Vasudeo S. Gaitonde

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Vasudeo S. Gaitonde
Untitled
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 50" x 40"
Year: 1995 

One of the India's foremost abstractionist, Large, planar surfaces distilled with subtle layers of paint create a meditative calm in Gaitonde's work. His abstract paintings with their translucent beams of light refer to nothing other than themselves and evoke subliminal depths.
courtesy: contemporaryindianart

Binoy Varghese

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Binoy Varghese 
Untitled 
Medium: Acrylic On Canvas 
2011

Binoy Varghese re-visits to the discourse of ‘otherisation’ and the dichotomies associated with it. Ideas about ‘public’ and ‘private’, about the inelegant backstages of a world that craves slick presentation take the forefront to make statements of his works. The way Binoy places the compositions accomplished with intent that might look as an over-mindful designing pattern must not be taken into account in that form. There is exhilaration but that’s the part of the execution to provide the intrigue quality the works bear.
courtesy:mattersofart

Justin Ponmay

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Justin Ponmay 
Expanded Portraits
‘2/34 parijat building, mahavir nagar’
2007

Ponmany specializes in focusing on contemporizing the portrait. he makes what he calls ‘expanded portraits’, in which he
photographs mumbai residents from all angles to create a map-like panorama views of their three dimensional heads. the pieces are reminiscent of scanners and cartography but their morphing nature also shows signs of abstract art.
courtesy:designboom

Santosh .T.V

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
T V Santhosh
Title: Across An Unresolved Story 
Oil on canvas
2005
71.7 x 47.6 inches

Heavily inspired by cinema, news media, art history and popular culture, Santhosh’s art is centered on the exploration of present day crises. He uses images from print media, television and the internet to create eerily realist canvases replete with meaning that make strong statements about the general socio-political situation in India. 

“The distinctive stylistic treatment, which makes Santhosh’s paintings recognizable without being predictable, subsumes three cardinal elements: first, a mode of representation that has erroneously been termed as photo-realism; second, a strict turning of chromatic scale; and third, an incremental transfiguration of the material, by degree and detail, that is all the more shocking for its unobtrusiveness”
Courtesy:saffronart

Bose Krishnamachari

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Bose Krishnamachari 
Title: Stretched Bodies 
Medium: Acrylic On Canvas 
Size: 36 x 72 inches 
Year: 2008 

Bose Krishnamachari works in striking and dynamic abstracts, and with figures seen through saturated lenses. Even in his photography and multi-media installations, color is a dominant force. He says, "I refine my color to brightness. I have learnt this usage from the alternately subdued and lavish color codes of Indian ceremonies and ritual performances; the costumes, the gestures of enactment..."
In addition to being an artist, Krishnamachari curates exhibitions and projects. He is driven by a desire to support the younger generation of Indian artists.
courtesy:aicon

Sebastian Varghese

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Sebastian Varghese 
Title: Oil Change
Medium: water color 
Size: 36x53 inches 
Year: 2011

The theme oil change is an ironic suggestion. It juxtaposes a colourful and natural backdrop and a hanging car and many elements of landscapes organically interplay. Just being playful.
courtesy:celesteprize

Manjunath Kamath

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Manjunath Kamath 
Title: underworld Theatre 
Medium: Digital print 
Size: 36 x 96 inches 
Year: 2010

Manjunath Kamath tells stories with his images. His narratives, however, are altered and adjusted constantly, adapting fluidly according to the environment they are narrated in, and resulting in a different meaning each time a story is told. As a visual artist, Kamath feels impelled to regularly reinvent his method of storytelling. By relentlessly working on his articulation and modernizing his techniques, the artist continuously updates his visual vocabulary.

The artist’s need to draw and hold his viewers’ attention is palpable in his varied use of painting, drawing, sculpture and video. With the help of these disparate genres he creates narratives that are gripping in content, even though they are composed of simple, commonplace elements. Thus Kamath’s forte ultimately lies in creating fantasies out of the ordinary.

Kamath usually begins a painting with just one element; this could be drawn from memories of past experiences or the reality of present contexts. He then keeps adding and taking away from the imagery, paying particular attention to structuring throughout this process, and ultimately arrives at a composition that he deems suitable to be the vehicle of his narrative. To Kamath, then, the process of construction is more important than his completed work.

