Giji Scaria

Artville Artist Of The Day
Gigi Scaria
Dry Hard
Watercolour & Automobile Paint On Paper
60" X 72" 
2011

Born in 1973 in Kothanalloor, Kerala, Gigi Scaria completed his Bachelor’s degree in painting from the College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram, in 1995, and his Master’s degree in the same from Jamia Millia University, New Delhi, in 1998.

Gigi Scaria’s work draws the viewer’s attention towards the painful truths of migrancy and displacement. The issue of non-belonging and unsettlement reverberate between the walls on his canvas. “Gigi’s particular position is to investigate how city structures, social constructs, and the view of location is translated in social prejudice and class attitude,” says critic and curator Gayatri Sinha.

Scaria’s solo shows include ‘Absence of an Architect’ at Palette Art Gallery, New Delhi, in 2007; ‘Where are the Amerindians?’ at Inter America Space, Trinidad, in 2005 following his residency at CCA7 there; the Art Inc., New Delhi, in 2001; and Great Art Gallery, New Delhi, in 1998. Amongst his group shows, the most recent include, ‘Popular Reality’ at the Stainless Gallery, New Delhi, Jam Jar, Dubai, and Clark House, Mumbai, in 2008-2009; ‘Keep Drawing’ at Gallery Espace, New Delhi; ‘Walk On Line’ at Avanthy Contemporary, Zurich; ‘Indiavata (India + Avatar): Contemporary Artists from India’ at Gallery Sun Contemporary, Korea; ‘Young Contemporary Indian Artists’ at 1x1 Gallery, Dubai; ‘Click! Contemporary Photography in India’ at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi; and ‘Who Knows Mr. Gandhi ?’ at Aicon Gallery, London, all in 2008. Scaria also completed residencies in Biella, Italy in 2002 and New Delhi in 2004. In 2005, the artist was honoured with the Sanskriti Award in Visual Art. Scaria lives and works in New Delhi.
img courtesy:http://www.paletteartgallery.com/
courtesy: http://www.saffronart.com/

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Vivan Sundaram

Artville Artist Of The Day
Vivan Sundaram
Figure in Double Skirt
Fiberglass, plastic, rubber & iron
62" x 30" x 15"
2013

Sundaram is an artist who has been consistent in his pursuit of a politically honed art. Some of his early work from the 1970s, such as the series The Heights of Macchu Picchu, The Discreet Chann of the Bourgeoisie and The Indian Emergency give voice to a constantly reactive subjectivity. During the early 1970s, he was actively involved with the student movement, and worked with activists. This activism later manifested in his involvement with the work of the Safdar Hashmi Memorial Trust (Sahmat), of which he is a founder member and trustee. A keen organizer, he initiated the Kasauli Art Centre in 1976, which has hosted numerous national and international ~ts workshops and theatre productions.

Sundaram's major output of paintings through the 1980s marks his involvement with a historically conscious figuration. One of the interesting dimensions of his work is the excavation of the historical through the painting. Often the historical also manifests as the personal in a situation of asserting a Third World identity and a position of solidarity with the exploited and the working classes. Sundaram's political consciousness has always seized upon the topical, upon the question that needs to be asked. The Gulf War of 1991 occasioned a series of works in engine oil and charcoal on paper. Though the use of unconventional media is not new to Sundaram, this series may be seen as being special in the move towards a more conceptually-oriented practice, that from then onwards, operates increasingly in three, and then four dimensions. In thematic terms, Sundaram's recent work remains concerned with social and environmental protest, and with an 'archaeology' of the recent past. In terms of practice, his interests in the appositional interventions of Dada and Surrealism. a well as such tendencies as Fluxus has led him to constantly reinterpret the role of the artist and the values of authorship and creativity, giving his recent work a strong conceptual content. Several of his recent projects involving the use of photographs, found objects, video and three-dimensional constructs in a variety of materials, are expressly COLLABORATIVE. His role here becomes that of the arranger, the conductor, a curator in a quasi-archaeological dig that probes identities in the contemporary international context. Some of his recent exhibitions have had the appearance of meticulously presented mini-museums, each one geared to the expression of a set of conceptual meanings that are coded into every detail of the organized space.

Vivan Sundaram lives and works in New Delhi, where he is a Visiting Professor at the Jamia Milia Islamia University.
img courtesy: http://www.vadehraart.com/
courtesy:http://www.contemporaryindianart.com/

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Pushpmala N

Artville Artist Of The Day

Pushpamala N
The Green Yogini
2004
Signed and dated in English (verso)
C-print on metallic paper
24 x 20 in | 61.0 x 50.8 cm
Eighteen from a limited edition of twenty

The artist is particularly known for incorporating popular culture into her work. The artist has adopted various popular personas and ironic roles as a vehicle for examining issues of gender, place and history. The comic aspect of her work carries a particularly sharp edge in her photo-based installations and projections, exposing cultural and gender stereotyping while exploring the complex terrain of contemporary urban life in India.

