Latitude 28 presents the best in new media art at India Art Summit
New Delhi: Asthe much awaited India Art Summit comes up with its 3rd Edition slated from January 20, 2011 to January 23, 2011,art curator and gallerist Bhavna Kakar brings forth an eclectic mix of senior and younger Indian contemporary artists under her art venture Latitude 28. Bhavna Kakar has successfully presented and promoted new media art, now the current art wave as well, throughout last year, and it was obvious that she would once again choose some of the most talented new media artists for her Art Summit outing! She has, however, also chosen to show printmaker Anupam Sud’s work, a veteran artist who is rarely seen in group shows otherwise. Apart from this, Latitude 28 will also be showing videos by Desire Machine Collective and Nandita Kumar at the Video Lounge in the Summit.
Says Bhavna Kakar, curator & Director, Latitude 28: “India Art Summit is a wonderful platform to showcase the gallery collection and interact with the art fraternity. The gallery is presenting some of the most sought after younger names like Kartik Sood, who will be at Art Summit for the first time, Rajesh Ram and Prajjwal Choudhury among others.”
The artists whose works will be shown at Latitude 28, Stall No.C-12, Hall No.-18, India Art Summit, Pragati Maidan include: Anupam Sud, Babu Eshwar Prasad, Dilip Chobisa, Kartik Sood, Manisha Parekh, Prajjwal Choudhury, Rajesh Ram, Ram Bali Chauhan and Viraj Naik.
To support both contemporary and traditional styles of art, Latitude 28 has interestingly brought together artist grandmother-grandson duo, Anupam Sud and Kartik Sood, to exhibit their works at the Art Summit 2011.
The winner of President of India’s Gold Plaque, Anupam Sud is one of the finest printmakers in India. Although she has taken up painting on large canvases, mostly in acrylic, her intaglio prints still hold their sway over her paintings. Her firmly drawn figuration of men and women draw our attention to the general human situation and to psychological tensions between man and woman and that between man and society.
“The four works in the Art Summit deal with women and femininity, something that as a woman, I am comfortable working with,” says the veteran artist. Without necessarily delving into the politics of feminism, these works treat women as humanist subjects, while remaining sensitive to their issues and concerns. Her work titled “How Does Your Garden Grow” was the result of a camp in Hyderabad, formally inspired by the decorative works of the other artists at the camp.
Unlike Anupam Sood’s bold, figurative canvases, her grandson Kartik Sood presents an oil on canvas titled The Black Black Sea. The title refers to the symbolic act of the unconscious mind developing an illusion which divides the real from the imaginary. The visual is a holy pilgrimage taken by him on a horse, into the black dark sea of unreality.
Kartik’s other work is a light based installation with photographs which refers to the ever shifting memory, where one’s immediate present in nothing but a moment that’s past. The work is called Through the Thickness of Blood.
“For me design is a very important part of my work for it reflects the cultural aspects of our new lives. My works, having a design influenced structure, often put together old fragmented pieces of our human past, and together how they stand is intentionally a statement made by me to provoke an experience reflecting our lives’ placement”, says Kartik Sood.
On the other hand, artist Manisha Parekh, who is showing 21 watercolour and gouache works in a set titled “In the Walnut Shell”,isknown for her subtle and abstract works. “Working in multiples is like documenting a thought in different stages, with different nuances explored, mulling over an idea in different ways, in an attempt to capture the feeling”, says Parekh.
Artist Prajjwal Choudhury in his sculptural work titled Desire is destroyed with the destruction of desire in welded aluminum, wooden alphabets, fibreglass, metal frame with acrylic work, ironically depicts the ‘ugliness’ of consumerist mentality through formal beauty. Choudhury is at war with the way in which everyday objects are taken for granted and so easily discarded. Objects such as matchboxes and bottles, which he has been mostly consumed with- are mass produced, used and discarded –and it is here that Choudhury gathers the preliminary fuel to engineer his thought-provoking creations.
Choudhury says, “The sculpture is meant to remind us how desires will lead to the eventual destruction of mankind. Human desire is a nagging allegory of the darkness and corruption of the soul. The history of human desires has been making its way through centuries. After all, it was desire alone that led to the creation of Adam and Eve. It was desire only, desire for knowledge or pure hedonism that led to the expulsion from Eden and the ultimate downfall of the human race.”
Rajesh Ram, a young artist based in New Delhi and practicing both as painter and sculptor, uses a strong visual vocabulary that builds on pointed references. The artist believes that when people move to metro city, they do not realize that in veil of pursuing their dreams, they end up being bonded laborers in the migratory land. Rajesh’s sculpture in bronze, for instance “Girl of Vegetable Seller”, exemplifies this ensuing narrative with rhythm and beauty.
