Friday, February 28, 2014

Video Art at BDL Museum, Cultural Colours, Chitramela 2014 and more..

NEWS

Video Art at BDL Museum
( work by Baiju Parthan)
Dr Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai launches its new program, ‘Video Art’ at the Education centre. Curated by Gayatri Sinha, the program titled,’ Critical Collective’ showcases a series of compilations of the works of artists whose practice involves video and multi-media.

Feature addresses urbanism, societal change and the metaphors of scientific development to interrogate the impact of globalism. While the work ‘The Panic City’ by Gigi Scaria induces vertigo, the interrogation of colonial processes in Raqs Media’s 'Surface' mark the dislocations of progress. Baiju Parthan, Gigi Scaria and Sheba Chhachhi create evocations around the passage of time and the changes it effects.The viewing will run over a 12 month period in monthly editions. The first edition examines 6 artists/groups whose works explore the conflicted issue of change and urbanism. 

Starting on 1st of March 2014, from 4:30 to 5:30 pm, these editions will be screened every Saturday at the same time.


Cultural Colours
(work on display)
Vinnyasa Premier Art gallery, Chennai presents the works of artist Mohan S Jadhav, from Maharashtra. The show titled, ‘Cultural Colours’ has on display his work which includes colourful paintings of  Kathakali dancers, festivals exclusively celebrated for bullocks, and camels.

Mohan works as a freelance artist. He paints in watercolours, oils and acrylic. His paintings are basically based on rural imagery, farmers, bullock carts, fishermen, boats, pet animals, riverscapes, flowers and heritage monuments.

The show is on view from 1st March to 10th March 2014.

Chitramela 2014

Achalam Art Gallery, Chennai is having an International Art Exhibition, ‘Chitramela 2014’ at its venue for a duration of two weeks. Paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs from artists all around the world will be displayed in this exhibition. 
The exhibition aims to act as a platform for young upcoming talent and renowned masters’ works to be displayed for the benefit of art lovers and buyers and collectors alike.
The show will be on view till 9th March 2014.

The young and restless
( work on display)
La Galerie D’Expression, Chennai presents the works of artist S J Jaya Goutham.  The artist is from Chennai and at a young age of 20 has already displayed his work in most of the major galleries in the city. He is currently in his second year pursuing his Bachelor of Visual Arts at the Chitrakala College of Fine Arts at Bangalore. He has completed his technical examinations in free hand outline and model drawing.

He started his journey of art and painting in the year 2008 and has explored the heights of his imaginations. He has received awards from many notable people, couple of them being Dr APJ Abdul Kalam and Mr Surjit Singh Barnala.
On display at the show are a selection if his exquisite figurative and emotional works. 
The show is on view till 28th February 2014.

( News reports by Sushma Sabnis)


FEATURE
Aam in Art
As politics gets messier, the common man finds a voice on the canvases of Siva Kesav Rao.
(Some of the works from Rao’s exhibition based on the issues of jal satyagraha, riots in Muzaffarnagar and blasts in Sivakasi, etc.)
All isn’t well and it clearly reflects in Siva Kesav Rao’s works on display at Lalit Kala Akademi (LKA). At times faceless, in grief, struggling to survive, in conflict with those in power, they surround the viewer in the top hall of the gallery space. The monochrome in charcoal brings out the pathos even more strongly with the density of black absorbing the onlooker totally. All 40 pieces of Rao, mostly in charcoal barring a few in dry pastels and oils, are rooted in our daily lives, and they go on to include the latest growing phenomenon of protest and agitation. Ask the Hyderabad-based artist if the movements of Arvind Kejriwal and Anna Hazare ignited this body of work, and Rao reveals that he has remained preoccupied with socio-political subjects for a while, before street agitations became the norm.
(work from Rao’s exhibition based on the issues of jal satyagraha, riots in Muzaffarnagar and blasts in Sivakasi, etc.)
A particularly interesting work is a 30-year-old painting depicting a muscled man occupying a seat of authority. This canvas flanks a work which has Mahatma Gandhi on it, whereas on the other side of the painting of Gandhi is one depicting the current Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, wearing dark black glasses and a wristwatch with no hands. The artist recollects the past through Gandhi who went on to become Father of the Nation, then casts a gaze at the present through the portrayal of the current Prime Minister, considered reticent, and then hints at the future of Indian polity through an unlikely person wielding control. “The painting became relevant today so I included it,” says Rao who also incorporated a few Gandhi works from his last year’s series on him. Rao who studied at Hyderabad College of Fine Arts and M.S. University Baroda has also mastered the craft of natural dyeing and hand block printing.
(Some of the works from Rao’s exhibition based on the issues of jal satyagraha, riots in Muzaffarnagar and blasts in Sivakasi, etc.)
“Something dreadful happens today, we talk about it and then forget it the next minute. At least these works will create a record of the happenings around us if nothing else. In any case I am not interested in drawing room art. Art should be socially provocative,” says Rao pointing at his dense works on unmanned railway tracks, child labour, corruption and communalism, etc.
(Some of the works from Rao’s exhibition based on the issues of jal satyagraha, riots in Muzaffarnagar and blasts in Sivakasi, etc.)
And nothing else except the medium of charcoal, which is difficult and not that popular, would have done justice to the subject enabling the artist to employ the chiaroscuro technique successfully, which then brings out the poignant mood portrayed. Two women crying, holding each other, mourning the loss of their beloved ones in a fireworks unit blast at Sivakasi, is one such example.
(Some of the works from Rao’s exhibition based on the issues of jal satyagraha, riots in Muzaffarnagar and blasts in Sivakasi, etc.)
But even where he leaves the company of charcoal to take to oil, Rao remains as effective. In a work on the Muzaffarnagar riots, which is from his future series, Rao says, he is trying to express more with colour and form. A sparsely populated canvas with three figures, out of which two are injured kids lying down while the third one looks away with clenched jaws, has the red on the faces and hands of the sufferers, communicating their angst. His division of canvases into triangles also adds novelty to the work. There is another set of works, again from Rao’s future series, in which he is experimenting with colour and form. These are to do with agitators and their psychology.
At Gallery 8, Lalit Kala Akademi, till March 1st, 2014.
( Report by Shailaja Tripathi for The Hindu)

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