The emphasis on theatricality was shared by the artist who reinvented herself as the vampish heroine of her own cinematic 'photoromance', which she set in Mumbai and captured in a series of black-and-white photographs for the 'Century City' show.
courtesy:http://www.saffronart.com/

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Murali Cheeroth

Artville Artist Of The Day

Murali Cheeroth

City Fossils II

Inches : 66 x 66

Medium: Oil on Canvas

Born 1966 Thrissur, Kerala, completed both his BFA and MFA from Kala Bhawan, Santiniketan in 1992 and 1995 respectively.

His has held his solo shows at Ahmadabad presented by Kerala Lalit Kala Akademi in 2000 and at Maharashtra in 2000 & 2001. He has held 3 two-man shows at Cochin in 2007 & 2003 and 1 at Ahmadabad in 1997.

He has participated in over 20 group shows across India and aboard, lastly featuring at Emerging India, presented by Art Alive Gallery at the Royal College of Art, London, in 2007.

He has received many Awards including State Lalit Kala Akademi Award in 1997-98; Kanoria Scholarship for Print Making in 1997; Cultural Scholarship by Department of Culture, Ministry of Human Resource Development, and New Delhi during 1993-95. He lives and works in Bangalore, Karnataka.

courtesy:http://www.artalivegallery.com/

#art #contemporary #artist #muralicheeroth #artville #artistoftheday

Jitish Kallat

Artville Artist Of The Day 
Jitish Kallat
Title: Annexation
Year: 2009
Media: painted black lead and steel
Size: 72.05 x 59.06 x 51.18 in

"My art is more like a researcher's project who uses quotes rather than an essay,with each painting necessitating a bibliography," Jitish Kallat, while defining his art. His obsessive use of the self image in his paintings as the main protagonist makes his works autobiographical. The autobiography addresses personal relations as well as the ones he has with his ancestory, time, death... 

He chooses a method that is a very economical, nearly abstract , form of narrative. Images float around the protagonist, like icons on a computer screen, creating a webwork. The sources are "any visual material relevant to me." Images of the print media are photocopied, transferred on to the surface, hence 'real', as against the painted which he considers fictional. The images are like a picture puzzle, which the viewer has to decode and conclude upon. The treatment of the picture plane is like a battered wall, and refers to the duality in his painting. 

The use of text, for titles, which are very important to Jitish, infuse the paintings with a sense of humour. An emblematic , which actually began as a joke on his classmates while at the Sir J.J. School of Art, is ironical for him. "It is like copyrighting an artwork which itself has been appropriated from so many histories, people, collaborations .." It acknowledges an acceptance as well as his critique of the modernist concept of authorship in which he revels. 

      

Shanthamani Muddaiah

Artville Artist Of The Day
Artist:Shanthamani Muddaiah
Title: Urn
Size: 50" x 25" x 15"
Medium: Charcoal, Cotton Rag Pulp and Copper Wire 
Year: 2012

Shantamani, an artist with seventeen years of experience working in the field of visual arts, has throughout her career been exploring material and content that influences geography and culture. She has a few solos and group shows to her credit in different parts of the world and with work in many reputed collections through out the world. Received a Charles Wallace scholarship, in 2004 to study Paper-Making in Scotland, and a National Junior Fellowship in 2006-08 to work with paper sculpting.
courtesy: http://colomboartbiennale.com/shanthamani-muddaiah/

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Ravi Kumar Kashi

Artville Artist Of The Day 
Artist: Ravi Kumar Kashi
Title: Carry On
Date: 2009
Medium: cotton rag pulp, plastic and metal
Original Dimensions: 6" x 22" x 37"
Copyright: Ravi Kumar Kashi 
Tags: mixed-media, sculpture

Ravikumar Kashi is an artist whose works defy easy categorisation. He has done painting, sculpture, photography and installation, but they combine or cut across defined expectations from these mediums. His idea / concept driven works are layered and connect with the viewer in multiple ways. Introspection is an important aspect of his works which touch upon the idea of self and its many facets. He has also explored the themes of desire, gratification, consumerism and destruction in individuals and at the societal level.

courtesy:http://www.ravikashi.com/ #art #contemporaryartist#ravikumarkashi #carryon   #artville   #artistoftheday  

Ritu Kamath

Artville artist of the day: Ritu Kamath

Untitled
Medium: Oil on Canvas
Size: 48in x 48in

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: www.crimsonartgallery.com
#artvilleartistoftheday #ritukamath #oilpainting #oiloncanvas #art #artville

Yusuf Arakkal

Artville artist of the day: Yusuf Arakkal

Untitled
Year: 1995
Medium: Oil on canvas
Size: 21 in x 29 in   |  53.34 cm x 73.66 cm

