Baba Anand

Né en 1961 à Srinagar, Cachemire. Vit et travaille à New Delhi. Baba Anand est un fils du Pop, l’héritier indien de Roy Lichtenstein et d’Andy Warhol, inspiré par les affiches bollywoodiennes comme ses pères par les bandes dessinées américaines. Pop, ces objets de la rue qu’il met en œuvre, les techniques qu’il emploie. Pop, sa tendance graphique, lorsque l’intervention cherche des lignes, des effets de cadrage. (Extrait de l’Art–Couture de Baba Anand, Jérôme Neutres)

Born in 1961, Srinagar, Cashmere. He lives and works in New Delhi. Baba Anand is a child of Pop Art, India’s heir to Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, drawing inspiration from Bollywood posters the way those forebears did from American comics. The street objects he picks up on, the media he uses are Pop. His graphic leanings are Pop when his manipulations go for effects of line and framing. (Extract from The Couture Art of Baba Anand, by Jérôme Neutres)

Baba Anand

Né en 1961 à Srinagar, Cachemire. Vit et travaille à New Delhi. Baba Anand est un fils du Pop, l’héritier indien de Roy Lichtenstein et d’Andy Warhol, inspiré par les affiches bollywoodiennes comme ses pères par les bandes dessinées américaines. Pop, ces objets de la rue qu’il met en œuvre, les techniques qu’il emploie. Pop, sa tendance graphique, lorsque l’intervention cherche des lignes, des effets de cadrage. (Extrait de l’Art–Couture de Baba Anand, Jérôme Neutres)

Born in 1961, Srinagar, Cashmere. He lives and works in New Delhi. Baba Anand is a child of Pop Art, India’s heir to Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, drawing inspiration from Bollywood posters the way those forebears did from American comics. The street objects he picks up on, the media he uses are Pop. His graphic leanings are Pop when his manipulations go for effects of line and framing. (Extract from The Couture Art of Baba Anand, by Jérôme Neutres)

Sakti Burman

Né en 1935 à Calcutta. Vit et travaille à Paris. Peintre virtuose Sakti Burman par son mélange de couleurs complémentaires, de textures diverses et de détails décoratifs nous offre un pays de rêve, un monde sans conflit. Ses peintures dépeignent des chérubins et arlequins, des nus sensuels et des divinités aussi bien que des personnages engagés dans des activités mondaines. Les éléments disparates, arrangés sans apparente logique, suggèrent les rêves. La palette de Sakti nous enchante, le style et la composition peuvent rappeler la tapisserie française ou les fresques italiennes médiévales.

Born in 1935, Calcutta, India. Lives and works in Paris. In a word the virtuoso painter Sakti Burman by his blend of complementary colours, varied textures and decorative details holds out to us a dream world of harmony, a world free of conflicts. His paintings depict cherubic children and harlequins, sensuous nudes and mythical divinities as well as people engaged in mundane activities. These disparate elements are set in arrangements that are devoid of logic and suggestive of dreams. Sakti’s palette delights us, the style and composition may remind one of French tapestry or medieval Italian frescoes.

Ahmed Shahabuddin

Ahmed Shahabuddin est né au Bangladesh en 1950, il vit et travaille à Paris. Élu en 1992, l’un des 50 Maîtres de l’Art Contemporain, récompense accordée lors de l'Olympiade des Arts à Barcelone, il a largement expose ses travaux à travers le globe. Le souci principal des peintures de l’artiste est de refléter la vie contemporaine. Dans leur dynamisme, ses toiles dépeignent des personnages intrépides qui passent à travers les difficultés de la vie, la vibration et la force de sa facture mettent en évidence cet aspect. Ses compositions sont incontestablement musicales et rythmiques.

Born in Bangladesh in 1950, Ahmed Shahabuddin lives and works in Paris. In 1992 he is one of 50 Master Painters of Contemporary Arts, an award bestowed on him at the Olympiad of Arts, Barcelona, he has shown his works extensively across the globe. The primary concern of his paintings is to reflect the contemporary life and times. In their dynamism his paintings depict fearless human figures that cut through the difficulties of life. The vibrancy and force of his brushwork highlight this aspect. His compositions are unmistakably musical and rhythmic.

Rajendra Dhawan

Né à New Delhi en 1936, Rajendra Dhawan a étudié à l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts de Paris de 1953 à 1960. Il vit et travaille à Paris. Sur la toile, une épaisse zone noire se diffuse avec sensualité avant de se métamorphoser en une version opaque d’elle-même qui fusionne alors avec le vert et le blanc. Le brun, sur une autre toile emprunte son éclat à un centre rouge ardent. Si un coin de la peinture ressemble à un paysage, l'autre est un champ chromatique où des bruns presque transparents, des verts, gris et noirs fusionnent et se répondent. Dhawan est capable, comme le note Jean Dominique Rey, de rassembler “le monde essentiel par de larges formes abstraites et un nombre réduit de signes en conservant un effet de mouvement surréel.” (Jean Luc Chalumeau, Exposition Galerie Francois Mitains, Paris, 1990.)

Rajendra Dhawan was born in New Delhi in 1936. He studied at the Ecole des Beaux –Arts de Paris from 1953 -1960. He lives and works in Paris. A dense black area spreads out sensuously before turning into an opaque version of itself that merges with the green and white on the canvas. The brown on another canvas borrows its lustre from a red glowing centre. If one corner of the painting resembles a landscape, the other is a colour field where translucent browns, greens, greys and blacks merge with and react to one another. The way Jean Dominique Rey notes he is able to bring together, « the essential world through large abstract shapes and reduced number of signs while keeping the moving aspect of ite ver surreal. »
(Jean Luc Chalumeau, Exposition Galerie Francois Mitains, Paris, 1990.)

Jamini Roy

Jamini Roy (1887-1972)

Alors âgé d’une trentaine d’année, Jamini Roy –après avoir étudié les maîtres de l’art moderne et exécuté dans ce but de nombreuses copies- se tourne vers l’art populaire et crée le style qui va lui valoir une reconnaissance nationale et internationale./…/ Son dégoût pour la ville européanisée de Calcutta l’aurait fait s’intéresser à l’art de la banlieue populaire de Kalighat /…/ afin de s’éloigner définitivement de l’influence néfaste de la métropole./…/Ainsi, l’intérêt de l’artiste bengali pour l’art pictural de la communauté santale se trouve placé en parallèle avec celui de l’artiste occidental pour l’art africain. /…/ Mais une différence essentielle le distingue de ces peintres : il est Bengali, né en milieu rural et n’ignore rien des fondements culturels des productions artisanales dont il s’inspire. /…/ La relation qui lie Jamini Roy aux peintures de bazar de Calcutta , n’est pas identique à celle, beaucoup plus formaliste, qu’établit Picasso avec l’art africain. /…/
PEINDRE AU BENGALE (1937-1977) Contribution à une lecture plurielle de la modernité, Nicolas Nercam (L’Harmattan).

Considérées comme trésor national, les œuvres de Jamini Roy présentes sur le territoire Indien sont interdites à l’exportation.

At the age of thirty, Jamini Roy, after having studied the masters of modern art and even made many copies of their work, turned to popular art and created the style that made his reputation nationally and internationally. His disgust for the Europeanized city of Calcutta apparently led the artist to immerse himself in the indigenous art of the popular suburb of Kalighat to distance himself definitively from the dangerous influence of the city. Thus, the interest of the Bengali artist in the pictorial art of the Santale population was similar to that of the Western artists in African art. But there is an essential difference. Jamini Roy was Bengali, born in a rural area, and very familiar with the cultural foundations of the craft productions that inspired him. The relationship that linked Jamini Roy to the bazaar painters of Calcutta was very different from the more formalistic relationship Picasso established with African art.
"PEINDRE AU BENGALE (1937-1977) Contribution à une lecture plurielle de la modernité", Nicolas Nercam (L’Harmattan).

Considered a national treasure, exportation of pieces by Jamini Roy located in India is forbidden.

Akbar Padamsee

Né a Bombay, 1928
Vit et travaille à Bombay

L’un des peintres les plus illustres de son pays, Akbar Padamsee fut associé au révolutionnaire ‘Progressives Artists Group’ de Bombay. Dans sa quête du modernisme, fraichement diplômé de la prestigieuse J.J. School of Art de Bombay, il est comme quelques autres de ses contemporains, parti pour Paris de 1951 à 1967.
L’œuvre prolifique de l’artiste, emplie de paysages abstraits et de figures splendides dans leur solitude, s’étend sur plus de six décennies par des moyens aussi divers que l'huile sur toile, l'encre chinoise, le dessin, les films, la sculpture métallique, et la photographie.

Puisant son inspiration dans les quatre éléments naturels que sont l’eau, l’air, la terre et le feu, Padamsee nous offre une vision de la nature universelle, hors de tout temps et lieu.
Ainsi sur cette huile sur toile datée de 1964, l’artiste, par un habile travail de la forme, de l'espace et de la couleur, peint des vestiges d’arbres, de ciel, de terre et d’eau qui ainsi combinés expriment la grandeur du temps infini.


Akbar Padamsee. Born in Bombay in 1928, lives and works in Bombay.
One of the most famous painters of India, Akbar Padamsee was associated with the revolutionary "Progressives Artists Group" in Bombay. In his quest for modernism, after having graduated from the prestigious J.J. School of Art of Bombay he left for Paris where he lived from 1951 to 1967, like so many of his contemporaries. The artist's prolific oeuvre, primarily abstract landscapes and splendid solitary figures, extends over more than six decades in such diverse media as oil on canvas, India ink, drawing, film, metallic sculpture, and photography.

Drawing his inspiration from the four basic elements of water, air, earth, and fire, Padamsee offers us a vision of universal nature, outside all time and space. In this oil on canvas from 1964 the artist cleverly manipulates form, space, and color, painting vestiges of trees, sky, earth, and water that, combined, express the grandeur of infinite time.

Akbar Padamsee has had many solo and group shows during his long career in India and abroad (France, Japan, Great Britain, ex-USSR, Canada…)
Venice Biennale 1953&55, Sao Paulo and Tokyo Biennales, 1959.

Padamsee a de nombreuses expositions solo et de groupe au cours de sa longue carrière en Inde et a l’étranger (France, Japon, Angleterre, ex-Urss, Canada…)
Biennales de Venice 1953&55, Sao Paulo et Tokyo, 1959.
Seven Indian Painters’, Gallery One, London,1958; Japan-1959;
Gallery ’63, New York-1963; Indian Triennale, New Delhi-1968; ‘India: Myth and Reality-Aspects of Modern Indian Art’, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford-1981; ‘Contemporary Indian Art’, Festival of India, Royal Academy of Art, London-1982; ‘Artistes Indiens en France’, Foundation Nationale des Arts Graphiques et Plastiques, Paris-1985; Festival of India in U.S.S.R., Moscow-1987; ‘National Exhibition of Contemporary Art’, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi-1991, ‘Ashta Nayak’, Tao Art Gallery, Bombay-2001. A retrospective showing of his works was organized by Art Heritage, New Delhi in New Delhi as well as in Bombay in 1980.

Récompenses:
Le Journal des Arts, Paris, 1952.
Gold Medal, Calcutta Fire Arts Society.
the award of the Lalit Kala Akademi, 1962
Nehru Fellowship, 1969.

Manish Pushkale

Born in 1973, Bhopal, India .The repeating sequences in the paintings are akin to rapidly chanted mantras recited while telling the beads of a rosary. The squares and the mesh like texture constitute the beads of Manish’s rosary. However, like every chant of the same mantra is different in its candence and its experience, every form in his paintings is differently enriched with colour and energy. Every movement of the hand that tells the rosary moves into the irrevocable past and every new movement remains in the present. Every viewing of his paintings is similarly varied.