Manjunath Kamath approached the idea of size for the exhibition 'Size Matters...Or Does It?' as a conceptual rug that lies are swept under. With 'Twelve Small Lies', he suggests covert behaviors and longings that are paradoxically absurd.

In his larger work, 'Lies Between Question and Answer', Kamath creates lies that have the ability to insinuate themselves while going unnoticed. The works are especially interesting when viewed in tandem. He explores a lie's pervasive and seductive smallness, which, rather than its form, is the keys to its dangers.
courtesy:latitude28

Azis.T.M

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Azis T M 
Medium: Water Color On Paper 
Size: 30"x22"
Artist note:
"I have never been particular about maintaining a style. I realize that experiences change with time. I accept the new environment, people and also like to adapt new techniques and colors".

Originally from Kerala, T.M. Azis is known to create human figures interacting with the other elements in a painting. Figures or objects performing as symbols spinning around allegories as conceived by the artist. He creates paintings, which record what might be ordinary, everyday occurrences, contemplated by him. A certain insight into behavioral thought, we realise that there is a world different from what see – the world that exists in our minds.

It is interesting to note that there are no decisive tactics, no fixed strategies in his work. Azis allows himself to be influenced by places around him and situations that he encounters. Simple objects and people in their vicinities rejoice in their existence by being involved in what is around.

The paintings do not project a grand décor, and even with its simplicity there is a certain magic and lightness about it. The different conversations performed by figures with the ‘designs’ lines or concentric circles in the paintings pleasantly create subtle movements on the surface reciting a visual rhythm to the viewer.

The paintings are constructed using bright colors sometimes and sometimes not so contrasting colors, which plainly have strong individual personas expressing a subtle theater of visual form.

In today’s contemporary art scenario, artists are fast adapting to new trends. T.M. Azis, primarily a painter, has also a prolific collection of photographs taken during the collaborative projects with other artists.
courtesy:saffronart

Bahuleyan

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Bahuleyan 
Untitled 
Acrylic On Canvas
54x33

The artist was in Kuwait when invasion of Iraq took place. It deeply moved the artist. He came back to India and did a series of paintings on it. 
courtesy:artmajeur

Somenath Maity

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Somenath Maity 
Untitled 
Oil on canvas
40 x 30 inches

Artist note:
"In a big city, I feel the vibration of an abstraction, and the colors Red, Blue, Brown, Black and Olive Green come alive in a meaningful way."
courtesy:saffronart

Ramananda Bandyopadyay

Artville Contemporary Artist Of the Day 
Ramananda Bandyopadhyay
Title: Ayna
medium: mixed media 
size: 14x18.5 inch
Lyrical and romantic, his work is typical of the Bengal school and reminiscent of Nandalal Bose who was his mentor.

"I represent the village in the city"

Ramananda Bandyopadhyay is a worthy representative of the Bengal School of Art. He is inspired by the simplicity and uncomplicated lives of the rustics. An admirer of Nandalal Bose he draws unabashedly from the master's work and has modelled his art on the same lines. Lyrical and romantic, Bandyopadhyay's canvases have a radiant innocence that is strongly reminiscent of an earlier era when life had a dignity and graciousness. A very distinct characteristic of Bandyopadhyay's work is the recurrent use of a palette that comprises principally of reds, browns, greens and white. In a career spanning almost four decades, he has consistently employed the same colors. " I owe the three to four colors used in my paintings, exclusively to my mother's addiction to pan (betel leaf). The green of the betel leaf, the lime's white, the catechu's brown and the red of the juice of chewed pan that turned my mother's lips into a pair of pure gems,"says Bandyopadhyay as he explains his predilection for these hues.

Mythology is a favourite subject of this artist. Drawing on the ancient and rich cultural heritage of his native state as well as the country, Bandyopadhyay paints the numerous gods and goddesses that people Hinduism and the fascinating tales that abound in the literature of India. This strong bias towards religious subjects is in part attributable to his upbringing. His parents were ardent followers of the religious tenets of the Ramakrishna Mission and the artist himself spent most of his working life as a Director of the Art Museum and Gallery at the Ramakrishna Mission in Kolkata.