His early abstract paintings with colors reflecting the superficial glamour of city life were followed in the mid-' 70s by compositions with wheels, drainage pipes and other geometrisized structures which referred to wretched living conditions of the urban poor. Soon his concern with people and wider social issues made him focus on the human figure, though always seen as bound with, even defined by the environment. After a few canvases of a partly super realistic nature dealing with drought, famine, untouchability, etc. He reached his constant style which has a link with a realist basis but generalizes it with a graceful, if non-specific roughness. One of such paintings depicting inhabitants of pipes and pavements won him a national award in 1983. Arakkal works in series of related images- from sensual, icon-like ladies to sick in hospital beds and wheelchairs, urchins playing with kites and paper masks, ironic images of paper politicians and empty chairs bearing human presence. "Throughout he has depicted working -class and village people set against dilapidated walls, among shaky planar divisions, hazy texturing and diffused to sharp and vibrating arbitrary chiaroscuro, all partially enclosed by the frames-within-aflame motif. His figures in moods ranging from vaguely atmospheric to restless, dejection, quiet joy and sensuousness, are flattened as well as plastic, emerging from and nearly dissolving into their backgrounds. Arakkal has worked also with sculpture in wood, stone, ceramic and bronze, did collages, graphics and water colors. He writes poetry and articles on art.

Courtesy: www.saffronart.com
#artvilleartistoftheday #yusufarakkal #oilpainting #oiloncanvas #art #artville

Manjunath Kamath

Artville artist of the day: Manjunath Kamath

Title: Evidence
Year: 2007
Medium: Acrylic on canvas
Size: 72 x 72 in | 182.9 x 182.9 cm

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.

Courtesy: www.saffronart.com
#artvilleartistoftheday #manjunathkamath #acrylic #acryliconcanvas #art #artville

David Maljkovic

Artville artist of the day: David Maljkovic

Title: Recalling Frames
Year: 2010
Size: 31.8 x 42 cm (framed)
Medium: B/W print from collage on negative

David Maljkovic (1973, Rijeka, HR) examines collective memory and amnesia in contemporary Croatia. Maljkovic's work consists of collages, installations, videos and drawings. His work incorporates images of dilapidated modernist landmarks, monuments and buildings commenting on the country's idealistic discontinuity. Erected during the communist era and left empty or deprived from its original use, these rundown monuments mark the gap between utopian heritage and disillusioned presence.

After studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb and the Cite Internationale des Arts in Paris, David Maljkovic participated in several artist's residency programs inculding the one of the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. Recent solo exhibitions were, amongst others, at Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2014), Kunstmuseum St. Gallen, St. Gallen (2014), CAC - Contemporary Art Center, Vilnius (2013), GAMeC, Bergamo (2013), Baltic Art Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead (2013), Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2012), Sculpture Center, New York (2012), Wiener Secession, Vienna (2011), Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana (2010).
With his work David Maljkovic participated in a large number of group exhibitions, amongst which 56th Venice Biennale, Venice (2015), Carré d’Art Musée d’Art Contemporain Nimes, Nimes (2014), Musée nationale d’art moderne Centre Pompidou, Paris (2014), EYE Filmmuseum, Amsterdam (2014), ACCA Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Melbourne (2013), MAXXI Museum, Rome (2013), EFA Project Space, New York (2013), Centro Huart de Arte Contemporaneo, Pamplona (2012), Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012).David Maljkovic received the International Contemporary Art Prize Diputacio de Castello, Spain.

Courtesy: www.artnet.com
#artvilleartistoftheday #davidmaljkovic #printfromcollage #printonnegative #collage #blackandwhite #art #artville

Neo Rauch

Artville artist of the day: Neo Rauch

Title: Osterfeuer
Year: 2015
Size: Paper: 29 1/2 x 21 5/8 inches / 75 x 55 cm
Image: 27 1/16 x 19 1/2 inches / 68.8 x 49.5 cm
Medium: Prints and Multiples, Six-color ink lithograph

Neo Rauch (German, b.1960) was born in Leipzig, and has been described as one of the most acclaimed and influential painters of his generation. Considered part of the New Leipzig School, Rauch’s work is influenced by his Communist East Germany origins, and is reminiscent of the works by fellow German artists Gerhard Richter (German, b.1932), Sigmar Polke (German, 1941–2010), and Georg Baselitz (German, b.1938). His paintings are often large in scale, and feature robust figures painted in garish colors. While Rauch himself hesitates to classify his paintings as Surrealist, he acknowledges the influence of dreams and imagination, and thinks of his work as usually a balance between various extremes, including the real and the surreal.

The scenes and images evoke a Social Realist sensibility, but are tinged with an unsettling ambiguity, due to the uncanny sense that they are simultaneously familiar and strange. In 2007, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York hosted a solo exhibition of Rauch’s work, called Para. The show, which included paintings created specifically for the exhibition, highlighted the theme of “parallel universes,” or the idea that the scenes in Rauch’s work appear both real and imagined. Rauch’s work has been exhibited at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg in Germany, the David Zwirner Gallery in New York, and the Museum Frieder Burda in Baden-Baden, Germany, among other museums and galleries. He trained at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst, and continues to live and work in Leipzig.