In his works Manish has tried to capture the resonance of the chanting, japa, and to visualize the auditory experience. Interestingly, the chant of the mantras or naam is not a public performative exercise but a private, introverted process, very much like the artistic process, recoverable in fragments to the viewer through the experience of repeated seeing. Perhaps one may try and understand Manish’s work by drawing on abstract artistic genres in other mediums such as dhrupada in music where the essence lies in the alaap, the rest is vistara. The painted surface is the essence; the constituent rudiments are the preceptory responses. As in other abstraction in Manish paintings it is the very processes of creation that explain the created object itself and its subjective relation to the outside”. Seema Bawa

Uday Shanbhag

Uday Shanbhag, né en 1972 dans le Karnataka, a un background que l’on retrouve parfois, si ce n’est assez souvent, en Inde. Un parcours dense et varié. Après avoir obtenu un diplôme d’électricien, Uday Shanbhag entame des études artistiques qui vont l’amener de Bangalore à Ahmedabad en passant par Baroda. Comme beaucoup de ses compatriotes, grâce à l’obtention d’une bourse, il s’installe à l’étranger. Depuis 1999, Uday Shanbhag partage son temps entre l’Inde et la Hollande. Est-ce cette faculté de déplacement inhérente à la dimension de ce sous-continent ou une curiosité naturelle qui favorise dans l’art moderne et contemporain Indien une tendance, une vaine, que l’on qualifie, par mimétisme, de surréaliste ? L’idée de patchwork ou de rébus conviendrait mieux pour parler de la peinture indienne, en générale, et de la peinture de Shanbhag, en particulier. L’idée de patchwork correspond bien à la diversité culturelle, religieuse ou encore linguistique propre à l’Inde. Pour cette série d’œuvre réalisée à la fin des années 1990, Uday Shanbagh s’intéresse tout particulièrement aux recherches génétiques, clonage, congélation des embryons, etc., qu’il met en regard de concepts religieux, réincarnation, résurrection, déesse de la fertilité.

Uday Shanbhag, born in 1972 in Karnataka, comes from a background sometimes seen in India, although not often enough – a busy, complex career. After getting a degree as an electrician, Uday Shanbhag began his study of the fine arts, moving from Bangalore to Ahmedabad passing through Baroda. Like many of his compatriots, he moved abroad thanks to a scholarship. Since 1999, Uday Shanbhag has shared his time between India and Holland. Is it the faculty of displacement inherent in the size of this sub-continent or rather natural curiosity that encourages a trend among modern and contemporary Indian artists that one might qualify, mimetically, as Surrealist? The idea of a patchwork or rebus is perhaps more appropriate in speaking of Indian painting in general, and the work of Shanbhag in particular. The patchwork concept is very consistent with the cultural, religious, and even linguistic diversity so typical of India. In this series of works completed at the end of the 1990s, Uday Shanbagh is particularly focused on genetic research, cloning, freezing embryos, and so forth, all examined in the light of religious concepts such as reincarnation, resurrection, and the fertility goddess.

Thota Vaikuntam

Thota Vaikuntam est une légende dans l'art contemporain indien. Ces captivantes figures sombres et denses représentant les femmes et les hommes Telangana, région intérieure de l’Andhra Pradesh particulièrement aride, sont devenus des icônes. La finesse de son travail pictural, héritage de l’art de la miniature, s’allie avec raffinement à une efficacité plastique générale de l’œuvre proche de l’art mural. Son art associe l’inventivité synthétique de l’art moderne à la simplicité attentive des arts populaires.

Thota Vaikuntam was born in 1942 in Andhra Pradesh, India. He has had over a dozen solo shows in Delhi, Mumbai and several cities in the South India. He has also participated in group shows in India and abroad. His works have been exhibited in New York, London and Birmingham, at the VII Triennale, New Delhi, and in Kassal, Germany. He lives and works in Hyderabad, India.

Subba Ghosh

Born in 1961, New Delhi

Ghosh’s work draws on the image as “medium”, as a repository of values constructed over time. Placing the self directly in line with the image the artist explores the underlying social realities that manifest the present through the hold of time past. As Amit Mukhopadhyay says, “The artist positions himself as the other, enters the social and invokes us to be engaged with larger discourses like the production of meaning. In a way, Subba tries to reverse the ‘looking’, relocate the positions of the subjects by working the zones of visibility and invisibility and these zones are crucial for constructing representations of social realities.” (texte Talwar Gallery, New York)

Bose Krishnamachari

Artiste considéré en Inde comme l’étoile montante de l’art actuel, il est aussi commissaire de nombreuses expositions d’art contemporain. Il nous propose ici des tableaux « à saturation visuelle » dont les ingrédients sont la ville de Bombay elle-même, avec tous ses excès de mégapole mais aussi « la dissolution universelle » des corps dans une matière picturale très fluide. L’œuvre de Bose est constituée de manipulations d’éléments photographiques aussi bien que d’espaces abstraits, vibrants et colorés. Ses toiles, avec leurs spectaculaires combinaisons de couleurs, ont une base intellectuelle forte. Influencé par le courant conceptuel de l’art moderne britannique, il incite à reconsidérer le rapport entre signifiant et signifié. Il remet en cause la validité de l’image en tant que révélateur d’une signification unique. Du catalogue Bombay Maximum City, Lille 3000, 2006

An artist considered the rising star of the Indian contemporary art world, he is also the curator of many exhibitions. Here he presents works that have ‘reached visual saturation point.’ The artist uses the town of Mumbai as an ingredient, with all the excesses of the megacity, but also the ‘universal dissolution’ of bodies within this free and flowing pictorial matter. Bose’s work is made up of manipulations of photographic elements and vibrant, colourful abstract spaces. His canvases, with their spectacular combinations of colours, have a strong intellectual base.

Influenced by modern British conceptual art, he invites us to reconsider the relationship between the signifier and the signified. He questions the validity of an image which reveals only one meaning. From the catalogue Bombay Maximum City, Lille 3000, 2006

Prabhakar Kolte

Prabhakar Kolte se dit lui-même peintre abstrait expressionniste. Il utilise la couleur pour exprimer sa pensée. Le processus de création l’intéresse avant tout. Selon Kolte, une œuvre ne peut avoir importance et puissance, que si l’artiste s’investit émotionnellement. Il s’éloigne ainsi de l’ approche conceptuelle. A première vue, ces œuvres abstraites semblent assez simples, mais elles sont très complexes. Il utilise des couches de peinture qui forment un rythme visuel. Grâce à ce processus, l’éphémère devient tangible. Les couleurs ont leur propre vie, animent ces tableaux et constituent les évènements intérieurs de l’artiste.

A self-proclaimed abstract expressionist, Kolte utilises colour as the ultimate means of self-expression. He revels in the process of creation above all else, for he believes an artist’s work can only be as powerful as the emotion and energy that the artist puts into it. Kolte avoids conceptualisation as it constricts the artist’s thought process, his abstract compositions may, at first glance, seem simple. However, in layer upon calculated layer, large patches of unmixed pigment coat his canvases, creating a visual rhythm and translating the ephemeral into something tangible. Kolte’s creations transcend time and celebrate the beauty of Nature in breathtaking and compositions where colours come to life and the artist’s own passion takes sensorial form.

Debesh Goswami

Le corps est au centre du travail de Debesh Goswami. Pour cet artiste indien résidant en France, le corps en question – le sien, en l’occurrence – est aussi, forcément, un corps étranger, en dépit de l’aspiration universelle dont il est la véhicule. L’étranger, pour les occidentaux, se révélerait dans la connaissance de Debesh Goswami de certaines techniques indiennes, en particulier le yoga, qui prouvent la sensibilité du corps ; l’ambition méta-physique repose sur l’oubli du corps dans le but d’atteindre un état de grâce spirituelle, d’où la teneur contemplative du travail de Debesh Goswami, et son recours à des substances les plus simples, telles la que, la cendre ou la farine. L’aspect terrestre de ces substances et le fait qu’elles forment une seconde peau éphémère sur le corps qu’elles recouvrent, est une condition préalable à « l’aura » supra-terretre, souffle ou respiration d’une absence, qu’il souhaiterait que ces traces, conservées sur photographies et vidéo, suggèrent.

The body is at the centre of Debesh Goswami’s work. For this Indian artist who lives in France, the body in question (his) is also, necessarily, a foreign body, despite the universal aspiration for which he is the vehicle. The foreign aspect, for Westerners, is revealed in Debesh Goswami’s knowledge of certain Indian techniques, especially yoga, which demonstrate the sensitivity of the body; its méta-physical ambition rests on the idea of forgetting the body in order to attain a state of spiritual grace. Hence the contemplative aspect of Debesh Goswami’s work, and his recourse to very simple materials, such as mud, ashes and flour. The earthly aspect of these substances, and the fact that they form a second skin on the body they cover, is a preliminary requirement for the supra-terrestrial aura, breath or respiration of an absence, which he would wish these traces, preserved on video or photographs, to suggest.
Deepak Ananth, commissaire de l’exposition Indian Summer à l’Ecole des Beaux-Arts (Paris, 2005)

Anju Chaudhuri

Née en 1944 à Calcutta dans une famille d’intellectuels bengalis attachés à la tradition, Anju Chaudhuri a reçu dès son enfance des influences très profondes, qui ont marqué le début d’une longue succession d’expériences aussi contrastées que formatrices. En Inde d’abord, elle est nourrie des histoires de la mythologie hindoue qui baigne sa vie quotidienne et par ses nombreux voyages entre mer et montagne. Avant même le choc de la rencontre avec l’Occident, elle découvre à la faculté des Beaux-Arts de Baroda, la culture indienne occidentale. Elle se rend ensuite en Europe où elle étudie à la Saint Martin’s School of Arts de Londres puis à l’Ecole Nationale des Beaux Arts de Paris. Elle y connaît des moments aussi forts et culturellement différents que les Sixties à Londres, la magie de sa rencontre avec Paris et son maître Hayter, Mai 68 et l’Amsterdam des années 70. Cette période est aussi celle des allers et retours entre l’Europe et le sous-continent.

Anju Chaudhuri grew up in an intellectual Bengalese family who was very attached to tradition. From her earliest childhood, many different and formative experiences influenced her. Firstly in India, where she was regularly exposed to Hindi mythology and numerous trips to the mountains and the sea. Before her culture shock upon arrival in the West, Chaudhuri discovered western Indian culture at the faculty of Fine Arts in Baroda. She then left for Europe, where she studied at Saint Martin’s School of Arts in London and afterwards, the Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts de Paris. Chaudhuri has experienced many different important and culturally diverse moments in time: London in the sixties; the magic of discovering Paris; her mentor and master, Hayter; May 68 in Paris; Amsterdam in the seventies. During this time, the artist travelled extensively between Europe and the sub continent.

Barmak Akram

Son œuvre plastique constitue elle aussi une coupure, au sens strict du terme, puisque Barmak Akram déchire littéralement, et à la main, des magazines de presse pour y révéler une autre image, enfermant toujours la première. C’est ce qu’il désigne par le terme de « Phytomorphisme », inversant le principe de l’anthropomorphisme, puisqu’il ne s’agit plus de trouver de l’humain dans images naturelles mais au contraire de fabriquer des images naturelles à partir d’images de corps, le plus souvent féminins. Ainsi, d’images publicitaires ou de magazines pornographiques, naissent des natures mortes improbables, des fleurs, des paysages ou des animaux, comme s’il voulait retravailler les genres traditionnels de la peinture à partir du matériau le plus banalement utilisé aujourd’hui par les artistes qu’est le journal.

