LET’S
GET
PHYSICAL

Let’s get physical

Galleries take the leap into the New Year by promoting physical exhibitions and interactive shows to get people out of their homes despite the fear of COVID and bird Flu, to look at art and refresh their palette.

Chemould Prescott Road reopens its doors after 10 months to the much-anticipated Aditi Singh solo show. “The past few months have been a time for reflection and renovation at the gallery. The engagement of the viewer, the artist and the work in person has been amiss and we look forward to returning to these interactions as they open their first physical show of 2021, as a part of the Mumbai Gallery Weekend,” says Shireen Gandhy director of the gallery. Aditi’s works have been part of Chemould’s shows in Mumbai and the global fairs through the last decade and while her solo shows extended to New York more often, we have not hosted her solo show here at Chemould since 2011. In her body of work somethings are always burning, you will essentially find an eye seeking solitude and commune with nature – the world of color, of light, of form, of shadow.

These translations range from a mathematical precision of rings of a tree drawn in fine lines of ink and the blue of layers of glistening ice, of rising storms, to the patterns of petal and leaf; of rhythm in the fluid curve and plunging crests of mountain faces. In a journal entry from Leh she writes, “…Why a certain landscape should profoundly tranquilize the mind, I am not sure, perhaps the eye imposes its own rhythm, one has to look creatively…” says the artist.

After a long hiatus, Abhay Maskara announces his intentions to come back into the art world and promote a physical exhibition titled, Portraits of the Self – II featuring Parag Sonagre and Prashant Pandey. The exhibition is curated by Abhay Maskara and will open at Gallery Maskara at Pasta Lane in Mumbai on January 14th and run till January 30th of 2021.

It is a physical show that looks at the human form, in its natural setting. It places the human body in focus – revealing not only its strength and passion, but also its vulnerability and sensuality. Parag Sonarghare and Prashant Pandey – the two artists in this show, come from very different backgrounds and work in contrasting mediums and styles. Yet they are connected.

In Delhi, Art Heritage announced its grand premier of the exhibition Imagining Women AkbarPadamsee, ArpanaCaur, Anupam Sud, Arun Pandit, Ira Roy, Jai Zharotia, K G Subramanyam, Kanchan Chander, Seema Kohli and Sunanda Khajuria. The exhibition that opened on January 9th will go all the way on tillMarch 19thand it features the stunning array of works by artists who have dedicated much of their lives to the sensitive and empowering portrayal of women in the visual arts, primarily painting and graphic arts.

Both male and female artists have engaged with the female form as a vehicle toexpress a variety of thoughts and ideas. The male gaze has tended to see thewoman in an idealized form and as an object of desire, an approach that womenhave found unacceptable, as they believe that male attempts to visualizefemininity have limited the way women have been imagined and represented forgenerations.In response, women artists from across the world, most especially from the 1960’s onwards, began by questioning assumptions of womanhood and providedalternative representations of themselves, challenging the dominance of men inboth art and society, in order to gain recognition and equality.

Meanwhile Champa Tree in New Delhi will bring art to your home, choose three artworks and you can have the works delivered to your home, you can live with them for a bit and then decide which works you would like to pick up from the gallery. This is a living with art project that galleries like Pundole used to do in the early days when people were just being introduced to the ideas of Modern Art and had the pick of names like the young Raza, Husain and Souza, when they were not the legendary artists that they are known as today.

Additionally, we would like to mention the ongoingphysical exhibitions at Latitude 28, the group show, When is Empathy too much? where Latitude 28 was one of the first galleries to try out hosting a physical show. Curated by Shubhani Sharma and Indira Lakshmi Prasad under Bhavna Kakar’s guidance, the exhibition looks deeply into the works of Abhishek Narayan Verma, Al-QawiNanavati, ShalinaVichitra and Yogesh Ramkrishna. “The idea was triggered by the desire to show what younger artists were doing during the pandemic, without making it only a show about the lockdown, but to actually try to understand their mental state,” says Bhavna Kakar, founder-director of the gallery.

Emami Arts in Kolkata is featuring Khoai Landscape a bilingual showof works on paper by artist Ghana Shyam. We are told thatGhana Shyam‘consciously chosen’ not to follow the tradition of the Santiniketan artists, for the sublime presence that once inspired the artists and poets of Santiniketan is now largely lost and threatened by the rapid spread of tourism and urbanization. Instead, she portrays the Kohai style landscapes in a fragmented manner with a heavy use ofblank spacerendered in monochrome, picturing them like plots, not as a panoramicview.

Tans-ition a visual arts story featuring Binoy Varghese and Nupur Kundu at gallery 1000A in Lado Sarai. Binoy’s works reflect daily lives of the common people, especially women, using earthy elements and nature. The idea is to highlight the struggles of the voiceless and perhaps the marginalized.