Art’s virtual existence
In Touch 3 launches its third leg of online exhibitions, featuring galleries from India and Dubai
As In Touch goes into its third edition, gallerists are embracing the idea of online ‘viewing-rooms’ as the new normal in times of the COVID 19 global pandemic. “The increasing importance of the online space at theses time, makes initiatives like In Touch, ever more vital,” says a statement from Mortimer Chatterjee and Tara Lal the ‘art couple’ who created Chatterjee & Lal right next to Mumbai’s Radio Club, as one of the premier art spaces in the mid- 2000.
Galleries may still have to keep the shutters down on their beloved art spaces, consequently they’ve taken their artists to an online virtual existence, since it is still not safe to step out. Given that scenario, In Touch 3 launches its third leg of online exhibitions, featuring galleries from India and Dubai who have congregated to present exhibitions for a brief period which changes with every following iteration. “In Touch is only getting bigger and better with the addition of four new galleries this time,” observes Roshini Vadehra the director, Vadehra Art Gallery.
Chatterjee &Lal are presenting works by Minam Apang, Nikhil Chopra and Sahej Rahal. Three artists with, “very different approaches to depicting reality.” While Chopra’s drawings of landscapes function as rehearsals for his pioneering work with performance, Apang drawings involve a hide and seek relationship with the real world, imbued with figures and symbols. Rahal’s drawings and sculptures engage with speculative fictions, environments filled with creatures and things emerging from the artist’s own imagination.
Sakshi Art Gallery is presenting a selection of small-format works by artist Rekha Rodwittiya, whose reading of the feminine form and the objects of everyday life have always been sources of powerful imagery “Femininity was a promised birth and feminism a conscious choice,” writes Rodwittiya. Embracing the oral feminist traditions and metaphorically representing them through mundane objects, Rodwittiya formulates an ornamented contemporaneity that not only questions the over-riding patriarchal structure but also focuses on its intangible growth into our entire eco-system.
Chemould Prescott Road has invited Samira Rathod (architect based in Mumbai) through her platform SRDA (Samira Rathod Design Atelier). She and her company have sought inspiration from the ‘small dying town of Bhadran’. Re-enacting, recreating loss through seemingly unrelated objects and drawings ‘in the presence of absence’ became ground zero for their visual experiment.
Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke presents a selection of delicate, almost ethereal portraits by Kerala-born artist Siji Krishnan. “I am fascinated by the idea of portraits — of people, other living beings and nature — delving into the inner depths of their personalities, inviting them to saturate my senses,” writes Krishnan who is inspired by the village life of her native-land.
In Kolkata Experimenter’s presentation for In Touch 3 is a solo exhibition by photographer Soumya Sankar Bose, who is showing a sensitive body of photographs titled, Let’s Sing An Old Song, that takes root in Bose’s personal relationship with the folk theatre practice – Jatra. “As Bose brings to life these once revered actors in his photographs, he not only refers to a sense of nostalgia but also his immersion in the relationships he has built with the individuals he photographs,” observes Prateek Raja, the director of Experimenter.
In Delhi Gallery Espace presents Paper Trails, a collection of works by Nandini Bagla Chirimar, Samit Das and Sheetal Gattani. The works, executed using processes as varied as etching and chine colle, watercolour and drawing with pen, pencil and even a blade, are testimony to the many ways – both traditional and uncommon – in which contemporary artists explore the possibilities of this medium.
GallerySke offers up the works of painter Dia Mehhta Bhupal. “The culmination effect of the ‘image’ in the world today is a sense of growing claustrophobia. The visible world and the intangible world are as fragile as one’s individual experiences. I present E(s)cape, a series of constructed photographs made from paper dust,” writes the artist.
PhotoInk presents a collection of unusual photographs by artist Dileep Prakash. His series, Sleeping in the Forest features British-era rest houses in Himalayan jungles: the black-and-white images of moonlit forests, luminescent star-trails and bungalows limned by an intense otherworldliness.
Nature Morte presents the popish works of artist Aditya Pande titled The Visual Gibberish Pande’s process involves both the manipulation of state-of-the-art technologies as well as more traditional media. Starting with computer-generated drawings, the artist then works on the large-scale print-outs (on paper or canvas) by hand, creating a meld of methods and visual cacophony.
Vadehra Art Gallery presents Myasmatica by Anandajit Ray, who has turned to Indian miniatures for structural inspiration, even though his imagery is modelled after scientific, botanical drawings, making them aesthetically pleasing for all lovers of abstract art. Pseudo Pathogens, a series of paintings modeled after scientific, botanical drawings, eschew any particular context for the essence of what the artist calls ‘imaginative maladies.’
Gallery Shrine Empire presents a collection of artists concentrating on different aspects of painting. From Parul Gupta’s play with space and geometry that reveal order as farce to Tayeba Begum Lipi’s and Anoli Perera’s feminist transgressions which critiques structural gender-based violence drawing from their familial histories. Samanta Batra Mehta’s ecofeminist approaches to alternative epistemes, and Omer Wasim & Saira Sheikh’s speculative futurism contemplates the detritus of anthropogenic industrialization in Karachi. These accounts are reflective contemplations, with global implications.
Moving toward Dubai, Gallery Isabelle Van Den Eynde, presents the works of artist Vikram Divecha works that are grounded in complex ideas around labour, time and value. He interrogates socio-economic structures through smart, sly gestures. I look forward to the conversations his work provokes among discerning collectors,” says Isabelle van den Eynde, the gallery director
Green Art Gallery presents a selection of photographic and painterly works by Syrian artist Jaber Al Azmeh. He works in a manner driven purely by aesthetics, that have been termed as abstract. Moving from Syria to Doha, to avoid violent environs, Azmeh set up a commercial photographic studio alongside his artistic practice. He often escapes to the desert to enjoy its beauty and serenity.
Gallery Grey Noise, hosts the works of Bangalore-based Mariam Suhail, who finds parallels with Lebanese artist Caline Aoun. We are informed that they both conversed with one another over the internet. Their work comments on the process of scanning an existing image and making a new image from it, commenting upon its circularity.
The In Touch platform will additionally host collateral online programming, including gallerist connects and artist talks conducted digitally.
In Touch – Edition 3: 17 July 2020 to 17 September 2020
Text by Georgina Maddox
Image Courtesy: https://www.artintouch.in/
Find out more about the Artist and Gallery:
https://www.instagram.com/mortchatterjee/?hl=en
https://chatterjeeandlal.com/artists/minam-apang/
http://chatterjeeandlal.com/artists/nikhil-chopra/
https://www.instagram.com/roshinivadehra/?hl=en
http://www.galleryespace.com/artists/gallery-espace/anandajit-ray/
https://naturemorte.com/artists/adityapande/
https://www.instagram.com/explore/tags/rekharodwittiya/?hl=en
https://www.gallerychemould.com/
https://www.instagram.com/samira_rathod/?hl=en
https://www.shrineempiregallery.com/
https://www.shrineempiregallery.com/artist/omer-wasim/
https://www.shrineempiregallery.com/artist/tayeba-begum-lipi/
https://www.instagram.com/sijirkrishnan/?hl=en
https://www.instagram.com/experimenterkol/?hl=ml
https://www.galleryespace.com/
https://www.galleryespace.com/artists/gallery-espace/sheetal-gattani/
http://www.diamehtabhupal.com/
https://caline-aoun.com/home.html