Courtesy: www.artnet.com
#artvilleartistoftheday #neorauch #prints #printsandmultiples #inklithograph #art #artville

Gayatri Gamuz

Artville artist of the day: Gayatri Gamuz

Title: Reflexions On Wildness II
Size: 48" x 48"
Medium: Oil on Canvas

Gayatri Gamuz was born in 1966 in Rojales, Spain. She studied in the Art School in Alicante and in the School of Ceramics in Manises, Valencia. She lives in India since 1992 together with her husband, Indian English poet and writer Ananda Surya and they have two children.

Her recent solo shows are “In a land without trees” at Hacienda Gallery, Mumbai, “In reverse I tell so you understand me” at Centro Cultural CAM, Orihuela, Spain, “Tenderness in the middle of the rat race” in the Embassy of India, Berlin and “The Other Within” at the Centro Civico, Besos Mar, Barcelona. She also did solo exhibitions in the Red Wall Gallery in Australia and in the Brighton Fringe Festival in England.

She has been in various group shows in RL Fine Arts in New York, in The Noble Sage Gallery in London, in Stables Gallery as part of the London Biennale 2006, in Art Konsult in New Delhi, in Mon Art Gallerie in Calcutta, in Museo Storico di Bergamo, Italy and Salon Municipal de Montevideo, Uruguay and in the Hong Kong Visual Arts Centre.

She collaborated with Ananda Surya with the installation “Pachamama Celebrates 2053” in the Lila Gallery in Kochi and in the “Open Art Project” in ´Die Bank´, in Munich. She also took part in the Tree Festival Art Exhibitions in Kochi, the “Women and Nature” camp in the Periyar Tiger Reserve and the Chestnut Tree Summer Festival in Nijmegen, Holland. Recently she was panelist in a discussion on “Art and Ecology” at the Mohile Parikh Centre for Visual Arts (MPCVA) in Mumbai. At present Gayatri lives in Thiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu.

courtesy: www.saffroanart.com
#artvilleartistoftheday #gayatrigamuz #art #artville #oilpainting #oiloncanvas

Veer Munshi

Artville artist of the day: Veer Munshi

Title: Guarding the nations
Size: 69 x 59 inches
Medium: Acrylic and oil on canvas

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: www.saffroanart.com
#artvilleartistoftheday #veermunshi #art #artville #acrylicandoil #acrylicandoiloncanvas

Sudarshan Shetty

Artville artist of the day: Sudarshan Shetty

Title: Lost Bodies
Year: 2007
Size: 71.5 x 47 in | 181.6 x 119.4 cm
Medium: Mixed media on Canvas

Sudarshan Shetty's body of work is animated by the twin themes of spectacle and disenchantment, idealism and actuality. The fact that these concepts are frequently at odds with each other has rendered the artist's output, whether painting, sculpture, photography or installation, particularly engaging. "Many of his works evoke strongly a fleeting memory of another space, other interiors, long lost except to that special faculty of memory that we all possess," (Radhika Desai, "All that is solid melts into air", Af-fair: 15 Contemporary Indian Artists, 1x1 Art Gallery, Dubai, 2008, pg. 57).

In Lost Bodies, a surreal architectural interior with an absurd rendering of a skeletal tyrannosaur - a common occurrence in the artist's body of work - evokes the dual dichotomy of spectacle and emptiness, which critic Anupa Mehta calls "a poetic of loss." (Anupa Mehta, "Unsteady Equilibrium", India 20: Conversations with Contemporary Artists, Mapin Publishing, Ahmedabad, 2007, pg. 188).

"For over a decade now, he has been fascinated by the mechanics of toys and mechanized objects. Drawing upon the skill of craftsmen and technicians, Shetty creates large, yet immensely fragile sculptures: the evocation of unsteadiness is as intentional as the precarious balance of these gargantuan creatures" (Ibid., pg. 188).

Courtest: www.saffronart.com
#artvilleartistoftheday #sudarshanshetty #mixedmediaoncanvas #mixedmedia #art #artville

Yusuf Arakkal

Artville artist of the day: Yusuf Arakkal

Untitled
Year: 2000
Size: 121.9 x 121.9 cm. (48 x 48 in.)
Medium: Oil on Canvas

His early abstract paintings with colors reflecting the superficial glamour of city life were followed in the mid-' 70s by compositions with wheels, drainage pipes and other geometrisized structures which referred to wretched living conditions of the urban poor. Soon his concern with people and wider social issues made him focus on the human figure, though always seen as bound with, even defined by the environment. After a few canvases of a partly super realistic nature dealing with drought, famine, untouchability, etc. He reached his constant style which has a link with a realist basis but generalizes it with a graceful, if non-specific roughness. One of such paintings depicting inhabitants of pipes and pavements won him a national award in 1983. Arakkal works in series of related images- from sensual, icon-like ladies to sick in hospital beds and wheelchairs, urchins playing with kites and paper masks, ironic images of paper politicians and empty chairs bearing human presence. "Throughout he has depicted working -class and village people set against dilapidated walls, among shaky planar divisions, hazy texturing and diffused to sharp and vibrating arbitrary chiaroscuro, all partially enclosed by the frames-within-aflame motif. His figures in moods ranging from vaguely atmospheric to restless, dejection, quiet joy and sensuousness, are flattened as well as plastic, emerging from and nearly dissolving into their backgrounds. Arakkal has worked also with sculpture in wood, stone, ceramic and bronze, did collages, graphics and water colors. He writes poetry and articles on art.

