter, Kolkata

Experimenter from Kolkata, presents Together We Survive, an exhibition rooted in ideas of collective action, hope, and collaboration. Prabhakar Pachpute works with marginalized farmers and mining workers, using experiences and folklore to bring collective responsibility and action to his sculptures and paintings.

“Resilience and testimony to time are reflected in many of the works, while others focus on or look at a precipitous moment in the failure of the global left and a possible future of the world,” observes gallerist Prateek Raja. Hence while Rathin Barman’s works represent aspirations of building homes inferred through interviews made of displaced inhabitants, Radhika Khimji and Biraaj Dodiya explore form and landscape through personal memory and loss to articulate their environments.

Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Colors of Time are made from pigments ground from chips of paint scraped off walls that have a significant historical reference while Strata Study by Ayesha Sultana continues the artist’s exploration into space, materiality and balancing one’s body in relation to the environment.

Chitra Ganesh, Prophecy, 2019, Gallery Espace, New Delhi

Shobha Broota, Untitled, 2019, Gallery Espace, New Delhi

In Delhi, Gallery Espace is showing a disparate group of women artists, under the titled, Beyond Surface. The exhibition showcases recent works by Chitra Ganesh, Manisha Gera Baswani, Mekhala Bahl, and Shobha Broota. Ganesh’s drawings in pop colors interpolate Hindu and Buddhist iconography with imagery drawn from popular visual culture to present an alternate, feminist mythology.

This contrasts with Shobha Broota’s meditative works made of woven wool stretched over canvas, forming folds and undulations reminiscent of the natural landscape; Bahl, who brings together photography, print-making, painting and drawing through a process of complex layering and mark-making; and Baswani, whose pin drawings are as much aesthetic process as they recall her personal journey of pain and healing with her life partner at the center of the narrative.

Abir Karmakar, Gate, 2019, GALLERYSKE, New Delhi

GALLERYSKE brings together poet Adrienne Rich’s text from the poem What Kind of Times Are These, and the powerful images by Abir Karmakar and Sunil Padwal, both of which look at the idea of the gate, containment, and the possibility of nature escaping human confines.

Nature Morte, also in Delhi, features To Balm and Cajole with works by Aditya Pande, Ayesha Singh, Bharti Kher, Dayanita Singh, Manish Nai, Manisha Parekh, Martand Khosla, Reena Saini Kallat, Raqs Media Collective, Tanya Goel, Thukral and Tagra and Zimbiri. The works that speak to our challenging times. Artists respond to situations in diverse, often confusing, ways; exploring the latent meanings that may hover just under the surface of recognizable images or those which can be coaxed from abstract meanderings.

Finally, GREEN ART GALLERY in Dubai presents a three-person show of new works by Kamrooz Aram, Hera Buyuktasciyan, and Chaouki Choukini. While Aram’s paintings bring the world of Suprematist works and Ornamental Composition together, through the use of lapis lazuli and cobalt, pigments. Buyuk Tasciyan drawings explore the relationship between power and architecture, disappearance, and reconstruction. Choukini, sculptural works, mainly in wood but occasionally in marble or stone, range from horizontal Lieux and Paysages to upright, anthropomorphic, almost totemic figures that explore and interrogate the organic and mechanical worlds we live in.

Third Line gallery, also in Dubai presents a two-person exhibition of Nima Nabavi and Rana Begum titled Chroma: Forma. This selection of works embodies the practices of both artists in their exploration of geometry, color, shape, form, and light

Editions of In Touch will be on view for a month with each gallery presenting an exhibition that will change with every following iteration. The website www.artintouch.in, hosts dedicated sections for each gallery’s exhibitions through which viewers can consider the works on view and directly reach the participating galleries. They will additionally host collateral online programming including gallerist connects and artist talks conducted digitally.

Text By Georgina Maddox
Image Courtesy: Chemould Prescott Mumbai, Experimenter Kolkata, GallerySKE Bangalore/Delhi, Vadehra Art Gallery New Delhi and Gallery Espace Delhi

Find out more about the Artists and Gallery:

http://jnaf.org/artist/shireen-gandhy/

https://www.gallerychemould.com/

https://www.gallerychemould.com/artists/37-aditi-singh/works/

https://www.galleryespace.com/

https://www.gagallery.com/

https://www.greynoise.org/

http://naturemorte.com/

http://www.photoink.net/

http://galleryske.com/

http://www.thethirdline.com/

https://www.vadehraart.com/