Not that Bandyopadhyay lives completely in the past and is unobservant of modern day life. In fact, all his canvases are firmly rooted in contemporary style and technique. Many of his paintings depict the humdrum existence of the middle-class in any large city going about their day-to-day activities. He transforms even these mundane subjects into paintings invested with a rare grace and beauty. A blend of tradition and the present-day world gives Bandyopadhyay's canvases the best of both worlds.
courtesy:saffronart

K S Radhakrishnan

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
K S Radhakrishnan 
Crossing The Pitfall
(2008)
109 X 114 Cm

K S Radhakrishnan breathes life and a certain energy into the figures he casts, an energy that allows the understanding of a being, of man and women. To him, no matter what form they may take, they remain devoid of distinction.
courtesy:kashiart

Jitish Kallat

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Jitish Kallat
Title: Hallucinations of a passer-by
Year: 2012
Midium: Oil on canvas
Size: 84.02 x 120 in
Jitish Kallat is one of the most prominent figures of Contemporary Indian Art. Working across a variety of media including painting, sculpture, photography and installation, his work reflects a deep involvement with the city of his birth (Mumbai) and derives much of its visual language from his immediate urban environment. His subject matter has been described previously as 'the dirty, old, recycled and patched-together fabric of urban India'. Wider concerns include India's attempts to negotiate its entry into a globalised economy, addressing housing and transportation crises, city planning, caste and communal tensions, and government accountability.
Many of Kallat's works focus on Mumbai's downtrodden or dispossessed inhabitants, though treating them in a bold, colourful and highly graphic manner. Kallat traditionally mounts his paintings on bronze sculptures that are re-created from the wall adornments found on the 120-year-old Victoria Terminus train station in the centre of Mumbai.
courtesy:arndt

Shanthamani.M

Artville Contemporary

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day
Shanthamani.M,
Hands,
2012
Wood charcoal with cotton rag pulp, polyurethane
184 x 113 x 73 cm
M Shanthamani explores the aftermath of transition and transformation through cultural impacts. As growing materialism creates a loss of values, the artist reminds us that happiness does not cost a thing. She shows us that life is removed from existence, the spiritual is forgotten, culture is lost, traditions are history, and everything is reduced to a label ‘made somewhere’. Shanthamani uses fragmentation in all mediums and symbolism in order to help Man recognize and understand what is changing, that we are at the last stage before ashes. Her use of charcoal represents the depletion of our natural resources and the destruction of industrial development. Shanthamani’s sculptures are rustic charcoal bricks combined as an allegory on the passage of existence in a sensual figure. Shanthamani’s works are introspections on the inner consciousness as it mutates with time and slowly becomes a pile of pieces burned by the combustion of life.
courtesy:artplural

Damien Hirst

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Damien Hirst 
Verity
2003 - 2012
Bronze, stainless steel, glass fibre reinforced polymer
20250 x 3800 x 7600 mm | 797.3 x 149.6 x 299.3 in
Sculpture
Gold, Silver and Bronze
On display Verity, Ilfracombe, United Kingdom

Verity stands at 20.25 metres (66.43 feet) tall, and weighs 25 tonnes. She is on long-term loan to North Devon Council as a gift from Hirst.

Verity is an allegory for truth and justice. Her stance is taken from Edgar Degas’s ‘Little Dancer of Fourteen Years’ (c. 1881). An anatomical cross- section of her head and torso reveal her skull and the developing foetus inside her womb.

Verity stands on a base of scattered legal books and holds the traditional symbols of Justice – a sword and scales. Representing truth, her scales are hidden and off-balance behind her back, whilst her sword is held confidently in her upstretched arm.

She was fabricated in bronze in over 40 individual sand castings at Pangolin Editions foundry, in Gloucestershire. Her phosphor-bronze surface is 20 millimetres thick and her internal support structure is a single piece of stainless steel. The sculpture is weather and lightning-proof and underwent extensive wind-tunnel-testing to ensure her capability of withstanding the force of high winds and sea spray. After two years of planning and production, Verity arrived in Ilfracombe in three parts in October 2012. After a week’s assembly on site, the sculpture was hoisted into final position using a 250 tonne crane.
courtesy:damienhirst

Gayathri Gamuz

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Gayathri Gamuz
Title: Water human frog
Size:39X39 in
Medium: Oil On Canvas

Gayatri Gamuz when asked in an interview about her adopted home land of the last two decades says “I feel one with the land in many respects… I don’t pretend to belong here or feel that India is mine... I am a long time tourist in India, and also on the planet.”
courtesy:gayathri gamuz

Subodh Kerker

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Subodh Kerkar
Chillies I
Archival quality print on museum etching paper
72 cm x 108 cm 