Viraj Naik presents two oils on canvas titled “Cavaleiro (horseman)” and Domesticado (domesticated) and describes them as experiencing the chiaroscuro of life that reveals the inherent symbolism of assured existence. According to the artist, “It is a fascinating journey of disturbances in nature. When and where could I draw imaginations from? The system becomes confusing to life, given as a process of experiences. The world is full of genesis, the journey never ends, thereby an untiring continuous process.”
Dilip Chobisa’s art occupies a space between the being and absence of the third dimension. The intimate and the minute in life attract his interest and hence come up as subject matter for the works. Laced with elements of fantastical realism, some having dramatic surrealistic tones, the works seem to play within the realms of the monochrome fantasy. Working in the margins of relief and installations, a combination of light and drawing works to extend the experience.
Focusing on visual motifs of animals and human forms either in painting or through sculptures, Ram Bali Chauhan examines the contemporary political and social discourse. Through the use of a vibrant palette and forms, Ram Bali Chauhan visualizes the mood of current times vis-à-vis the notion of terror and institutionalized fear at several levels – emotional, social and political. The work provides alternative reading to popular culture and public language of fracture, hostility and threat by exploring tactics of fear.
Babu Eshwar Prasad’s workshave retained the earthy innocence of a rustic, despite rubbing shoulders with the elite set for over a decade. A keen student of world cinema, Babu says that his pictures are like a theatre-set waiting for a script. He begins constructing the set with gripping images and then begins painting. His acrylic on canvas titled “I like the story as well as when you told it” and “Yellow Earth” reflects the same story telling.
At the Video Lounge
1. Title of exhibit: Untitled Liverpool
Name of the Artist: Desire Machine Collective
Duration: 7:40 minutes
Collaborating since 2004 as Desire Machine Collective, Sonal Jain and Mriganka Madhukaillya work through image, moving image, sound, time and space. Assuming their name and theoretical disposition from Anti-Oedipus, a seminal text from 1972 by French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Félix Guattari, Desire Machine seeks to disrupt the neurotic symptoms that arise from constricting capitalist structures with healthier, schizophrenic cultural flows of desire and information. As the French philosopher Michel Foucault put it, Anti-Oedipus is an introduction to a non-fascist life. In similar fashion, through their practice Jain and Madhukaillya confront the many forms of fascism that lead to violence and injustice, both regionally in Guwahati, Assam and around the world.
Synopsis – This work was shot on the shores of Liverpool. This was an important location for trade with India and especially with Assam during the colonial times. Most of the tea from Assam was unloaded here. The video also has in layers, images of X-ray scans of the human body by airport security cameras.
2. Title of exhibit: Birth of BrainFly
Name of the Artist: Nandita Kumar
Duration: 03:19 minutes
Nandita Kumar is a multi-faceted, award winning filmmaker, multi media artist, painter and performer. She holds a joint Bachelors Degree from MS University, India and Auckland University, in the Elam School of the Arts, New Zealand and has completed her Masters Degree in Experimental Animation at California Institute of the Arts, in Los Angeles. Nandita has received the “Best Original Music” for her film Birth of Brain Fly at the Cinema Mundo festival in Brazil and is also an awardee of the famed Jules Engle Scholarship.
Synopsis – Birth of BrainFly is a surreal narrative dealing with the process of a
person’s individuation in a mental scape. A journey through and into Self, the
constructed labyrinths of Ego, and the creative transcendence of the mind’s physical
limitations. Birth of BrainFly charts a surreal course of a psyche’s evolution within
the invisible landscape of the mind. The visual landscape is made up of a mélange of
experiments in collage, live action, hand drawn, paint on film and multi plane.
LATITUDE 28 is a venture under the direction of Bhavna Kakar, a Delhi-based expert in Modern and Contemporary Art with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Committed to giving a platform to young talent, LATITUDE 28 encourages broad-based practices ranging from painting and sculpture, to photography, video and installations.
Take on art! is the art magazine launched under the same banner, a bold initiative in today’s recessionary times that sets Latitude 28 apart from the regular commercial set up.
LATITUDE 28 has exhibited an eclectic mix of contemporary artists like Justin Ponmany, Atul Bhalla, Prajakta Palav, Manjunath Kamath, George Martin, Sandeep Pisalkar, Farhad Hussain, Binu Bhaskar, Niyeti Chadha, Sakshi Gupta, Minal Damani, Apurba Nandi, Pooja Iranna, Alok Bal, and seniors like Bhupen Khakhar, Nasreen Mohamedi, Ganesh Haloi, Prabhakar Kolte, G R Santosh amongst others in India and international venues like Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and London.
