|
Secrets
- The Spectacle Within
"The
thing about performance, even if it's only
an illusion, is that it is a celebration
of the fact that we do contain within ourselves
infinite possibilities."
-
Daniel Day Lewis
The
air in India is lush with expectations. It
is becoming the hub of practitioners in all
arenas, social, religious, artistic and with
New Delhi as the capital it is becoming the
nerve centre of the shifting paradigms in global
hierarchy. From an India long steeped in history
and tradition with its undertones of conformity
we arise in the 21st
century with our finger on the pulse of the ‘glocal’ -
located in the global but with a unique positioning
within the local, national. It marks an assimilation
of influences national and international, urban,
rural, folk, post modern where individuals
have won the right of self-definition choosing
freely the positioning of the parameters of
influence.
The
last century is marked by increased movement
between cultures, a movement initiated by choice.
This exchange or dialogue led to knowledge
and the confidence in self that stems from
it. Greater numbers of artists today are deciding
to initiate a cross-cultural dialogue but situate
themselves firmly within the Indian aesthetic
without the overwhelming desire to dredge up
the past golden traditions. They are self aware,
knowledgeable about their history and participating
in the exchange of ideas that began in the
last decades of the 20th century.
In
addition to the free and easy accessibility
to information, there is an economic shift.
The art market in India which started in the
1980s is approaching the light at the end of
a tunnel with Indian artists commanding international
prices. With their increasing marketability,
the critical debate surrounding the multi tangential
post modern aesthetics of contemporary Indian
art is beginning to manifest internationally.
The
five artists selected for the exhibition have
a common subterranean thread running though
all their works. The artists, three international
Diann Bauer (United States), Young In Hong
(South Korea) and Christian Ward (United Kingdom)
and two Indian, Suhasini Kejriwal and A. Balasubramaniam
have all lived or continue to live and worked
in England. But within this common framework
they each approach their art from their separate
backgrounds. This exhibition will explore the
personal and intimate spaces that each artist
inhabits.
The
exhibition is designed covering the entire
spectrum of art materials. Christian Ward and
Suhasini Kejriwal will exhibit paintings. Young
In Hong and A. Balasubramanium shall create
site specific installations. Dianne Bauer's
work is a bridge between the two. The unifying
thread in all the works is their visual compulsion,
their immediacy of medium. Ambitious in scale
the works become almost deliberate displays
of skill and intricate detail. It is as if
the work is designed to seduce the viewer with
its 'extravagance'. For instance in Bala's
art the reversal is explicit and not unpredictable
but yet so effective because it is so extreme.
A body cast sculpture will disappear upon exposure
to air in a few days. In Dianne's work the "more" is
much more subltle, the detailed richness of
the work and the contrast it makes to the violent
imagery. In Suhasini’s work the entire image
unravels into lots of little images and depending
on the position of the viewer from the painting
the viewer can see the whole image (depicting
the object for instance a flower), lots of
little images, or even just pattern. With Young
In's work, the obvious absurdity of the curtain-pillars
is overwhelmed by their sheer presence. They
overcome you with their 'elaborateness'. As
in Christian's work too, the deliberate painterly
brush strokes and the fantastic colour do not
mar the credibility of the landscape, in fact
they add to the intricate and extreme details
and give the images a real presence.
A
bold disclosure of what is otherwise hidden,
the show aims at revealing the excessive and
spectacular that exists within an artist’s
reality.
Click
here to view exhibition |