His work is also a cutting, in the literal sense of the word, as Barmak Akram actually rips up magazines by hand to reveal another image, while still locking in the original. This is what he denotes by the term 'Phytomorphisme', inversing the principal of anthropomorphism, since he is not concerned with finding the human in natural images but with making natural images from images of (mostly women's) bodies. In this way, improbable still lifes (flowers, landscapes and animals) are born out of advertisements or pornographic magazines, as if he wished to rework painting's traditional genres from a material commonly used by artists today, the newspaper. Christine Macel, Conservateur pour l’art contemporain au MNAM-Centre Pompidou

Velu Viswanadhan

Viswanadhan est né en 1940 au Kerala dans une famille d’architectes traditionnels. Il étudie à l’école de Beaux Arts de Madras, sous l'enseignement de célèbre peintre KCS Paniker. En 1966, il participe à la fondation du village d’artistes Cholamandal. En 1968 il entre à la Galerie de France et s'installe à Paris où il côtoie Hartung, Soulages et Degottex. De 1982 à 2006 Viswanadhan a été représenté par la galerie Darthea Speyer, Paris.

Viswanadhan est aujourd’hui l’un des artistes Indiens les plus renommés. Les National Galleries de Delhi, Bombay et Le Victoria Memorial Museum de Calcutta lui ont consacré des rétrospectives.
Son œuvre témoigne de l'époque où les artistes Indiens, dans la lignée de ceux que l’on appelle aujourd’hui les « Old Masters », ont construit avec autant de conviction que de persévérance les bases d'un art moderne en Inde.
On peut observer à travers l’œuvre de Viswanadhan soit la manifestation d'un art abstrait, soit l’expression de l’art tantrique. Mais tout l’intérêt de cette œuvre, comme celle de son maître KCS Paniker ou de J Swaminathan, est d’être ailleurs, d’être autre.

La Delhi Art Gallery a récemment exposé une collection des oeuvres des début parisien de Viswanadhan. Sa prochaine exposition aura lieu à la Malborough Gallery de New York en Mars 2008.

Viswanadhan was born in Kerala in 1940 and studied at the Madras art school, where KCS Paniker was one of his teachers. In 1966, he was one of the founders of the artists' village of Cholamandal. In 1968 he moved to Paris, and joined the Galerie de France where he kept company with Hartung, Soulages and Degottex.

Today, Viswanandhan is one of India's most well-known artists. The National Galleries of Delhi, Bombay, and the Victoria Memorial Museum of Calcutta have all organized retrospectives of his work, which bears witness to a period when Indian artists, similarly to those currently known as the "Old Masters", laid the foundations of modern Indian art with conviction and perseverance. In Viswanandhan's work, abstract art and Tantric art are both evident. However, the real significance of his work, as in the work of his masters, KCS Paniker and J. Swaminathan, is to be elsewhere, to be other.
Vismanadhan recently exhibited at the Delhi Art Gallery. His next exhibit is to be held at the Malborough Gallery in New York.

Atul Dodiya

Né en 1959 à Bombay
Etudes à la JJ School of Art de Bombay
Vit et travaille à Bombay

« Atul Dodiya, passionné d’histoire de l’art est une sorte de chef de file des peintres de sa génération en Inde. Constamment, tant avec humour que gravité, il brouille les pistes : figuratif, abstrait, il réalise également des vitrines aux objets presque surréalistes. Atul Dodiya joue sur la superposition de toutes sortes d’imageries – images kitsch et populaires, grandes figures ou événements de la politique indienne (Gandhi, Nehru, l’état de violence au Cachemire et les émeutes du Gujarat) ou occidentale (Clinton, Poutine), autobiographiques mais également images faisant référence à l’histoire de la peinture (suprématisme, constructivisme, abstraction) – et sur le sens qui se dégage de cette collision. » (Indian Summer, ENSBA Paris 2005).

L’œuvre d’Atul Dodiya a cette particularité culturelle Indienne particulièrement captivante, à l’instar de l’un de ses maîtres Bhupen Khakhar, de revitaliser sa démarche par des aller retour incessant entre les Beaux Arts et les arts populaires, entre l’espace privatif et l’espace publique.

Atul Dodiya avoue aussi, parmi ses nombreux centres d’intérêt, sa passion pour le cinéma. Satyajit Ray occupe la première place dans son panthéon personnel, suivi par Tarkovsky, Antonioni et Kurosawa. Son œuvre est en plan séquence, multipliant les expériences formelles comme autant de plan, contre plan et autre plan large. Elle s’affirme comme le synopsis d’une œuvre globale.


Diplômé de la J.J. School of Art, Bombay en1982, il étudie à l’école des Beaux Arts de Paris de 1991 à 1992. Depuis sa première exposition solo à la Gallery Chemould, Bombay en 1989 il a beaucoup exposé en solo et en groupe en Inde et dans le monde entier : Saptapadi, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi ; Museum Art Gallery, Mumbai,2007 ; Shri Khakkar Prasanna, Chemould Prescott, Mumbai, 2007 ; The Wet Sleeves of My Paper Robe, Bodhi Art, Bombay & New York, 2006. Icon: ‘India Contemporary’ Venice Biennale, 2006; 'Indian Summer' L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, 2005; Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India, the Asia Society, New York & Queens Museum, New York, 2005; London's Tate Gallery, 'Centuries Cities: Art and Culture in Modern Metropolis', 2000; Yokohama Triennale, 2002 ; Capital and Karma: Recent Positions in Art, Kunsthalle Vienna, 2002 ; the House of World Cultures, Berlin, 2003 ; Espacio Uno, Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, 2002. The crowning glory was his works being shown at the Tate Museum, London, (2000), as part of the exhibition 'Centuries Cities: Art and Culture in Modern Metropolis'…

Born in 1959 in Bombay
Studied at the JJ School of Art of Bombay
Lives and works in Bombay

"Atul Dodiya, passionately involved in art history, is something of a leader among the Indian painters of his generation. With both humor and gravity, he constantly confuses the issue, moving from figurative to abstract painting as well as creating glass cases with almost surrealistic objects. Atul Dodiya plays on the superposition of all sorts of images – kitsch and popular imagery, major figures and events from Indian politics (Gandhi, Nehru, violence in Kashmir and riots in Gujarat, as well as images from Western sources (Clinton, Putin). Autobiographical images are included as well as others referring to the history of painting (Suprematism, Constructivism, Abstraction), all designed as an investigation of meaning that emerges from these collisions." (Indian Summer, ENSBA Paris 2005).

The work of Atul Dodiya shares a particularly captivating Indian cultural specificity, similarly to one of his masters, Bhupen Khakhar – the revitalization of art through a constant dialog between the fine arts and popular arts, between a private and public space.

Among his many centers of interest, Atul Dodiya is also fascinated by the cinema. Satyajit Ray holds first place in his personal pantheon, followed by Tarkovsky, Antonioni, and Kurosawa. His work is a kind of sequence shot that multiplies formal experiments as plain, reverse, or wide-angle shots, affirming itself in a synopsis of a global oeuvre.

Following a degree from the J.J. School of Art, Bombay in 1982, he studied at the Ecole des Beaux Arts de Paris from 1991 to 1992. Since his first solo show in 1989 at the Gallery Chemould, Bombay, he has exhibited in many solo and group shows in India and elsewhere in the world: Saptapadi, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi; Museum Art Gallery, Mumbai,2007; Shri Khakkar Prasanna, Chemould Prescott, Mumbai, 2007; The Wet Sleeves of My Paper Robe, Bodhi Art, Bombay & New York, 2006. Icon: ‘India Contemporary’ Venice Biennale, 2006; 'Indian Summer' L'Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, 2005; Edge of Desire: Recent Art in India, the Asia Society, New York & Queens Museum, New York, 2005; London's Tate Gallery, 'Centuries Cities: Art and Culture in Modern Metropolis', 2000; Yokohama Triennale, 2002; Capital and Karma: Recent Positions in Art, Kunsthalle Vienna, 2002; the House of World Cultures, Berlin, 2003; Espacio Uno, Reina Sofia Museum, Madrid, 2002. The crowning glory was his works being shown at the Tate Museum, London, (2000), as part of the exhibition 'Centuries Cities: Art and Culture in Modern Metropolis'…

Pushpa Kumari

Pushpa est la petite fille de Mahasundari Devi, l'une des grandes dames du Mithila painting. L’art du Mithila est le mode d’expression populaire pictural Indien le plus renommé tant dans le sous continent qu’à l’étranger. A la base exclusivement féminin, l’art du Mithila a fait l’objet de nombreuses études. Certaines œuvres des plus grandes dames du Mithila Painting sont conservées dans des collections publiques et privées. Un musée au Japon est consacré exclusivement à cette forme d’art. D’autres projets de musée et de fondation sont à l’étude en Inde.

Pushpa incarne le renouveau de cette tradition artistique. La qualité et à l'originalité de ses œuvres, l’amène à exposer régulièrement en Inde mais aussi aux Etats-Unis et au Japon. De nombreux articles lui ont été consacrés. Ce dessin, n’hésite pas à s’affranchir d’une certaine morale pour nous offrir, comme le fit Courbet avec la naissance du monde, une de ses franches et rares représentations des origines.

Pushpa Kumari is the granddaughter of Mahasundari Devi, one of the grande dames of Mithila painting. The art of Mithila is the most well-known mode of popular pictorial expression both in the Indian sub-continent and the world. Initially exclusively feminine, the art of Mithila has been thoroughly studied. Certain works by the greatest women artists of Mithila Painting are preserved in both public and private collections. A museum in Japan is exclusively devoted to this art form. Other projects for a museum and foundation are currently underway in India.

Pushpa incarnates the renewal of this artistic tradition. The quality and originality of her work has resulted in many exhibits in India, but also in the United States and Japan. Many articles have been written about her work. This drawing confidently transgresses a certain morality to offer us, as did Courbet in his Naissance du Monde, one of her direct though rare representations of our origins.

Shibu Natesan

Shibu Natesan

Né à Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, 1966
Partage son temps entre Baroda et Londres.

La peinture de Shibu Natesan a la qualité, la précision et le réalisme d'un montage photographique. Utilisant une palette hardie, l’artiste injecte son réalisme en combinant le familier avec des symboles inattendus. Sous une apparente naïveté, le mélange de réalisme et de fantaisie défie les notions préconçues de reconnaissance et amène le spectateur a repensé les implications d’événements présumés ordinaires.

Shibu Natesan maîtrise aussi bien l’aquarelle que la peinture à l’huile. Pour cette dernière, il utilise un matériau proche de la peinture glycérophtalique pour métal. C’est cela qui donne un aspect inusuel, distant, à ses sujets, par ailleurs et par contraste, anodin.

Les œuvres de Shibu Natesan sont des peintures d’atmosphère. Celle du quotidien, du réalisme. Elles s’apparentent au cinéma d’Eric Rohmer. Les photos de presse de « Pauline à la plage », l’un des opus du cycle Comédies et Proverbes semblent être tirées du même univers que cette peinture titré laconiquement « On the beach ».

« Peintures d’atmosphère ! », voilà en quoi le réalisme de Shibu Natesan se distingue de celui largement pratiqué par d’autres artistes issus de la même génération.
Le langage de l’atmosphère est celui du silence qui fait sens.

Born in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, 1966
Shares his time between Baroda and London.

Shibu Natesan's painting has the quality, precision, and realism of a photographic montage. Using a bold palette, the artist alters the realism of the image by combining the familiar with unexpected symbols. Although deceptively naïve, the mixture of the realistic and the imaginary defies the preconceived notions of recognition and leads the viewer to rethink the implications of seemingly ordinary events.