Courtest: www.artnet.com
#artvilleartistoftheday #yusufarakkal #oiloncanvas #oilpainting #art #artville

Fred Tomaselli

Artville artist of the day: Fred Tomaselli

Title: Untitled

Year: 2013

Size: 60 x 60 in. 

Medium: Mixed media and resin on wood pane

Fred Tomaselli makes exquisitely rendered paintings on wood panels, combining an array of unorthodox materials suspended in a thick layer of clear, epoxy resin. Medicinal herbs, prescription pills and hallucinogenic plants are combined with images cut from books and magazines: flowers, birds, butterflies, arms, legs and noses, for example, are worked into dazzling patterns that spread over the surface of the painting like a beautiful virus or growth.

Tomaselli sees his paintings and their compendium of data as windows into a surreal, hallucinatory universe. “It is my ultimate aim”, he says, “to seduce and transport the viewer in to space of these pictures while simultaneously revealing the mechanics of that seduction.” Tomaselli has also incorporated allegorical figures into his work – in Untitled (Expulsion) (2000), for example, he borrows the Adam and Eve figures from Masaccio’s Expulsion from the Garden of Eden (1426-27), and in Field Guides (2003) he creates his own version of the grim reaper. His figures are described anatomically so that their organs and veins are exposed in the manner of a scientific drawing. He writes that his “inquiry into utopia/dystopia – framed by artifice but motivated by the desire for the real – has turned out to be the primary subject of my work”.

Fred Tomaselli was born in Santa Monica, California in 1956. He has been included in numerous group exhibitions including ‘Open Ends’, MoMA, New York (2000), the Berlin Biennale (2001), the Liverpool Biennial (2002), the Whitney Biennial (2004), the 5th Site Santa Fe Biennial (2004, ‘Ecstasy’, LA MoCA (2006), ‘Prospect 1’, New Orleans Biennale (2008), ‘Universal Code’ Powerplant, Toronto and ‘The World in The Body’, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2009), ‘Between Two Worlds’, Kunstmuseum Thun and ‘The Beauty of Distance’, the 17th Biennale of Sydney (2010), CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco (2011), 1st Kiev Biennale Arsenale(2014). Solo exhibitions include Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, (1999), Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art, Florida (2001), Site Santa Fe, New Mexico (2001), Albright-Knox Gallery of Art, Buffalo, New York (2003), Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh (2004), IMMA, Dublin (2005), The Rose Art Museum, Massachusetts (2005), the Aspen Art Museum (2009), Brooklyn Museum of Art, New York and Frances Tang Teaching Museum, New York (2010), Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas (2014).

Courtesy: www.artnet.com

#artvilleartistoftheday #art #fredtomaselli #mixedmedia #resinonwood #artville

CF John

Artville artist of the day: C. F. John

Title: Still and Silent - Lady
Year: 2010
Size: 18 X 22 Inches
Medium: Mixed media on canvas

C. F. John, one of southern India’s promising artists, is an ardent nature lover. His native state of Kerala and its lovely landscapes have enriched the artist’s visual angle. Apart from being an artist, he is also a social activist; he has lived and among the tribal people. The artist finds his inspiration from those who are close to nature.

Becoming an artist was a long cherished dream for him. He was obsessed with nature since his childhood, gazing at the twinkling stars at night, going fishing after midnight appealed to his artistic sensibility. Being with nature gave him a solace. For him nature was always the driving force of energy, an energy that he had experienced in the lap of nature.

Some of his major exhibits include a solo show at Alliance Francaise, Bangalore (1991); ‘Celebrating Cultural Pluralities, workshop and exhibition of spiral painting, Ravindrakalakshetra, Bangalore (1993); ‘From the Nether, the ceaseless Dance,’ collective works, Kochi, Kozhikode and Kunnur (1993); Silence of Furies and Sorrows, workshop and exhibition of installations, Venkatappa Gallery, Bangalore (1995); solo Show in Mainz and Saarbrucken, Germany (1997). Apart from this he had his shows with other artists in France and London too. He also had his shows in Indian Habitat Center as well as Siri Fort Auditorium, Delhi.

Courtesy: www.saffronart.com
#artvilleartistoftheday #cfjohn #mixedmedia #art #artville

Anish Kapoor

Artville artist of the day: Anish Kapoor 

Title: Non-Object (Spire)
Year: 2008
Size: 119 x 118.13 x 118.13 in.
Medium: Stainless steel

Anish Kapoor (British/Indian, b.1954) is regarded as one of the most prominent British-Indian sculptors of his generation. He first gained critical recognition for his work in the 1980s; Kapoor is well known for his intense, almost spiritual, outdoor and indoor site-specific works in which he marries a Modernist sense of pure materiality with a fascination for the manipulation of form and the perception of space. Kapoor, who was born in Bombay and moved to London in the 1970s to study art, first worked on abstract and organic sculptures using fundamental natural materials such as granite, limestone, marble, pigment, and plaster. His sculptures extend formal minimalistic precepts through catching the viewer’s attention with rich colors, sensuously refined surfaces, and optical effects of depth and dimension.