Artist note
The trans-oceanic commerce led to an interesting exchange of plants and foods. Chillies have become such an integral part of Indian cuisine that very few Indians are aware that they are not indigenous. Before 1500, Indian curries were not red. Chillies sailed to India from South America on a Portuguese Caravella around the beginning of the 16th century and spread all over the country and in South East Asia in less than 50 years. Today India is the largest producer of chillies in the world, producing a million tons annually and consuming 90% of it locally. I have created my chilly sculptures using fiberglass and used tyre skins. To use old truck tires as the surface texture of the chilly, I am connecting it back to trade, since trucks in modern India are an important means to transport goods across the country.
courtesy: subodhkerkar

Veer Munshi

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Veer Munshi 
Title: CAN I LAND IN YOUR SPACE?
Size: 47 x 69
Media: Oil on Canvas
year: 2005

An artist like Veer Munshi is one of the few painters in India today who is able to transform his experiences as an exiled refugee into the language of painting. Munshi was born and brought up in the Kashmir valley, but was forced to move to Delhi in 1990 when it was no longer safe for him to stay there.

For Munshi, viewing pleasure plays no role in his objective as an artist. His work is very personal and at most times disturbing. It is his reaction to a specific event - in this case, the ongoing political situation in his home, Kashmir - and he wants everyone who views his work to understand what is happening there. Rather than leaving viewers with a light hearted happy feeling, Munshi wants his works to cause reflection and spread awareness. He is a painter with a clearly defined course In Veer Munshi`s paintings we see a reflection of the anguish and fear he felt whilst living in his own home, a fear that plagued so many other Kashmiris as well. Munshi was forced to give up his home and heritage, and witness how men he once knew turned into vicious, killing animals - a theme often recurring in his large canvases.

In Munshi`s paintings we also see the artist`s bitterness upon seeing a once beautiful valley ravaged by men intent on nothing but their own gain in the name of patriotism. This farce is reflected in Munshi`s ability to telescope images of pain and hatred over those of the Kashmir that was. Beautiful houseboats lie overturned and neglected in the Dal Lake and the flowers in the Shalimar Garden are trampled and dying. The artist also manages to manipulate the colour he uses to suit the message of his paintings. Reds, oranges and greens, otherwise warm and inviting, are given harsh and dark roles. His purples are potent and the shades of brown always cloak and muddy everything.
courtesy:saffroanart

Seema kholi

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Seema Kholi 
Untitled 
Mixed media on canvas 
27'' x 48'
'
Seema Kohli's works reveal a claiming of feminine subjectivities, an altered concept of feminine sexuality. Her works bring into focus a woman's physical attributes, her intellect, thought, dreams and realities. The domain of sacred feminine geography with an effulgence of energy emanates from the paintings, where myth, memory and imagination have become the handmaiden of her own artistic oeuvre. Within the genres of sexuality and desire, one can't ignore the parallel journeys of discovery that she has made. Being a student of philosophy, she has inhaled and experienced myriad notions of existence, and has lived emotional and psychological reality. Seema has recently been facilitated by Lalit Kala Akademi for being an achiever as a woman in Contemporary Indian Art. She lives and works from her studio in Delhi.

Pipilotti Rist

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day
Pipilotti Pist
"Cravity Be My Friend", 2007
Audio Video Installation 
Dimensions Adaptable 

"Pipilotti" Rist, is a visual artist who works with video, film, and moving images which are often displayed as projections. During her studies Pipilotti Rist began making super 8 films. Her works generally last only a few minutes, and contained alterations in their colors, speed, and sound. Her works generally treat issues related to gender, sexuality, and the human body.
Her colorful and musical works transmit a sense of happiness and simplicity. Rist's work is regarded as feminist by some art critics. Her works are held by many important art collections worldwide.
In I'm Not The Girl Who Misses Much (1986) Rist dances before a camera in a black dress with uncovered breasts. The images are often monochromatic and fuzzy. Rists repeatedly sings "I'm not the girl who misses much," a reference to the first line of the song "Happiness Is a Warm Gun" by the Beatles. As the video approaches its end, the image becomes increasingly blue and fuzzy and the sound stops.
Rist achieved notoriety with Pickelporno (Pimple porno) (1992), a work about the female body and sexual excitation. The fisheye camera moves over the bodies of a couple. The images are charged by intense colors, and are simultaneously strange, sensual, and ambiguous.
Ever is Over All (1997) shows in slow-motion a young woman walks along a city street, smashing the windows of parked cars with a large hammer in the shape of a tropical flower. At one point a police officer greets her. The audio video installation has been purchased by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Rist's nine video segments titled Open My Glade were played once every hour on a screen at Times Square in New York City, a project of the Messages to the Public program, which was founded in 1980.
Pour Your Body Out was a commissioned multimedia installation organized by Klaus Biesenbach and installed in the atrium of the Museum of Modern Art in early 2009. In an interview with Phong Bui published in The Brooklyn Rail, Rist said she chose the atrium for the installation "because it reminds me of a church’s interior where you’re constantly reminded that the spirit is good and the body is bad. This spirit goes up in space but the body remains on the ground. This piece is really about bringing those two differences together."
courtesy:wiki