Shibu Natesan masters not only watercolor but oil paint as well. For the latter, he uses a material similar to glycerophtalic metal paint, giving an atypical, distant look to subjects that in other respects appear perfectly innocuous. Works by Shibu Natesan are paintings of atmospheres, the daily round, realism. They can be related to the films of Eric Rohmer. The press photos of "Pauline à la plage", one of the films in the "Comédies et Proverbes" cycle, appear to be linked from the same universe as the painting entitled laconically "On the beach".

"Paintings of atmosphere" … this is what distinguishes the realism of Shibu Natesan from that widely practiced by other artists of the same generation. The language of atmosphere is a language of silence that generates meaning.

Education :
B.F.A. Painting, College of Fine Arts, Trivandrum, Kerala, (1987); M.F.A. Print making, Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda (1991); Participant, Rijksalademie Van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam (1996-97)

Expositions personnelles :
“Each One Teach One” Jack Shainman Gallery, New York, NY, 2007
“Vision Unlimited”, Grosvenor Gallery, London, UK, 2005
“Existence of Instinct”, Shridharani Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2005
“Paintings”, Galerie Nanky De Vreese, Amsterdam and Sakshi
Gallery, Bangalore, 2001-02
“Missing”, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, 1999
“Nature Morte”, New Delhi, 1998
“Linkage”, Gallery de Vreese, Amsterdam, 1997
Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, 1997
“Futility of Device”, Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University,
Baroda.

Expositions de groupe :
“Parallel Realities”, Asian Art Now, Blackburn Museum, Lancashire, England, 2006
“Making the Divinity”, Curator: Ina Pury, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai
“Altered Realities”, Gallery Art India, New York
“Parallel Realities”, The third Fukuoka Asian Art Triennale,
Fukuoka Asian Art Museum, Japan, 2005.

Amitava

Né à New Delhi, 1947
Vit et travaille à New Delhi

Peintre, graphiste et designer, Amitava a étudié au College of Art, New Delhi et fut en 1974 membre fondateur du ‘New Group’.

Depuis 2000, Amitava trace les cartes de voyages psychiques, les contours s’apparentent aux rythmes syncopés de séismographe. Sur divers supports, l'artiste commence son dessin sans thème préconçu, le processus créatif résulte alors des niveaux subconscients du mental. Une jungle de lignes épaisses noires et rouges domine alors sur ses œuvres.
Pendant son séjour en France en 2002 il crée quelques travaux abstraits purs sur des pages du British Daily et du Financial Times. Sans idée précise, l'artiste prend ses marqueurs et commence à accentuer et souligner les images et les textes verticalement et horizontalement pour produire, avec un nouveau langage visuel, des résultats oblitérants les messages sur lesquels il s'abandonne.


Depuis sa première exposition à la Kunika-Chemould Gallery, en 1969, Amitava a participé à plusieurs expositions personnelles et de groupe en Inde et à l'étranger. Ses oeuvres se trouvent dans les collections permanents telles que: Society of Contemporary Art, Londres; National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal; Punjab Museum, Chandigarh; Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi et de collections privées dont : M. V. Sanjay Kumar, Madras; M. Devender Sahani; Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi.

Born in New Delhi, 1947
Lives and works in New Delhi

A painter and graphic designer, Amitava studied at the College of Art, New Delhi and was a founding member of "New Group", born in 1974.

Since 2000, Amitava has been drawing maps of psychic voyages, whose contours evoke the syncopated rhythms of a seismograph. The artist begins his drawings on various types of surfaces without any preconceived intention, the creative process emerging from the subconscious levels of the mind. A jungle of thick black and red lines dominates his work.
During his stay in France in 2002, he created several purely abstract works on the pages of the British Daily and Financial Times. With no precise idea, the artist uses his markers to accentuate and underline the images and texts horizontally and vertically to produce, using a new visual language, results that obliterate the messages he uses as a vehicle for his freestyle abandonment.

Since his first exhibit in the Kunika-Chemould Gallery in1969, Amitava has participated in several solo and group shows in India and abroad. His work is found in permanent collections such as: the Society of Contemporary Art, London; National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal; Punjab Museum, Chandigarh; Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi and private collections such as: M. V. Sanjay Kumar, Madras; M. Devender Sahani; Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi.

Jagdish Swaminathan

Jagdish Swaminathan (1928-1994) est l’une des grandes figures tutélaires de l’art moderne Indien. Artiste, poète, théoricien, fondateur et directeur de musée, Swami, comme l’appelle affectueusement ses proches, caractérise cet engagement global que l’on peut retrouver dans l’art indien. La figure du mentor, grecque, du leader, anglo-saxonne, est, en Inde, celle du gourou.

En 1982, Swaminathan participe à la création du Bharat Bawan, complexe culturel situé à Bhopal incluant le Roopankar, un musée d’art contemporain. Jagdish Swaminathan milite pour que le terme de contemporain embrasse la diversité culturelle indienne, de ses origines nomade à sédentaire, de sa réalité rurale à urbaine. L’art contemporain exposé et collectionné au Bharat Bhavan illustre cette volonté de faire coexister art populaire et art dit cultivé.

L’œuvre de Jagdish Swaminathan est l’expression d’un no man’s land pictural. Elle se situe dans ces espaces encore vierges que des artistes comme Bawa, Souza, Gaitonde, Akbar Padamsee et Tyeb Mehta vont explorer. Ces artistes vont articuler de nouveaux langages tenant compte tout autant de l’histoire de l’art moderne occidental que de la représentation de l’espace dans l’art jain ou de la symbolique des couleurs dans l’art tantrique.

Les peintures de Swaminathan nous proposent des espaces indéterminés. La montagne, l’oiseau et la symétrie sont les éléments de base de son vocabulaire plastique. La montagne est en soi un symbole, elle est aussi la demeure de Shiva. L’oiseau serait un trait d’union entre le connu et l’inconnu, entre le temporel et l’éternel. La symétrie jette les bases d’un art qui admet l’interchangeabilité des états, physique et psychique, senti et ressenti, perception et réflexion.

Jagdish Swaminathan a fait des études de Polytechnique à Delhi avant d’être journaliste, critique d’art et artiste. Il fonde en 1962 le « Group 1890 » regroupant à Delhi 12 jeunes artistes dont Jeram Patel, Jyoti Bhatt, Ambadas, Gullamohammed Sheikh. La première exposition du Group est inaugurée par le premier ministre Indien Jawaharlal Nehru et le poète Mexicain Octavio Paz. Il se lie d’amitié avec Paz grâce auquel il rencontre Rufino Tamayo, Fidel Castro ou encore Claude Levi-Strauss. De son vivant, 31 expositions personnelles lui sont consacrées en Inde et à l’étranger.

Jagdish Swaminathan (1928-1994) is one of the major tutelary figures of modern Indian art. An artist, poet, theoretician, and founder and director of a museum, Swami, as his friends affectionately call him, is exemplary of that total commitment typical of Indian art. In India, the figure of the mentor, the word for "leader" in ancient Greek, transforms to that of the guru.

In 1982, Swaminathan participates in the creation of the Bharat Bawan, a cultural complex situated in Bhopal and including Roopankar, a museum of contemporary art. Jagdish Swaminathan militates to ensure that the word "contemporary" embraces the entire range of cultural diversity in India, from its nomadic to its sedentary origins, from its rural to its urban realities. Contemporary art exhibited and collected at the Bharat Bhavan illustrates his strong desire to ensure that popular art and the so-called fine arts co-exist.

The work of Jagdish Swaminathan is an expression of that pictorial no man’s land located in the still virgin territory to be explored by artists such as Bawa, Souza, Gaitonde, Akbar Padamsee and Tyeb Mehta. These artists were to develop new languages that combined the history of Western modern art and the representation of space in Jain art and color symbolism from Tantric art.

Swaminathan's paintings offer us indeterminate space. The mountain, bird, and symmetry are the basic elements of his esthetic vocabulary. The mountain is a symbol in itself, but is also the house of Shiva. The bird is the link between the known and the unknown, the temporal and the eternal. Symmetry serves as the basis of an art that admits to interchangeability of both physical and psychic conditions, sense and awareness, perception and reflection.

Jagdish Swaminathan studied Polytechnic in Delhi before being a journalist, an art critic and an artist. In 1962, in Delhi he establishes the " Group1890 " grouping together in Delhi 12 young artists among whom Jeram Patel, Jyoti Bhatt, Ambadas and Gullamohammed Sheikh. The first exhibition of the Group is inaugurated by the Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the Mexican poet Octavio Paz. The artist, thanks to Paz, meets Rufino Tamayo, Fidel Castro and Claude Levi-Strauss. During his lifetime, 31 solo shows exhibited his work both in India and abroad.

Surekha

Née en 1965, Bangalore
Vit et travaille à Bangalore

Surekha, fait partie de la nouvelle génération d’artistes pluridisciplinaires (avec Sonia Khurana) qui pratique la vidéo, la photo et l’installation.
Elle utilise la vidéo comme moyen de négocier les questions relatives à son rapport à la tradition, la globalisation et aux changements. Comment vivre avec les valeurs culturelles traditionnelles ? Comment se libérer en tant que femme ? Comment faire face aux problèmes ethniques ?
Surekha dresse la carte des trajectoires de la mémoire, des rituels et aborde les questions liées à la politique sociale. Une grande partie de son travail s’interesse à la femme et sa condition de vie en Inde. "Comme pour un documentaire, elle filme un groupe de brodeuses de toutes générations qui racontent à force de rires leur vie avec un mari alcoolique ou bien dans une série de photographies des fillettes prennent la pose devant un miroir en costume traditionnel, coiffées d’une tresse fleurie de jasmin ou évoquent par l’immersion dans un bain fleuri le rite de la fertilité traditionnel de la femme en Inde" (Indian Summer, ENSBA, Paris 2006).



Surekha, Fragments of a Wedding Diary, Installation de 33 photographies, chaque photographie : environ 15,24 x 22,86 cm, 12 000 € (detail)
"Fragments of a wedding diary" was shown in two museums as part of an international show " Complexities of Life", Aboa Arsanova Museum and Turku Lapperanta Museum, South Karelia.


L’installation ici présentée et intitulée ’Wedding Diary’, amène le spectateur face à face avec 33 photographies noir et blanc* rehaussées symboliquement de quelques couleurs évoquant le travail de retouche fait par les studios de prise de vue de mariage et autres évènements marquant la vie et les rites des familles. Ces images ont été sauvées des poubelles des studios de quartier. Négatifs voilés, mal fixées, rayés ou simplement répudiées par le client. L’arrivée du numérique coïncide avec une pixellisation, comme l’on dirait une atomisation, de la cellule familiale. L’urbanisation et ses implications dans la vie sociale en Inde sont au cœur de la problématique de Surekha. Ces fragments de famille nous parlent d’une pixellisation du sens.

* Ces images ont été tirées d’après négatifs, puis colorées à la main pour être, en dernier lieu numérisées et à nouveau imprimées sur papier photo.

Born in 1965, Bangalore
Lives and works in Bangalore

Surekha is among the new generation of multidisciplinary artists (with Sonia Khurana) adept at using video, photography, and installations.
She uses video as a way to negotiate questions surrounding her relation to tradition, globalization, and change. How to live with traditional cultural values? How to become liberated as a woman? How to deal with ethnic issues?
Surekha maps trajectories of memory and rituals, addressing questions linked to social politics. Much of her work is devoted to Indian women and their condition. "Using the documentary technique, she films a group of embroiderers of all ages who tell stories, laughing, of life with an alcoholic husband, or a series of photographs of young girls posing in front of a mirror in traditional costume wearing a braid interwoven with jasmine flowers, or a suggestion of the traditional Indian woman's fertility rites through immersion in a flowery bath." (Indian Summer, ENSBA, Paris 2006).