Since the mid-1990s, Kapoor has explored the notion of the void by creating works that seem to recede into the distance, disappear into walls or floors, or otherwise destabilize assumptions about the physical world. Through transforming properties of objects and materials, Kapoor’s recent work increasingly blurs the boundaries between architecture, design, and art. He received great critical attention in the United States for Cloud Gate, a permanent 110-ton sculpture of polished stainless steel created for Chicago’s Millennium Park in 2006, and for Sky Mirror, a 35-foot-diameter concave mirror shown in the same year at Rockefeller Center in New York.

Kapoor has reached international status, with solo exhibitions at venues around the world, such as the Tate and Hayward Gallery in London, Kunsthalle Basel, the Haus der Kunst in Munich, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston. In 2015, a major exhibition of his work was presented in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles. He represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1990, and received the Turner Prize in the following year. Kapoor’s work can be found in collections worldwide, notably in The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Modern in London, the Prada Art Foundation in Milan, and the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao.

He is represented by various galleries including Leslie Sacks Contemporary in Santa Monica, CA and Grosvenor Gallery in London.

Courtesy: www.artnet.com
#artvilleartistoftheday #anishkapoor #sculpture #stainlesssteel #art #artville

Julian Schnabel

Artville artist of the day: Julian Schnabel

Title: Untitled (Yogi)
Year: 2008
Size: 121 1/2 x 91 1/2 in
Medium: Paintings, Spraypaint, resin on polyester

Julian Schnabel (America, b.1951) is an artist, filmmaker, musician, and writer, best known in the art community for his hasty rise to fame after the exhibition of his famous Plate Paintings at Mary Boone Gallery in 1979. Encouraged to draw by his mother during his childhood in Brooklyn, Schnabel’s artistic interest piqued as a teenager when he encountered the art of the Mexican muralists. After earning his BFA at Houston University in 1973, Schnabel enrolled in the very prestigious Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum, and began his career as an artist.

Rapidly achieving notoriety in the late 1970s, Schnabel became the infamous star of the internationalist Neo-Expressionist movement in the 1980s, with his works on unusual materials such as velvet, and garnering as much attention through his brash remarks and self-aggrandization as through his art. Along with fellow Neo-Expressionists David Salle (American, b.1952), Eric Fischl (American, b.1948), and Sigmar Polke (German, 1941–2010), Schnabel’s art can be seen as a reaction against the cool compositions of Minimalism and Conceptualism, in its rough texture and violently expressive return to addressing the human condition in painting. In 1996, he began a career as a filmmaker with Basquiat and his movie The Diving Bell and the Butterfly based on the novel by Jean-Dominique Bauby had a great success. Since 2010, a selection of his Polaroids taken since 2002 has been held in London, Milan and Paris, which are repainted to underline the highlights of the pictures. He still lives and works in New York.

Courtesy: www.artnet.com
#artvilleartistoftheday #julianschnabel #spraypaint #resinonpolyester #art #artville

Pipilotti Rist

Artville artist of the day: Pipilotti Rist

Title: Herbstzeitlose (Saffron Flower or Fall Time Less)
Year: 2004
Size: Dimensions variable
Medium: Installations, Video/Film, video/audio installation, 4 projectors, 4 DVD players, 2 sound systems, part of a wooden house, branch from a maple tree, backlit panorama (photo print on Plexiglass), table and 3 chairs.

Pipilotti Rist (Swiss, b.1962) is an artist known for her colorful, fantastical, and sensual videos and installations. She studied commercial art, illustration and photography at the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst in Vienna from 1982 until 1986, developing an aesthetic reminiscent of MTV and advertising. One of her best-known videos, I’m Not a Girl Who Misses Much (1986), shows her singing and dancing hysterically to the Beatles song ‘Happiness is a Warm Gun.’ Rist integrates the loose narrative with the technical possibilities of video by speeding up, slowing down or distorting the image. In her Ever is Over All (1997), a woman smashes the windows of parked cars with a tropical flower, a playful gesture that also addresses the role of femininity in a media-saturated world. Her recent installation Pour Your Body Out (7354 Cubic Meters) (2008) engulfed the atrium of the Museum of Modern Art in New York with a 25-by-200 foot video of pink tulips and nudes. Unlike other Conceptual artists who take a more intellectual approach, Rist conveys the critical element of her work by creating an intensely sensual experience. She received the Joan Mirò Prize in 2009, and her work has been exhibited internationally in institutions such as the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and Museum of Modern Art in New York, as well as the biennials of São Paulo, Venice, Istanbul and Santa Fe. She completed her first feature film called Pepperminta in 2009. She currently lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland.