Sumedh Rajendran

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Artist: Sumedh Rajendran 
Title: INFANT REGION ADVANCING
Size: 270 cms x 366 cms x 58 cms
Medium: wood, tin sheet and imitation leather  
Year: 2008

Rajendran guides us through a mental landscape shaped by widely disparate velocities of experience, of opportunity and privilege: the time zones of the horse, the tin cabin trunk, helicopter and the airplane emblematise a planet that has not yet been unified by the seamless efficiencies of transport and communication. The phantom of change may glide over the hapless meridians in a stealth aircraft, but it can also be held hostage by the refusal of a carriage to yield right of way of a dirt track. The sculptor dose not declaim a critique of mindless globality with its belief in all-pervasive and homogenising change, but rather, chooses to encode it’s into the play of contrary materials, the dialogue between incongruous entities.
courtesy: sumedh rajendran.

Mithu Sen

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Mithu Sen 
'Shut Up'
Sketch book 

In her works, Mithu Sen contrasts scale, subject and even genre to give life to her remarkable imagination. Installations and paintings are an important part of Sen’s oeuvre. She works spontaneously in both genres – one mark or symbol leading to another, with no preconceived narrative or definitive meaning ; put down in the style of free association, they consist of a peculiar collection of motifs that playfully subvert commonly held beliefs about femininity and sexuality. Juxtaposing intricate and large forms, conflating animals, humans and inanimate objects, and combining drawing, painting and collage, Sen’s works provoke both humour and serious consideration on the part of the viewer.
courtesy:saffronart

Ritu Kamath

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Artist: Ritu Kamath 
Title: Peacock 
Medium: Acrylic on canvas 
Size: 4'/4' 

Ritu Kamath has been working on varied themes for the past few years yet the underlying message is 'the social focus' which predominates. She has evolved as a sensitive artist as she treads along her path , expressing joys and pain of one who chooses to dream, to experience and to render. Ritu has traversed a varied field from floral dreams to biting satire.
courtesy:NVYA.

Sebastian Varghese

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day
Sebastian Varghese
Alluvium
Water color
23/43.5 in

Alluvium refers to the sediments and remnants of any organic transformation. All forms are transient. Matter looks constant and concrete. But in reality things are being disintegrated and integrated always. Body is repaired, recreated and rejuvenated each moment. Self also has the same constitution.
courtersy:celeste.network

Ravinder Reddy

Artville Contemporary Artist Of The Day 
Ravinder Reddy
Gilded Head, 2006
Gold Gilded, Painted on Polyester Resin Fiberglass
53 x 35 x 60 in / 135 x 89 x 152 cm 

Ravinder reddy later' 80's he was doing free-standing, oversize heads and relief figures of nude women and lover couples in a gradually varied, steady development from the style which yet more inherently blended an archaic and classic rootedness with present day sensuous ways on the popular plane. His contemporary nymphs - from coy adolescent girls to sated middle-aged house wives, often gilded or painted in iconic colours like blues, are massive and monumental, but intimately exposed. They look at the viewer directly with their large, open eyes, almost hypnotically. Utterly tactile, fluid and powerfully synthesized, yet with a capacity for delicate, nuances detail or splashed under kitschy, oily pigments and garish ornament, they are also soft, enchanted, pleased and serene. Although presented with a dose of irony and witticism, the aggressive ribald, apparitions exude endurance, love, dreaming and sustenance, perhaps and indistinct sense of being set within social moulds.
courtesy: contemporary Indian art.