Surekha, Fragments of a Wedding Diary, Installation of 33 photographs, each photograph about 15.24 x 22.86 cm. "Fragments of a wedding diary" was shown in two museums as part of an international show " Complexities of Life", Aboa Arsanova Museum and Turku Lapperanta Museum, South Karelia.

The installation presented here, entitled "Wedding Diary’, faces the viewer with 33 black and white photographs, highlighted symbolically with a few colors that refer to retouching done by the professional photographers who cover weddings and other important life events and family rites. These images were rescued from the garbage bins of studios in the neighborhood, negatives that were out of focus, poorly developed, scratched, or simply rejected by the client. The rise of digital photography coincides with pixelization, in another sense atomization, of the nuclear family. Urbanization and its implications for social life in India are core issues in the work of Surekha. These family fragments talk to us about the pixelization of meaning.

* These images were printed from negatives, colored by hand, then scanned and printed onto photography paper.

Diplome Fine Arts, Ken School of Ats, Bangalore & Santiniketan, Calcutta (1992)

Expositions a l’etranger et dans le pays :
Expo solo :
"traces and memories of a body", "the native body", "selving a body", "eye of a needle" Bangalore and Lakeeren gallery, Mumbai.
Expo de groupe
Newark Museum, EU, 2007
“Horn Please! Narratives from Contemporary Indian Art”, Kunstmuseum, Bern, Suisse, 2007
Ghosts in the Machine and Other Fables, Apeejay Media Gallery, New Delhi, 2006
Indian Summer, Paris 2005
"other side of the sky", Unesco, Paris(2003);
"sites of recurrence", Boras Museum, Sweden(2003).
"self", IMA Brisbane(2002);
"under the Skin", Aarau (1999), "british make" Bristol(2001); "skin deep" Helsinki(2001).
"camouflage", Nehru Center London(2001.

Jivya Soma Mashe

Jivya Soma Mashe, né en 1934, est l’une des figures incontournables de l’histoire de l’art Indien. Son œuvre a été saluée par les personnalités les plus représentatives, politiques et culturelles, de l’Inde, d’Indira Gandhi à Sayed Haider Raza.
Paris, Berlin, New York, Londres ou encore Moscou, cet artiste, membre de la tribu Warli, parlant seulement le dialecte Warli, à visiter et à exposer dans de nombreux pays.

Située à 150 km seulement au Nord de la mégapole Mumbai, les Warli font partie des nombreuses communautés tribales que les indiens appellent les Adivasi, littéralement « premiers habitants ». De fait leur art nous parle des temps les plus anciens, avant même que naissent bouddhisme et hindouisme. Jivya Soma Mashe est, même au regard des siens, un artiste légendaire tant par sa personnalité que par son talent.

C’est la fameuse galerie Chemould qui a exposées ses peintures pour la première fois en 1975, publiant en 1985 « The Warlis, Tribal Paintings and Legends ». C’est aussi avec Jivya Soma Mashe et son fils Balu, que la Chemould Gallery a fait, en 2007, son show d’adieu à son premier et historique lieu d’exposition située au-dessus de la Jehangir Art Gallery de Mumbay.

Celui que certain surnomme le Husain de l’art tribal Indien (Gulf News 13/09/2007), tant sa renommée est grande, a exposé récemment avec Richard Long (Düsseldorf 2003 et Milan 2004) et Neck Chand (Paris 2007).

Ces deux peintures sont rares tant par leur grande taille que par leur qualité exceptionnelle particulièrement représentative du style de l’artiste, célébration de l’intime et de l’universel.

Jivya Soma Mashe, born in 1934, is an essential figure in the history of Indian art. His work has been commended by some of the most important cultural and political figures of India, from Indira Gandhi to Sayed Haider Raza.
The artist, a member of the Warli tribe, only speaks the Warli dialect but has visited and exhibited in many different countries – Paris, Berlin, New York, London, and even Moscow…

Located only 150 km to the north of the Mumbai megapolis, the Warli are one of the many tribal communities the Indians refer to as Adivasi, literally translated as "the first inhabitants". Their art speaks to us of the earliest periods, before the rise of Buddhism and Hinduism. Even those close to him consider Jivya Soma Mashe a legendary figure of an artist both for his personality and his talent.

The well-known Chemould Gallery first exhibited his paintings in 1975, publishing "The Warlis, Tribal Paintings and Legends" in 1985. In 2007, the Chemould Gallery organized a farewell show for its first, historical premises with Jivya Soma Mashe and his son, Balu, above the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai.

The man known as the Husain of Indian tribal art (Gulf News 13/09/2007) for his remarkable reputation has recently exhibited with Richard Long (Düsseldorf 2003 and Milan 2004) and Neck Chand (Paris 2007).

Both paintings are remarkable not only for their large size but also for their exceptional quality, especially representative of the artist's style – a celebration of the intimate and the universal.

Exhibitions:
2007 - "Jivya and Balu Mashe " - Gallery Chemould, Mumbai, India
2007 - "Nek Chand - Jivya Soma Mashe" - Halle Saint Pierre, Paris, France
2006 - "Birth of the Painted World " - Kauffman Gallery, Shippensburg, USA
2006 - "Abitare il cuore" - Galleria Lattuada Studio, Milano, Italy
2004 - Incontro: Richard Long e Jivya S. Mashe - PAC (Padiglione dell'Arte Contemporanea), Milano, Italy
2003 - Dialogue: Richard Long und Jivya S. Mashe - Museum Kunstpalast, Duesseldorf, Germany
1999 – Other Masters, Craft Museum, New Delhi, India
1989 - Magiciens de la Terre - Paris, France
1975 - Gallery Chemould, Mumbai, India

Other various solo and group shows in India and around the world.

Ravi Agarwal

Ragi Agarwal, né en 1958, est photographe et environnementaliste. Ses photographies interrogent la manière dont on devrait s'imaginer aujourd'hui la vie des individus tout au bout de la "chaîne de la globalisation", comme dans sa série consacrée aux travailleurs du Sud en Inde, dans le Gujarat, exposés à la Documenta 11. En tant qu’environnementaliste, il est le fondateur et directeur de Toxics Links, une organisation qui collecte et partage les informations sur les sources et les dangers d’empoisonnement de l’environnement.
La mousson vue comme une "mise à nu" est également au cœur du travail de Ravi Agarwal qui propose des photos en forme de performance. Des bustes d’homme indiens nus portant dans leurs mains des racines arrachées de différents arbres constituent sa série de photos dites écologiques.
Artiste activiste, Ragi Agarwal l’est pleinement.

Ravi Agarwal (b. 1958) is a photographer and an environmentalist. His photography examines work, labor, and the street within the domain of public spaces. As an environmentalist, he is founder and director of Toxics Link, an organization that collects and shares information about the sources and dangers of poisons in the environment. Agarwal’s solo exhibitions include Alien Waters, India International Centre Gallery, New Delhi, 2006; Down and Out, New Delhi, Ahmedabad and Amsterdam, 2000; and A Street View, All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi, 1995. He has also participated in Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany 2002; Crossing Generations: diVERGE: Forty years of Gallery Chemould, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, 2003; Self x Social, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jahawahar Lal Nehru University, New Delhi, 2005, and Watching Me Watching India, Fotografie Forum International, Frankfurt, Germany, 2006. Agarwal lives and works in New Delhi.

Agarwal’s solo exhibitions include Alien Waters, India International Centre Gallery, New Delhi, 2006; Down and Out, New Delhi, Ahmedabad and Amsterdam, 2000; and A Street View, All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society, New Delhi, 1995. He has also participated in Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany 2002; Crossing Generations: diVERGE: Forty years of Gallery Chemould, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, 2003; Self x Social, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jahawahar Lal Nehru University, New Delhi, 2005, and Watching Me Watching India, Fotografie Forum International, Frankfurt, Germany, 2006. Agarwal lives and works in New Delhi.

Naveen Kishore

Né a Calcutta en 1953 et diplômé de Littérature Anglaise en 1973, Naveen Kishore débute comme concepteur d’éclairage scénique. En 1982, il fonde Seagle Books, publication sur les arts et les médias orientée sur les études de film, art et culture.
Kishore se tourne vers la photographie et montre des acteurs travestis du théâtre de Manipuri, Bengale et Punjab. Il photographie plus particulièrement Chapal Bhaduri, un travesti du théâtre populaire bengali appelé Jatra, dans un projet intitulé Performing the Goddess. Certaines de ces images ont voyagé en Inde, au Royaume-Uni et aux Etats-Unis avec l’exposition intitulée Woman/Goddess. Une série de photo sur les éboueurs du Bombay et le trafic des jeunes filles à Chiang Mai, Thaïlande ont fait partie de la Fondation Ashoka. Le projet Paris:Music récemment conclu sera présenté en Mars 2008. Kishore vit et travaille à Calcutta.

Watching Kali or Song for Kali

My mother’s image by error with clay I want to shape.
This Ma is not earth’s girl, vain toil, with clay I sweat.
In hand a sword, ’round neck cut heads, is she earth-born,
Can mere clay put out mind’s burning, as she does?
I’ve heard her hue is black, that black lights up the world.
Can black paint slapped on clay come close to Mother-black?
My Mother has three eyes: sun, moon and holy fire.
Is there an artisan, to build me such a one?
Evil-destroying Kali, she is not just clay and straw.
She’ll take away mind’s dark. Show Proshad her Kali-face.

Ram Proshad (c. 1720–1781).
Translated from the Bengali by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak.



. . . at the other end of the bloodied sacrifical block, hot gold tongue thrust out, trembling with the rays of outer space, three-eyed woman with loosened hair, world-lighting black, Mother naked as the day, terrible beautiful Kali. Images of divinity standing cheek by jowl with ordinary daily-lived humanity . . . women washing clothes, children playing, cars passing by, food being cooked . . .This series of images taken in 2005 at Kumartuli, Calcutta city’s clay quarter where the men make Gods. Self-taught artisans shape the clay from the Hoogly, tributary of the holy river, Ganga, into Gods and Goddesses for the annual Kali festival. Year after year. Generations after generation of artisans. These clay idols are worshiped with great reverence and then immersed in the river after one day of worship.

Born in Calcutta in 1953, with a degree in English literature in 1973, Naveen Kishore began as a light designer for the theater. In 1982, he founded Seagle Books, a publication on arts and media focusing on film, art and culture studies. Kishore then turned to photography using female impersonators from Manipuri, Bengali and Punjabi theatre practices. He focused particularly on Chapal Bhaduri, a female impersonator of the Bengali folk theatre called Jatra in a photographic project entitled "Performing the Goddess". Some of these pictures were exhibited as a part of a show entitled Woman/Goddess which traveled all over India and to the United Kingdom and the United States. A series of photo features on the garbage collectors of Bombay and girl trafficking in Chiang Mai, Thailand were shown as a part of the Ashoka Foundation. A recently concluded Paris:Music project will be on view from March 2008. Kishore lives and works in Calcutta.

Ram Rahman

Born in 1955, Ram began his photographic education under Jonathan Green at MIT while a physics student in the mid 1970’s. He went on to do a graduate degree at the Yale School of Art. His first major one man show was at the Shridharani Gallery in Delhi in 1988. Since Group shows include the Japan Foundation in Tokyo, The Photographer’s Gallery in London and an upcoming show at the Newark Museum. Ram has also curated exhibitions including a major retrospective of Sunil Janah in New York in 1998 and HEAT , a group show of mainly photographic and video work at Bose Pacis in New York. He was also a part of ‘ I Fear, I believe, I desire’ a group show curated by Gayatri Sinha at ‘Gallery Espace’, New Delhi(2007). He has participated in symposia at MOMA in New York, the Tate Modern in London and at the Baroda School of Art.His work has been in a documentary Style, in black and white. He is represented in major collections in India and around the world.