Courtesy: www.artnet.com
#artvilleartistoftheday #pipilottirist #installation #art #artville

Damien Hirst

Artville artist of the day: Damien Hirst

Title: Sensational
Year: 2008
Size: 6 x 6 in. (15.2 x 15.2 cm.)
Medium: Paintings, Butterfly with household gloss on canvas

Damien Hirst (British, b.1965) is one of the leaders of the Young British Artists—a group of contemporary British artists, including Fiona Rae, Liam Gillick, Sarah Lucas, Ian Davenport, and Michael Landy—the winner of the 1995 Turner Prize, and, as of 2009, the wealthiest artist in history. He rose to fame after the success of two warehouse shows he organized featuring his friends and his own work; at his second show, advertising executive Charles Saatchi purchased Hirst’s A Thousand Years, which features a glass case enclosing a rotting head of a cow swarmed with flies. Saatchi promoted Hirst and the Young British Artists for several years, until the relationship ended in 2003.

Hirst’s work has generated enormous controversy, in part, for its morbidity and fascination with medicine, which is evident in several of his series: the encased dead animals in various states of preservation, the incorporation of butterfly wings into stained glass-like images, cabinets filled with pharmaceuticals, and diamond-encrusted skulls. A team of assistants help Hirst carry out his projects; his spot paintings and spin paintings are almost entirely the work of others. In the 1990s, Hirst was also a public figure for drunken and drugged spectacles, but he has since stopped drinking and smoking. In 2012, his works were exhibited at the Tate Modern in London, and his spot paintings were part of a world exhibition The Complete Sport Paintings 1986–2011 held by the Gagosian Gallery in 11 of its galleries simultaneously, from January 12 to February 18, 2012.

#artvilleartistoftheday #damienhirst #butterfly #gloss #art #artville #contemporary
Courtesy: www.artnet.com

Leon Ferrari

Artville artist of the day: Leon Ferrari

Title: Erotic Figures in Japanese Art Shunga
Year: 1987
Size: 9.5 x 10.75 in. (24.1 x 27.3 cm.)
Medium: paper collage

Born in Buenos Aires, Ferrari employed methods such as collage, photocopying and sculpture in wood, plaster or ceramics. He often used text, particularly newspaper clippings or poetry, in his pieces. His art often dealt with the subject of power and religion; images or statues of the saints, the Virgin Mary or Jesus may be found in cages, sinks, meat blenders or frying pans. He has also dealt with issues of United States influence — in his best-known work, La civilización occidental y cristiana ("Western-Christian Civilization", 1965), Christ appears crucified on a fighter plane, as a symbolic protest against the Vietnam War.

Ferrari also wrote many articles for left-leaning newspaper Página 12. His work and his politics brought him much controversy and notoriety. He was forced into exile in São Paulo, Brazil from 1976 to 1991 following threats by the military dictatorship, which "disappeared" his son Ariel in 1977. In 2004, his exhibition in Recoleta, Buenos Aires, was forced to close following intervention by Pope Francis (then Archbishop of Buenos Aires) and a subsequent court order. Protests and government action allowed the exhibition to reopen.

Courtesy: www.artnet.com
#artvilleartistoftheday #leonferrari #papercollage #art #artville

Gerhard Richter

Artville artist of the day: Gerhard Richter

Title: Bagdad II
Year: 2014
Size: 20 x 16 in. (50.8 x 40.6 cm.)
Medium: Prints and Multiples, c-print mounted on aluminum

Gerhard Richter is a German painter who originally trained in a realist style and later developed an appreciation for the more progressive work of his American and European contemporaries. Richter increasingly employed his own painting as a means for exploring how images that appear to capture "truth" often prove, on extended viewing, far less objective, or unsure in meaning, than originally assumed. The other common themes in his work are the elements of chance, and the play between realism and abstraction. Working alongside but never fully embracing a quick succession of late twentieth century art movements, such as Abstract Expressionism, American/British Pop art, Minimalism, and Conceptualism, Richter has absorbed many of their ideas while remaining skeptical of all grand artistic and philosophical credos.
Richter has maintained a lifelong fascination for the power of images and painting's long, uneasy relationship with photography: while either medium may claim to reflect or express reality truthfully, either ultimately suggests only a partial, or incomplete view of a subject.
Richter borrows much of his painted imagery from newspapers, or even his own family albums. Often he begins by mechanically projecting such an image onto the canvas, a technique for thinking about how images often seem to have a life of their own, like mysterious ghosts haunting our psyche. This act of visual compression, in which photography, projection, and painting merge to make a finished art work, suggests that all vision is a kind of conversion of the "real" into the "imaginary."

Courtesy: www.artnet.com

#artvilleartistoftheday #gerhardricter #prints #printsonaluminium #art #artville

Georg Baselitz

Artville artist of the day: Georg Baselitz

Title: Yellow Song
Year: 2013
Size: 306.5 x 146.5 x 109 cm. (120.7 x 57.7 x 42.9 in.)
Medium: Sculptures, Bronze, 890 kg

Georg Baselitz is one of Germany’s most prolific and well-known living artists. Born in Saxony in 1938 – painter, draughtsman, printmaker and sculptor. Selecting subject matter (figures, animals, birds, landscapes and still-lifes) and placing them in dramatic settings, Baselitz’ works also place the viewer in a world of heightened self-consciousness to confront the being with the brutalities of history and the human tragedies.

