A PERFECT METAPHOR FOR OUR TIMES
Log on to TAP India for their second selection of online art that is abstract, spiritual and figurative loaded with social commentary
The Art Platform India (TAP India) presents their second selection of their digital collection for the art season. The 14 galleries and art institutions from across the country have come together in an attempt to support art and artists, encourage synergies among galleries, explore new markets and open doors to conversations around modern and contemporary art.
Akar Prakar is showcasing the works of Manish Pushkale. The artist is known for his highly abstract and minimal works that include large format presentations; we may now catch a glimpse of his small format works after a long time. The palette comprises mostly azure shades, gentle brushwork and the recurring forms of diagonals, squares and rectangles.
Anupa Mehta’s eponymous gallery is hosting the works of the Delhi-based artist Chetnaa, whose geometric abstraction is inspired primarily by the architectural forms of the city she lives in. Initiated as symmetrical arrangements, Chetnaa’s work reveals the need to deconstruct the order she once sought, so as to build a new geometric logic that feeds her minimalist aesthetic.
Apparao Galleries is showcasing the works of Manish Nai, that revel in textured abstract forms, textile-based works that employ jute, butter-paper and even the tweezed-out filaments of mold. His installations and large format mixed media work have made their impression on the artworld, and we now get to see the more delicate pieces. “I speak of home and the city, inside and outside wall surfaces the parallels of development and decay,” says Nai.
The Spanish artist Gayatri Gamuz is showcasing a section from her oeuvre at Threshold Art Gallery, where she presents her ruminations on the ‘land without trees’. The minimal forms speak of nature and the horizon, the sphere and the line representing the primary concepts of night and day, positivity and the void. Gamuz moved to India in the 1990s and has been inspired by the fertile Kerala landscape, although never in a direct or illustrative manner, rather more on a spiritual level.
Kumaresan Selvaraj showcases a selection of works that address sensuous textures and psychedelic candy colours, playful yet serious in his approach. The dynamic nature of the
work is best experienced in three-dimensional physicality but given the COVID times one can enjoy their feel online as well, with a little assistance from imagination and memory. The built-up layers of paper are covered in acrylic and fiberglass coating to give them the shiny almost lacquered feel that conveys the impression of a cross-section of the earth’s crust. Of course, his works are open to multiple interpretations.
Breaking away from the largely abstract nature of the collection presented is highly figurative work that brings modern interpretations to tradition by Emami Art and Gallery Espace. Emami presents the works of Anjan Modak, the Kolkata-based artist who comments on the continuous sense of crisis that modern society is undergoing. Gallery Espace presents the quirky contemporary retake on the miniatures by Waswo X Waswo and R. Vijay. The duo’s fourteen-year-long collaboration blends genres and plays intelligently on themes interwoven from history Colonialism and contemporary identities.
Artist Ketaki Sarpotdar is known for her humorous interpretations of current-day scenarios using a style that recollects the delightful etchings presented by masters like Rembrandt Van Rijn, Pieter Bruegel and Adriaen Jansz. The artist chooses to place herself at the thin layer of the binaries of right and wrong where the personified forms of turtles, donkeys, lions and tigers play out the ideas of what is considered ‘sensible’ human behaviour or not. A perfect metaphor for our times.
Log on to enjoy a variety of artistic concerns, stylistic approaches, materials and formats, presented by the artists and their galleries in this online exhibition.
www.theplatformindia.com
Text by Georgina Maddox
Image Courtesy: TAP Galleries
Find out more about the Artists and Galleries:
https://www.saffronart.com/artists/manish-pushkale
https://www.anupamehtaarts.com/about
http://kavigupta.com/artist/manish-nai/
https://www.saffronart.com/artists/gayatri-gamuz
https://www.instagram.com/kumaresan.selvaraj/?hl=en
https://www.galleryespace.com/
https://www.instagram.com/apparaogalleriesindia/
http://www.latitude28.com/index.php/artists/view/234-Ketaki-Sarpotdar
https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/rmbt/hd_rmbt.htm