Ram Rahman’s engagements with public sites result in heaven in Mylapore (2006) a collage of images that dissolves hierarchies of value. Within the context of the street he creates a visual collage of temple sculpture, gods, flags, abstract patterns and the objects of the everyday. While his early practices of street photography may have been influenced by Eugene Atget and Lee Friedlander, Ram developed the style of voyeur/participant that is ironic and anti-aesthetic. Ram draws from vernacular and popular print traditions, a lifetime of political activism and an engagement with the traditions of street photography to render the gods as signage and political portraits as graffiti. Working from the early 1980’s , a period dominated by the intense chromatic pictorialism of India by Raghubir Singh, and Rghu rai’s generous, even epic view of the heroic and the quotidian, Ram opens up another stream. Of an implicit critique of class, of the dismantling of hierarchies, of the hard, even chaotic compression of the rhythms of the street into a frame of the present context.

Cross cultural engagements over a period of two decades , that resonate back and forth in time distinguish the work. The Assassination of Trotsky/Ernakulam/Coyoacan/2007. It is tempting to draw a parallel between the residue of Soviet revolutionary images in Ernakulam in the mid 1980’s and the Trotsky memorial at the house he chose for his four year exile in Mexico City. These are marks of a transfer of political ideology and its survival far away from the land of its origin. Trotsky’s own position of exile in the last four years of his life, and his assassination resonates with the political histories of India and Mexico, the remapping of ideology and shifts of power. Several cross references in the work reinforces the affinities of violence, and the passing of the image of death into cultural artefact.


Reference:
I Fear, I believe, I desire catalogue; catalogue essay by Gayatri Sinha; copyright Gallery Espace.
Copyright Gallery Espace

One-man shows
2003 Photo Studio/Cutouts, India International Center, New Delhi
2002 Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio
2000 Admit One Gallery, New York.
1999 Galerie Foundation for Indian Arts, Amsterdam.
1998 Gallery at 678, New York
1992 Gallery Chemould, Bombay
1988 Shridharani Gallery, New Delhi
1978 Triveni Gallery, New Delhi
1977 Brunswick Public Library, Brunswick, Maine
1977 Rotch Visual Collections, MIT, Cambridge

Binoy Varghese

Né à Kuttathukulam, Kerala, 1966
Vit et travaille à New Delhi

Binoy Varghese se distingue par ses compositions proches du photoréalisme. Proche aussi d’un certain hyperréalisme, ces peintures ont l’aspect suave des publicités peintes.
Sur sa toile éclatante d’une nature luxuriante, un visage innocent, déconcerté, parfois confiant ou réservé, réclame l’attention.
L'idée de la série à laquelle cette toile appartient serait de révéler les émotions des personnes déplacées d'une situation à une autre. Adaptation et défi sont les termes qui définissent l'humeur qui se dégage des travaux de Binoy. L’atelier du photographe portraitiste devient celui du peintre. Le style rappelle aussi le Pop Art. En lieu et place des « people » d’Andy Warhol Binoy Varghese dresse un portrait flashant des gens ordinaires.
Thématique du fond identique pour cette série : all over de fleurs exotiques agrandies pour mieux envahir et s’approprier la toile de fond avec, en premier plan, un portait en buste. Le dispositif est anthropométrique. La forme fait penser à des photos prises dans des lieux de transit, sorte de Sangatte bucolique. L’atmosphère serait celle de papillon, chrysalide comme métaphore de l’état de transition, posée, temps de repos, sur la corolle d’une fleur. Etrange complément sensitif, la mise à nue de la structure de la fleur et de ses organes reproducteurs, pétales, pistils et autres pédoncules, confère à cette série une dimension sexuelle qui n’est pas sans filiation avec celle des fleurs géantes de Georgia O’Keefe.


Born in Kuttathukulam, Kerala, 1966
Lives and works in New Delhi

Binoy Varghese's work is distinguished by compositions that come close to photorealism. Similarly to a certain form of hyperrealism, these paintings have the smooth look of painted advertisements. On a painting bright with luxuriant vegetation, an innocent face, disconcerted, sometimes confident, sometimes reserved, claims our attention.

The concept behind the series to which this canvas belongs is to reveal the emotions of individuals as they move from one situation into another. Adaptation and challenge are terms that define the mood emanating from Binoy's work. The studio of the portrait photographer becomes that of the painter. His style is also reminiscent of Pop Art, but instead of Andy Warhol's portraits of famous personalities, Binoy Varghese paints flashy portraits of ordinary people.
A single background theme for the series: exotic flowers blown up to better invade and conquer the background of the canvas with, in the foreground, a bust-style portrait. The arrangement is anthropometric. The form is reminiscent of photographs taken in places of transit, a kind of bucolic Sangatte. The atmosphere is that of a butterfly, the chrysalis as metaphor for a state of transition, controlled, a time of rest, on the corolla of a flower. A strange, sensitive complement, revealing the structure of the flower and its reproductive organs – petals, pistils and other peduncles – that gives the series a sexual dimension that is not without a link to the giant flowers of Georgia O'Keefe.



Diplômé du R.L.V College of Fine Arts, Kerala ; ses expositions personnelles et de groupe incluent :
Group show at Tamrind gallery ,New York,2007 may
Pallet art gallery-october 2006
Twoman show Kashi art galery, Cochin
Virat Gallery, New Delhi, 2004
Definitively Provisional ‘Whitechapel Project Space, London,2003
HEAT Habitat Centre, New Delhi, 2002
The Other Gallery, Banff Centre for Arts, Canada, 2000
Gallery 47 London, 1997
Herwitz Gallery, Ahmedabad, 1997
Quay Side Gallery, London, 1996
Artist of the month Max Muller Bhavan, Chennai , 1996
Ses œuvres font partie de collections privées et publiques en Inde et a l’étranger dont : National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, Inde

Roy Thomas

Né en 1966 au Kerala et basé à Delhi, Roy Thomas a participé à de nombreuses expositions, ses œuvres font partie de collections prestigieuses dont celles du Glenbarra Art Muséum, Fukuoka, Japon et NGMA, Delhi, Inde.
Connu pour ses représentations de la ‘vie réelle’, il interprète en peintre accompli nombre de sujets sociopolitiques Indiens mais aussi étrangers pour essayer de garder vivante l'époque dans laquelle il vit. Roy Thomas appartient à l’école de la ‘réalité virtuelle’ qui s’est largement développée au sein des jeunes artistes du Kerala.

Born in 1966 in Kerala and based in Delhi, Roy Thomas has participated in many exhibits and his works are found in prestigious collections such as the Glenbarra Art Museum, Fukuoka, Japon and NGMA, Delhi, India.

Known for his representations of "real life", this accomplished painter interprets many social and political topics from India but also from other countries to enliven the period he inhabits. Roy Thomas is a member of the "virtual reality" school which has become an important movement among young artists in Kerala.
Diplomes
MFA & BFA (peinture), College of Arts, Delhi, 1993

Expositions solo :
2006- ‘Projected Memories ... Fading Realities’, at ‘Arushi Arts’ New Delhi.
1999 - Kashi Art Café, Kochi, Kerala
1998 - Galleria Mareechika, Times House, Kochi, Kerala.
1998 - The Great Art Gallery, New Delhi.
1995 - Lalit Kala Ackademi, Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi.
1993 - Treveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi.

Participations :
2007-REAL-
2007, Lalit Kala Academi, Rabindra Bhavan New Delhi.
2006- “A compensation for what has been lost“ New Delhi, HARVEST-2006”
New Delhi, “REAL-2006”Visual Art Gallery, India Habitat Center, New Delhi. “Spirit &Souls Festival”15th Korea-India Modern Art Exchange Exhibition, New Delhi. “Garden of Black Roses” Travancore palace, New Delhi, “Self & identity”, National Gallery of Modern Art, Maldives.
2005’-Double Enders’, Jahangeer art gallery, Mumbai, Vadhera art gallery, Delhi, Gallery sumukha, Bangalore, Darbar Hall kochi, ’ An ode to peace’, Art Junction, New Delhi, ´ Fly High my beloved Dreams’ a tribute to Ashokan Poduwal New Delhi, , ’ self and identity’, India habitat center, New Delhi, ‘60 years of Hiroshima’, Academy of arts , ‘Recent wishes and anxieties of six artists’, New Delhi.’ Being and belongings’ New Delhi,’ Ethnic Colours’ Group show by suryakanti at Durbar hall kochi, kerala, ‘People on progress’ New Delhi. Tsunami distress relief fund Art exhibition, Kochi, Kerala.
2004 – ‘Median’, Exhibition of painting and sculpture,New Delhi. ‘Making of India’, Exhibition organized by SAHAMAT,New Delhi. ‘Invasions” an exhibition by ‘ASK’, New Delhi.
2003 – National exhibition, Guhwati & Hydrabad, contacted by Lalit kala akademi, New Delhi.
2002 –‘Vriksholsav ‘-kashi art café. Kochi.
2001 - Birla Academy of arts, Mumbai. Suryakanthi Art Exhibition, Kovalam, Kerala
2000 – ‘Windows’, Contemporary Art Gallery Durbar Hall, Kochi, Kerala .’ ‘Small but significant’, Academy of Arts New Delhi.
1999 - Mira Center for Arts, New Delhi. ‘Edge Of The Century’, Art Today, New Delhi. ‘Masters Guild’ Rabindra Bhawan, New Delhi. Suryakanthi, Thiruvananthapuram.
1998 – ‘Artists for a Sustainable World’, Academy for Fine Arts and literature, New Delhi. State Exhibition, L.K.A Kochi, Kerala
1997 - “Gift for India” organized by SAHMAT, New Delhi. Birla Academy of Arts, Mumbai State Exhibition L.K.A Kochi, Kerala.
1996 –Indo-Cuban Lalit Kala Akademi New Delhi. Cuban Binnale, Cuba
1995 - ‘Postcard for Gandhi’ exhibition organized by SAHMAT in New Delhi, Mumbai, Baroda, Chennai, Ahmedabad and Calcutta
1993 - National Exhibition, Lalitha Kala Academy, New Delhi Clenbera Art Museum, Japan. College of Art’s 36th Annual Exhibition, New Delhi.
1992 - Doomimal Art Gallery, New Delhi. Summer Show at Gallery Espace, New Delhi College of Art’s 37th Annual Exhibition, New Delhi. 7th Yuva Kalamela, Sahithya Kala Parishad, New Delhi
1991 - Southern Regional Art Exhibition conducted by the Lalitha Kala Academi Regional Centre, Chennai.
1990 - Group show at Venketappa Art Gallery, Bangalore. Onam Festival Exhibition sponsored by KTCD, Kerala. State Exhibition L.K.A Kochi, Kerala
1989 - All India Exhibition, Samskarika Kendra, Ernakulam. Regional art Exhibition, Chennai.
1988 - Graphics ’88, College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram. State Exhibition L.K.A Kochi, Kerala

Vivek Vilasini

Né à Trichur, Kerala, 1964
Vit et travaille à Bangalore

Officier radio de la Marine, il a ensuite étudié les Sciences Politiques à l’Université du Kerala avant d’avoir une pratique artistique. Ce parcours atypique l’amène naturellement à avoir un intérêt fort pour les pratiques multimédias.
Vivek Vilasini avec "Between one shore and several other" semble capturer les saveurs du « monde passe-plat » de la mondialisation. Il s’explique en soulignant que son but n'est pas de débattre de ses avantages ou inconvénients mais simplement de la dépeindre.
Vivek participe actuellement, avec 27 artistes photographes et vidéo à ’’India : Public Places, Private Spaces’’ au Newark Museum, New Jersey, EU. Cette exposition explore la vitalité artistique contemporaine Indienne née des changements économiques et politiques, de l'influence envahissante des médias ainsi que de la rivalité entre tradition culturelle et mondialisation.

