MASH INDIA

TAKING SOLACE:
ART NIGHT
THURSDAY PART II

TAKING SOLACE: ART NIGHT THURSDAY PART II

We present the second installment of the Mumbai Galleries that present their collections in physical as well as online exhibitions

Discourses, KHANJAN DALAL, TAO ART GALLERY WITH 079 STORIES, ON UNTIL 8 AUG

Discourses is Khanjan Dalal’s recent solo that focuses on a variety of serious issues with a twist of his brand of wry humor. He adopts the Foucauldian format of the ‘discourse’ to thread together varying concerns expressed through his practice.

The first section of works comprises wall-mounted speech-bubble shaped sculptures. Khanjan’s ‘discourses’ takes the format of punctuation marks and smaller bubbles assembled in floral and other interesting shapes. He freely borrows from popular culture and the millennial format of chat boxes to the point where the speech-bubbles actually form a third entity like a fox or a bird. Besides giving rise to these mystical creatures, Khanjan also talks about the fragility of our conversations. Khanjan’s work reclaims these ‘orphan texts’ that populate cyberspace with his mythical, fairy-tale creatures and one may contemplate this while we enjoy the forms on a purely visual level.

In the Armour series it is the muscular male busts evoking the ‘depiction of masculinity’. For much of history, muscles have been seen as vulgar, meaty indicators of labor and in some instances virility. Khanjan adds another layer of humor and irony to his sculptural work for they are placed on a pedestal that has a cow bell hidden under the torso, which could be rung by pulling the thread which the viewer can engage with. He playfully critiques masculinity.

The third segment of the exhibition looks at the Samurai culture built around the ethos of heroism, sacrifice, revenge and a glorification of violence that is strangely based on love: The love for one’s country, one’s clan, the love for the master or teacher and one’s beloved. He examines the folly behind heroism, the gloom around the glory, and patriarchal machismo that focuses on the idea of revenge, suicide and violence through Chushingura, a 15th century Japanese Fable.

The Moderns – 20th Century Indian Art, DAG, COLABA, ON UNTIL 30 AUG

Indian modern art has a range and diversity that combines the legacy of local traditions, Western techniques and Asian influences along with individual creativity that gives it its distinctive identity. DAG presents a group exhibition titled The Moderns – 20th Century Indian Art. The show features the works of artists Avinash Chandra, Jeram Patel, V. Viswanadhan, F. N. Souza, Gogi Saroj Pal, Rabin Mondal and many more.

The artworks of Chandra, Patel and Viswanadhan have a very strong geometric element characteristic of them, while the works of Gogi Saroj Pal, Rabin Mondal and F N Souza are strongly figurative works. DAG has done seminal work in gaining recognition for India’s modern masters whose legacies had been lost to time and apathy in the absence of sufficient viewers, collectors, promoters, curators or scholars. These works bring the viewer a segment of Indian art that taps into its multiple sources of indigeneity while technically the works are high in their Modernist content.

This exhibition provides glimpses of art practice across different periods and mediums and includes artists based in India as well as overseas. Seen collectively, it offers a bird’s eye-view of the major art movements in the country through a body of work that hints at the depth and breadth of the work of artists varying from the naturalistic to the abstract, and from the figurative to the distorted in a babble of vocabularies adding up to the making of modernism in India.

With its flagship gallery based in New Delhi, 2013 marked the opening of DAG in Mumbai in a heritage building with an iconic show titled Mumbai Modern, and in 2015 the organisation expanded its activities to New York, inaugurating it’s gallery in the prestigious Fuller Building. Its gallery shows apart, Ashish Anand (Managing Director & CEO) has built a vibrant programme of historical exhibitions of significance in collaboration with museums and institutions within his vision of taking art to the people.

Fête Champêtre, ART MUSINGS, ON TILL 15 AUG

Fête Champêtre, is French for the ‘garden party’ or an outdoor celebration and that is precisely what Art Musings invites its viewers to, as they savour a rare delight: the coming together of two generations of painters with an Indo-French twist a mother and a daughter, Maïté Delteil and Maya Burman, the wife and daughter of artist Shakti Burman. Each is an artist in her own distinctive right, and their painting forms a lineage, a bloodline; and inspiration originates from the inner lives of the artists. The resultant compositions are bound to personal histories and images from the unconscious, making for paintings replete with layered realities.

Living and working in France and India, both mother and daughter draw on the diverse aesthetics of these cultures. Maïté’s evocations of nature and Maya’s buoyant figures encourage an identification with the intimate dramas being performed in these paintings.

In the painterly universe of enchantments and epiphanies that Maïté conjures into being, time is calibrated through the unfolding of the seasons; through the rhythms of waking and dream; and through the transitions between interior and landscape. In Maya’s lively tableaux, time is measured out by reference to the successive stages of childhood, adolescence, youth, and maturity; its rhythms play out between the childhood world of toys and the grown-up world of built and engineered objects. For both artists, time is recast as stylized narrative.

She’s in the Streets She’s in the Stars, SANTOSH JAIN, METHOD, KALA GHODA, ON UNTIL 25 JULY

Over several decades, artist Santosh Jain has borne witness to the lives of many different women, including herself. A printmaker who studied at the College of Art, Delhi, Jain earned her an inclusion in prestigious artist associations – Group 8, Shilpi Chakra, Lalit Kala Akademi, Bombay Art Society and AIFACS. This was followed by a two-years fellowship to the Netherlands before she returned to New Delhi in 1976.

The theme of womanhood in all its forms, seen and unseen, has been a constant thread through the career of her artmaking. While the medium has changed, the presence and significance of women has not. Historically speaking, women have rarely been the central character of any story. Rather, they have been pushed into the background, their roles, desires, and existence nothing more than of service to others. “Through my art, I’ve explored the many ways in which women are an integral part of society, family, and life itself,” says Jain.

These works are her second language which allow her to freely share long forgotten episodes of her lifetime, her innermost feelings. Sometimes the same woman recurs in multiple artworks, and sometimes her presence is fleeting, though no less important. The women in her artwork embody the viewer, and the artist…they are in the stars, they are in the streets.

Text by Georgina Maddox

Image Courtesy: Tao Art Gallery, DAG, Art Musings, Method Kala Ghoda

 

Find more about the featured Artists and Gallery:

http://www.khanjandalal.com/

https://www.taoartgallery.com/current

http://artmusings.net/

https://themethod.in/

https://www.artbysantoshjain.com/uniques

http://artmusings.net/artists/maya-burman-5/

https://dagworld.com/

https://dagworld.com/artists/jeram-patel/

https://dagworld.com/artists/avinash-chandra/

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