He also partakes of a particular rebel sensibility and – like Camus Homme révolté - examines several countercultural figures and movements to cast anti-heroes as a strategy to liberate the subject matter, from the grotesque one, to the broken soldiers of the Fracture paintings and the inverted figures of the disturbing upside-down paintings.

Courtesy: www.artnet.com
#artvilleartistoftheday #georgbaselitz #sculpture #bronze #art #artville

Vasundhara Tewari

Artville Artist of the day: Vasundhara Tewari 

Untitled
Year: 2004
Size: 14 in x 20.5 in   |  35.56 cm x 52.07 cm
Medium: Mixed media on paper

Vasundhara Tewari is one among the young generation painters who have indulged into exploring the potential of figurative paintings. Here it is worth mentioning that her images surface out of the perception of a woman and the psycho-political existence of the female body.
Vasundhara first drew attention for her sensitive mixed media work in which an interpretation of the suppressed womanhood within the existing societal structure in contextualized by her female nude images. Her treatment and use of the female nude soon diffused she creates are abstraction and are often emblematic of the inner life or contemporary women. Her paintings are characterized by tensions arising out of the naturalistically modeled figures and the flat pictorial space which is enriched with small focuses of tonal recessions.

In the more recent works of Vasundhara, a sensibility towards the understanding of the internal and external psychological spaces of the artist alias the ‘woman’ is displayed lucidly. In these works the human figure does not occupy the space of the protagonist, but shares a equi-focal space with the background objects, where both are of equal significance. The identifiable artist psyche and experiences surrounding it stands as meaningful reality for Vasundhara. Her paintings are a celebration of a contemporary woman, unafraid to reveal her soul and at the same time, participate in the daily life-patterns unencumbered.

Courtesy: www.saffronart.com
#artvilleartistoftheday #vasundharatewari #mixedmedia #art #artville

Ernesto Neto

Artville artist of the day: Ernesto Neto

Title: Egg Bed Crystal Shell A

Year: 2014

Medium: Installations, Plywood, fabric, polyurethane foam, semiprecious stones and pulleys

Size: Bench: 16 x 78 x 92 inches; Dome: 90 x 102 x 145 inches; Overall: 166 x 102 x 152 inches

Ernesto Neto is known for his biomorphic sculptural environments. Originally inspired by the Brazilian Neo-Concrete movement of the 1950s and 1960s, Neto moved from hardedge iron sculptures to his signature pendulous nylon sacks filled with aromatic spices, lead, sand, and Styrofoam balls. Neto mixes the highbrow formalism of minimalism with the sociability and fun of relational aesthetics. Viewers are encouraged to poke, touch, and—in some cases—even walk through these plush organic forms. Neto has had solo shows at major art institutions around the world, including London's Institute for Contemporary Art, Site Santa Fe, Kunsthalle Basel, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. He represented Brazil in the 2001 Venice Biennale.

Courtesy: www.artnet.com

#artvilleartistoftheday #ernestoneto #art #artville #installation #plywood #fabric #polyurethanefoam #semipreciousstones #pulleys  

Atul Dodiya

Artville artist of the day: Atul Dodiya

Title: Cage
Year: 2003
Size: 68.5 x 43.5 in | 174.0 x 110.5 cm
Medium: Watercolor, charcoal and acrylic with marble dust on paper

Born in Mumbai in 1959, Atul Dodiya, one of the most sought after contemporary artists today, completed his Bachelor in Fine Arts from the Sir J. J. School of Arts in 1982. He says, "I was passionate about painting from childhood. I come from a liberal Kathiawadi family and was brought up on old Guru Dutt (Legendary Indian Film maker) movies and classical music of Kumar Gandharva (Classical Singer). Even though nobody in the family has an aesthetic background, they were very supportive. When I was 13, my father, a civil contractor, bought me a first class local train pass, so that I could go for art exhibitions. One of my elder sisters wanted me to be an architect. But I failed my Secondary School Certificate exams twice because I was weak in math. Finally, they allowed me to join the Sir J.J. School of Art."

Atul met his wife Anju --- also an artist --- at the Sir J. J. School of Art where he used to teach after completing his graduation. She was his student. "We are critical of each other`s work. It`s a great thing because it means a lot to have an opinion you can completely trust, coming from someone who understands you completely and knows what you are trying to say",

Both work out of what used to be Atul`s father`s home in Ghatkopar, in Central Mumbai. "While I work, neighbors keep coming in to look at my paintings and comment on them. These people, with their various priorities and concerns, do not come to the painting with any prejudice. They may say the work look like their bed cover. I do not consider their response useless. It can be hilarious and also very enlightening," he says.

Courtesy: www.saffronart.com
#artvilleartistoftheday #AtulDodiya #watercolor #charcoal #acrylic #marbledust #mixedmedia #art #artville