Born in Trichur, Kerala, 1964
Lives and works in Bangalore

Beginning as a radio officer in the Navy, he then studied political science at the University of Kerala before beginning his artistic practice. This atypical career naturally led him to a strong interest in multimedia techniques.
With "Between one shore and several others", Vivek Vilasini seems to capture the flavor of the "serving-hatch" world of globalization. He explains, emphasizing that his goal is not to debate its benefits and drawbacks, but simply to describe it.
Vivek is currently participating in "India: Public Places, Private Spaces", an exhibit held at the Newark Museum in New Jersey including 27 photographers and video artists. This exhibit explores the vitality of contemporary Indian art born of economic and political change, the invasive influence of media, and the rivalry between cultural traditions and globalization.

Vivek Vilasini a participé à plusieurs expositions de groupe dont :
Arts for Peace, New York, 2007; & the Photographic Exhibition, Sharjah Art Museum, Dubai, 2007; Reading Paint, Gallery Soulflower, Bangkok 2007; Rock, Art Resource Trust, Mumbai, 2006; Satyagraha: Indian and South African Artists, Curated by Jayaram Poduval, New Delhi & Dublin 2006; A Compensation for What Has been Lost, curated by Johnny ML 2006; Waging Peace, Hera Art Gallery, Wakefiled, Rhode Island, EU, 2006; Double Enders, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Kochi, 2005; I, Me, Myself. Kashi Art Gallery Kochi, 2004; Reclaiming the Lotus. Triveni, Delhi, 2004; Solitude. Visual Arts Gallery. Habitat Center, Delhi and Artist Center, Bombay, 2003

Mithu Sen

Née à Buran, Ouest Bengale, 1971
Vit et travaille à New Delhi

Mithu Sen, jeune artiste polymorphe influente, pratique l’installation, la vidéo, la photographie et la peinture. Son œuvre, dense et variée, suggère qu'il n'y a aucune forme ou matière qu’elle ne puisse manipuler avec succès pour servir sa vision artistique.
Ses motifs récurrents pris sur et à l'intérieur du corps - cheveux, sang et os – analysent et mettent en doute la notion de sexualité féminine théorisée selon les paramètres masculins.
En associant leur expertise par le jeu de leur art pour créer une œuvre unique, Mithu et son frère, artiste designer Kumar Kanti Sen, renouvellent l’énergie et la synergie de la création artistique contemporaine. L’assemblage de techniques, supports, symboles, formes et textures offre un art qui casse les distinctions artificielles et normatives entre les disciplines que sont les beaux-arts et le design.

Born in Buran, West Bengal, 1971
Lives and works in New Delhi

Mithu Sen, a multitalented and influential young artist, practices installation, video, photography, and painting. Her dense, varied work suggests that there is no form or material she cannot handle successfully in the service of her artistic vision. Recurrent motifs taken from the surface and inside of the body – hair, blood, and bone – analyze and question the concept of feminine sexuality as theorized in accordance with masculine frameworks.
By combining their expertise through their art to create a unique work, Mithu and her brother, the artist and designer Kumar Kanti Sen, renew the energies and synergies of contemporary artistic creation. A combination of techniques, materials, symbols, forms, and textures propose an art that breaks the artificial and normative distinctions between the two disciplines of fine art and design.


Education :
PG Program (Visiting), Glasgow School of Art, RU, 2001
BA & M.F.A Painting, 1991-1997

Expositions personnelles :
‘’Half Full’’, Bose Pacia New York, 2007
Nature Morte, New Delhi, 2007
Horn Please, Kunst Museum, Bern, 2007
Tiger by the tail, Rose Museum, Boston, 2007
It’s Good to be Queen, Bose Pacia, New York 2006
Drawing room, Nature Morte & British Council, New Delhi 2006
Drawing room, Gallery Chemould, Mumbai 2006
I Hate Pink, Lakeeren Art Gallery, Mumbai, 2003
Unbelongings, Machintosh Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland, UK 2001
Can We Really Look Beyond The Map? Art India Style, New Delhi 2000

Expositions de groupe :
Indian Colour, Keumsan Gallery, Seul, Korea 2007 Making/Unmaking, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2007 Indian Art 111/111, Here and Now, Grosvenor Vadehra, London 2007;
Brazil, Art Basel Bose Pacia, Miami 2006;
Avatars of the object, The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai, 2006 Metrospective: Visual Representations of Metrosexuality, Kitab Mahal, Mumbai, 2005
Tableaux Vivant, Nature Morte- Bose Pacia, New Delhi, 2004 Kaleidoscope, Square One Gallery, New York, 2004
Young contemporary from Shantiniketan Gallery Espace, New Delhi, 2002
Portrait of the Decades, CIMA, Kolkata, 2003
Emerging Trends, CIMA Art Gallery, Kolkata, 1999

Recompenses :
UNESCO ASHBERG scholarship for Brazil, 2005-06
Charles Wallace India Trust Award, UK 2000-01

Sayed Haider Raza

Né en 1922 à Barbaria, Madya Pradesh, Inde. Vit et travaille en France.

Sayed Haider Raza sera représenté dans cette vente par une œuvre exceptionnelle datée de 1984. Rare par son format imposant, 175x175 cm, cette peinture illustre deux des influences majeurs de l’artiste, celle de l’histoire de l’art abstrait européen et américain, et celle de la pensée Hindou caractérisé par le Bindu, abstraction en soi puisque, par définition symbole du sacré dans son état non manifesté (représenté communément sous la forme d’un simple point appliqué sur le front).

« Dans les années soixante et soixante-dix, des voyages en Inde resensibilisèrent sa faculté de percevoir une vision dernière, suprême et universelle de la nature, non pas en tant qu’apparence, ni en tant que spectacle, mais comme une force à part entière de la vie et de l’expansion cosmique reflétées dans chaque particule élémentaire et dans chaque fibre d’un être humain.

Les cinq éléments qui, dans la pensée hindoue, constituent ce monde-ci, ainsi que d’autres : la terre, l’eau, le feu, le ciel, et l’éther, et leur correspondance avec d’une part, des zones de la conscience de l’esprit humain, et d’autre part, les couleurs : jaune, blanc, rouge, bleu, et noir, s’emparèrent de l’imagination de Raza jusqu’au point d’une complète identification de lui-même avec son œuvre peinte.

La nature devint pour Raza quelque chose qu’il fallait, non point observer ou imaginer, mais expérimenter dans l’acte même de mettre de la peinture sur une toile. La peinture se donne elle-même comme une force naturelle, luttant dans l’obscurité, se brisant à la lumière, volant en éclats dans le froid, brûlant dans la chaleur, essayant de prendre forme et cependant se dissolvant dans le chaos.

Dans certains de ses tableaux, une division de la toile en quatre quadrants ou en quatre triangles semble y retenir à l’intérieur les énergies, les contraignant à des formes structurales dans le tourbillon de la création, tels des cristaux prenant forme dans une matrice plastique. »

Extrait de Rudolf von Leyden « Métamorphose » in Raza, Chemould Publications and Arts, 1985

Born in 1922 in Barbaria, Madya Pradesh, India. Lives and works in France.

Sayed Haider Raza is represented in this auction by an exceptional piece dating from 1984. One of his rare large formats at 175 x 175 cm, the painting illustrates two of the artist's major influences – the history of European and American art history, and Hindu philosophy characterized by Bindu, an abstraction in itself because by definition a symbol of the sacred in its non-manifest state (commonly represented in the form of a single dot applied to the forehead).

"During the sixties and seventies, trips to India reawakened his ability to perceive a final vision of nature, supreme and universal, not as an appearance, nor as a spectacle, but rather as a force in itself for life and cosmic expansion reflected in each elementary particle and each fiber of a human being.

In Hindu thought, the five elements that make up our world are earth, water, fire, the sky, and ether, and their correspondence with areas of consciousness of the human spirit as well as colors – yellow, white, red, blue, and black – conquered Raza's imagination to the point of complete identification of himself with his painted work.

For Raza, nature becomes something that he was not to observe or imagine but rather to experience in the very act of putting paint on the canvas. Painting is itself a natural force, fighting in the dark, breaking in the light, shattering in the cold, burning in the heat, attempting to take form but nevertheless dissolving into chaos.

In some of his paintings, dividing the canvas into four quadrants or four triangles seems to hold energies within its field, forcing them to take structural shapes in the whirlpool creative process like crystals growing in a plastic matrix."

Quoted from Rudolf von Leyden "Metamorphosis" in Raza, Chemould Publications and Arts, 1985

Riyas Komu

Né en 1971, Kerala, Inde.
Vit et travaille à Bombay.

Diplômé de la J.J. School of Art en 1999 et membre avec, entre autres, Bose Krishnamachari, Jitish Kallat, Justin Ponmany et Tv Santosh du groupe avant-gardiste des « Bombay Boys », Riyas Komu appartient à la tendance émergente du réalisme médiatique.
La variété pleine d'assurance de leur production reflète la diversité de l'Inde contemporaine et suscite un engouement croissant du monde de l’art contemporain international.

Artiste pluridisciplinaire, Riyas Komu pratique en plus de la peinture - qui par sa précision et hyper réalité fait penser à des panneaux publicitaires - la photographie, l’installation, la vidéo et la sculpture.

Komu sollicite avec force l'universel. Il observe la vie et explore la situation paradoxale de la société - locale et globale, rurale et urbaine - ou se chevauche simultanément les limites brouillées qui lient ou séparent les individus.
Concerné par les problèmes de l’immigration, l’oppression, la faim, la violence, l’aliénation…tous liés à l’appartenance sociale et religieuse, son travail est un hommage à l'esprit de ces gens ordinaires dotés de la capacité extraordinaire de survivre contre toute attente.

Artiste visuel stratégique ses photographies sont souvent chargées de signification politique et d’un engagement social.
Sélectionné par le curateur Robert Storr, Riyas Komu participe à la biennale de Venise 2007.

Born in 1971, Kerala, India.
Lives and works in Bombay.

Awarded a degree from the J.J. School of Art in 1999, and a member with Bose Krishnamachari, Jitish Kallat, Justin Ponmany and Tv Santosh of the avant-garde group known as the "Bombay Boys", Riyas Komu belongs to an emerging trend towards mediatic realism.
The confident variety of their production reflects the diversity of contemporary India which has been increasingly appreciated by the world of international contemporary art.

A multidisciplinary artist, Riyas Komu also practices photography, installation, video, and sculpture in addition to painting – where his precise, hyperrealist style suggests advertising billboards.

Komu strongly solicits the universal. He observes life and explores the paradoxical situation of society – local and global, rural and urban – where the confused limits that link or separate individuals simultaneously overlap. Concerned with issues such as immigration, oppression, hunger, violence, alienation – all linked to social and religious origins – his work is a homage to the spirit of ordinary people with the extraordinary capacity to survive against all expectations.

As a visual artist with a clear strategy, his photographs are often charged with political meaning and social commitment.

Selected by the curator Robert Storr, Riyas Komu participated in the latest Venice 2007 biennale.


Expositions personnelles
2006 Systematic Citizen, Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi
2006 Faith Accompli, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai
2005 The Third Day, Lalit Kala Academy, Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi presente par Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai
2005 GRASS, photography show, The Guild Art Gallery,Mumbai
2003 Sarasu, photography show on Raja Ravi Verma Press , The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai
2002 UNCONDITIONAL, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai
2002 - 2003 AMBULANCE, Renaissance Art Gallery, Bangalore

Select Group Exhibitions:
2007
Documenta 12, Kassel.
Think with the Senses - Feel with the Mind. Art in the Present Tense, 52nd International Art Exhibition, Venice Biennale.
INDIA NOW:Contemporary Indian Art Between Continuity and Transformation, Provincia di Milano, Milan, Italy .
INDIA TIME,Galleria Paolo Curti/Annamaria Gambuzzi, Milan, Italy
Group show, Christian Hosp, Austria
New Wave: Contemporary Indian Art, Aicon Gallery,London.
Grid, Bodhi Art Gallery, New Dehli.
Photographs, Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai, India
Other, Aicon Gallery, London.
Annual show, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, India
I Fear I Believe I Desire, Gallery Espace, New Delhi, India

2006
Bronze, sculpture show, Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi, India.
Art on the Beach, Made by Indians, St Tropez, Gallery Enrico Navarra, Paris, France.
On Difference #2 (represented Korea), Wurtt. Kunstverein Stuttgart, Germany.
Maarkers, Bodhi Art Gallery, Mumbai.
Red Earth And The Pouring Rain, Lanxess ABS Gallery, Baroda
Viart, Annual show, New Delhi
Strangeness, Anant Art Gallery, Kolkatta

2005
KAam, Arts India Gallery, New York, Palo Alto
Span, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, India
Endless Terrain, Lalit Kala Academy, Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi Double Enders, Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Cochin, India
Present Future, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, Configurations, Anant Art Gallery, New Delhi, India
Are we like this only? , Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi, India
Whose space is it anyway? ,Gallery Espace, New Delhi.
Mannat Jali, Marine Drive, Mumbai, India
Public Art Project, Gallery Chemould, Mumbai, India
World Social Forum, Brazil.

2004
Group show during VASL Residency, Karachi, Inde
Anticipations, Museum Gallery, Mumbai.
Bombay Boys, Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi, India.
A New Mediatic Realism, Bayer ABS Gallery, Baroda, India.
Generation I, Saffron Art Gallery, Mumbai, India.
RED, Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi, India.
Mumbai x 17, Kashi Art Gallery, Cochin, India.
2003
Crossing Generations :Diverge, 40 years of Gallery Chemould, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, India
Highlights, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, India
2D/3D, Visual Art Center, Hong Kong
Ideas and Images, National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, India Art for Art/ Switzerland Meets India, Kala Ghoda Festival, Mumbai, India

The 'Harmony Excellence Award for Emerging Artist of the Year' was instituted in 1998.




Sa série photographique, Karachi , témoigne de la façon dont l'incurie des hommes détruit la dignité des cimetières au Pakistan.
Dans une image, des pierres tombales et des arbres déracinés flottent ironiquement à travers un cimetière musulman inondé. Dans une autre, un ange isolé, vu de dos, surgit perpendiculaire aux pierres tombales chrétiennes en ruine. La série fait écho à Héraclite pour qui tout est fleuve de changement constant, balayé par le courant du temps. Elle rappelle aussi Nataraja dans sa façon de transformer l'effacement en relance. Cette série illustre le dépassement des traditions ethniques et la façon dont l'artiste joue avec les influences occidentales, tout en restant vraiment indien.

The Karachi Series are black and white images of cemeteries in Pakistan. They portray the marks of natural forces - time and weather - which, due to human neglect, have broken down the dignity of the burial grounds. In a photograph of a flooded Islamic cemetery, tombstones along with uprooted trees ironically float past. Another image, this time an abandoned Christian cemetery, depicts an isolated, erect angel seen from the back hovering, in a cross-like contradiction, perpendicularly to the tombstones fallen in ruin. The series treats various religions through the optic of Heraclitus' philosophy (uncannily echoing that of the Buddha) encapsulated in the words 'Panta Rei' that all is just a river of constant change ultimately swept away as time flows and ever renewed. (Deborah Jenner)

Manjunath Kamath

Ne en 1972, Mangalore, Inde
Vit et travaille à New Delhi.

Manjunath Kamath, par la pratique de la peinture, du dessin, de la sculpture et de la vidéo raconte des histoires qui sont uniques dans leur contenu et leur articulation.

Des images curieuses apparaissent sur sa toile et ses peintures se lisent comme une histoire. Manjunath Kamath explique :
"Je peux jouer avec l’espace, je peux placer mes images comme je le veux et je peux créer des histoires incroyables que vous devez croire. Comme les histoires que me racontait ma grand-mère quand j’étais petit". Et de préciser :" L'Art, pour moi, est un pont qui connecte non seulement deux espaces, mais aussi deux époques. "

Kamath emploie une technique de narration fragmentée tout en essayant de peindre le vide. (Il se serait inspiré du travail de Prabhakar Barwe pour structurer le vide).
Ses travaux de couleurs vives sont un mélange éclectique de fantaisie et de réalisme. Par d’habiles permutations et combinaisons, il crée des calembours visuels qui défient la logique et présentent des allégories absurdes.
Chacun de ses tableaux exige l'attention du spectateur qui se questionne en confrontant le titre à l’espace presque vide du tableau. Un espace illusionniste où flottent les éléments ordinaires du quotidien qui, assemblés selon la fantaisie de l’artiste, semblent surréalistes.


Born in 1972, Mangalore, India
Lives and works in New Delhi.

Manjunath Kamath tells stories through his use of painting, drawing, sculpture, and video, stories that are unique in content and organization.

Curious images appear on his canvases, and his paintings can be read like a story. Manjunath Kamath explains:
"I can play with space, I can place my images as I like, and I can create incredibly stories that you will have to believe. Like the stories my grandmother used to tell me when I was small." He adds: "For me, art is a bridge that not only connects two spaces, but also two epochs."

Kamath uses a fragmented narration technique while attempting to paint the void (he has been inspired by the work of Prabhakar Barwe in organization emptiness).His work with bright colors show an eclectic mixture of imagination and realism. Using clever permutations and combinations, he creates visual puns that defy logic and present absurd allegories. Each of his paintings requires the full attention of the viewers, who question themselves by confronting the title of the almost empty space of the painting. An illusionistic space where ordinary objects from daily life float and, assembled by the artist's imagination, take on a surrealist tinge.


Expositions personnelles
‘Something Happened’, Gallery Espace New Delhi, 2006.
‘About Something’ One Man Show, Shridarani Gallery, New Delhi, 1996.

Expositions collectives majeures
Gulf Art Fair, Dubai, 2007
Thermocline of Art-New Asian Waves ZKM, Museum of Contemporary Art, Karlsruhe, Germany (2007)
Hibrid Trend, Hangaram Museum, Seoul, Korea (2006);
‘Paper Flute’ Gallery Espace New Delhi, 2006.
‘Back to the Future’ Gallery Espace New Delhi, 2006.
'Dot and pixel' Gallery Espace New Delhi & Gallery Sumukha Bangalore, 2004.
Sheesha - Indo-French Art Show, Sanskriti Kendra, New Delhi, 2003.
CHROMA – Indo-Norwegian Art Show, Visual Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2003.
Photo print - Nature Morte New Delhi, 2003.
Screened Animated video, UGC Hall, Cardiff, UK, 2003.
Four cities- Tao art gallery Mumbai, 2002.
Digital art exhibition- Sakshi Gallery Mumbai, 2002.
Art on move project- organised by sahmat New Delhi, 2001.
Print etc .com - Max Muller Bhavan, New Delhi, 2001.
‘Buddha laugh again’ - academy of fine arts New Delhi, 2000.
Young contemporaries - French embassy New Delhi, 1999.
Edge of The Century' New Delhi, 1999.
Four young artists- Gallery Espace New Delhi, 1997.

Projets media & installations
Animated sketch book gallery Espace New Delhi, 2004.
Digital film screening at ugc hall Cardiff UK, 2002.
Let me fool you’ interactive art project, print etc .com Max Muller Bhavan New Delhi, 2000.
‘To be continued’ animated art work Jyothi auditorium Baroda, 2000.

Gauri Gill

Née en 1970, New Delhi
Vit et travaille à New Delhi

Gauri Gill fait partie de cette génération de photographes qui ressent le besoin de traduire en clichés et en images la société vaste et très codée qu'est l’Inde. Elle travaille sur des séries à long terme, ses projets en cours sont : Urban Landscape - the changing Indian city (notre sélection, depuis 2003), Nizamuddin at night (depuis 2005), Life in three rural communities of Western Rajasthan (depuis 1999), The Americans – the Indian Diaspora in the United States (depuis 2000).

Gauri Gill photographie la métropole urbaine pour en exprimer son injustice sociale et sa désolation. Les images tout en pénombre et sans aucune présence humaine posent un débat psychologique. L’artiste, au cours d’une promenade à la découverte d’espaces intimes ou publiques, où rien ne semble se produire, nous offre une vision détachée et mélancolique de l’Inde



L’œuvre intitulée « Ghaziabad » (nom de la cité industrielle de l’Uttar Pradesh), offre au regard le vestibule de ce qui semble être une demeure de riche industriel Indien. L’espace est vaste, comme vide (il est à noter que la notion du vide n’est pas la même selon les cultures, du simple nécessaire à l’extravagante profusion), ouvert sur l’extérieur. Le mobilier y est réduit à sa plus simple expression. Le bas relief recouvrant le mur du fond symbolise la modernité de l’ère industrielle, l’abstraction y est celle d’une machinerie décorative à la Fernand Léger. Seuls deux chiens gardent cet espace latent et semblent, à travers leurs regards adressés au photographe, exprimer tout le poids d’un climat propice à faire courber l’échine des plus aguerris. Le temps est comme suspendu. Une pause et un temps de pose se superposent pour donner naissance à cette œuvre sur papier glacée.

A work entitled "Ghaziabad", the name of the industrial city of Uttar Pradesh, gives the viewer a look into the vestibule of what appears to be the home of a wealthy Indian industrialist. The space is huge, seemingly empty (note that the concept of the void is different in different cultures, from the simplicity of the necessary to an extravagant profusion), open to the outside. The furniture is reduced to its simplest expression. The bas relief covering the wall in the back illustrates the modernity of the industrial era, abstracted in the same style as a decorative machined à la Fernand Léger. Only two dogs guard this latent space, and their gaze at the photograph seems to express the heavy burden of a climate to which even the toughest must bow. Time is suspended. A pause and the exposure time are superimposed to give birth to this work printed on glossy paper.


Born in 1970, New Delhi
Lives and works in New Delhi

Gauri Gill is one of that generation of photographers who feel the need to translate into photographs and images the vast, strictly coded society of India. She works in long term series. Current projects: Urban Landscape - the changing Indian city (our selection, since 2003), Nizamuddin at night (since 2005), Life in three rural communities of Western Rajasthan (since 1999), The Americans – the Indian Diaspora in the United States (since 2000).

Gauri Gill photographs the urban metropolis to express its rampant social injustices and its desolation. The images, all dimly lit and devoid of any human presence, generate a psychological debate. The artist offers us a detached, melancholic vision of India as she wanders in search of intimate or public spaces where nothing seems to be happening.


Education :
B.F.A College of Art Delhi, 1992 ; B.F.A Photography Parsons School of Design, NY, 1994 ; M.F.A Photographie Stanford University, CA, 2002

Expositions :
Frieze Art Fair, Londres, 2007
'Public Places, Private Spaces' - Contemporary Photography and Video from India, The Newark Museum,U.S.A & Photoquai, Musee du Quay Branly, Paris, 2007
'I feel I believe I desire', Gallery Espace, New Delhi, 2007
'Relative Values' John Hansard gallery, Southampton U.K. 2007
'Women Photographers from SAARC countries' Italien Cultural Center, New Delhi, 2005
'Award Winners Show', Fifty Crows Foundation, San Francisco 2002
'In Black and White', divers villes en Inde & Admit One Gallery, New York 1998
'Alliance Francaise Prizewinners Exhibition', New Delhi 1995.
Récompenses :
The Fifty Crows/Mother Jones Award for documentary photography, 2002