Rekha Rodwittiya

Artville Artist Of The Day 
Rekha Rodwittiya
Matters of the Heart
2014
Digital inkjet print with autobiographic photo images and hand painted watercolor on paper
30 x 22 in

Matters of the Heart

Rekha Rodwittiya's work describes complex issues of life and living, of alienation and belonging, of discrimination and acceptance, of accord and discord. It is of paramount importance to this sensitive artist to react pragmatically to socio-political attitudes that surround her. Her work reflects her sensitivity towards socio-political attitudes along with the reflections from her past.

She does not treat art, and life in isolation and deems it necessary to experience life to paint. Her fervent activity of painting is a struggle for her own rightful existence. The artist explains to say, "I go through all the terror and agony of stepping into an 'unknown'." Her images are a byproduct of her thoughts and emotions, her readings, observations, beliefs, values and vast compilation of past experiences.

The artist draws on a heritage of elemental imagery, tempered by psychological insights, portraying women through the prism of personal experience and day-to-day realities. As she has noted: "Caught within the intricacies of adult angst where the undercurrent of pain was recognized though not fully understood by me, the drawn or constructed image became very early a means of deciphering all that I accumulated from observing....My sense of empathy with the drawn image was that it offered a physicality, and established a concretizing of the otherwise intangible. It became a method, as I perceive it in retrospect, of creating a dialogue that gave meaning to a psychological realm."

Born in Bangalore in 1958, Rekha Rodwittiya completed her graduation from The Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda in 1981. She then received the Inlaks scholarship for her M.A. in Painting from Royal College of Art, London in 1984. In 1988-89 she was invited as guest artist to the Konsthogskolan, Stockholm and was also invited to deliver series of lectures on Indian Art at the Ecole des Beaux Arts Grenoble and Castello de Rivoli, Torino in 1991. She did a short stint at the Fullam Institute on Film and Video, and was conferred the Staff Fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation Asian Cultural Council to work in the U.S. in 1990.

Rodwittiya has always been concerned with the representation of the female figure in her quest to find the vocabulary to represent women without objectifying them, without allowing the viewer to play the role of voyeur. Rodwittiya represents large clothed Gauginesque women as the archetypal figure in their daily work rituals, dwarfing their tools and objects that surround them, in a celebration of the female protagonist.

Rekha Rodwittiya has represented India in several prestigious art shows internationally apart from a series of workshops and lectures on Indian art. She has held solo exhibitions at Cymroza Art Gallery, Mumbai, Art Heritage, New Delhi, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, Bangalore, and Chennai, Seagull Foundation for Arts, Kolkata, the Gallery 678, New York. She has also participated in the 2nd Biennale, Havana and in "Six Young Contemporaries" in Geneva.

Among her other select exhibitions are 'Contemporary Indian Art from the Herwitz Collection', Grey Art Gallery, New York (1985), VI International Triennale, New Delhi (1986), 'Dialogues of Peace', 50th Anniversary of U.N. Worked on site on a painted room 'Songs from the Blood of the Weary' (1995), 'Evocations', solo exhibition at Ludovica Barberri Gallery, Venice (1998), and a Project in Brazil with Labrotoria, curated by Phillipe Mullion (1998). She was one of the participating artists at a major exhibition of Indian contemporary art in Oslo's Henie-Onstad Art Centre as part of the celebrations of 50 years of Indo-Norwegian bilateral relations.

Her works titled -Bye Bye Baby- exhibited at the Sakshi Art Gallery in March 2003 refer to "loss of innocence'. This particular series is a reflection of the lost innocence and sensitivity that has led to the growing schism in the society. The body of work of about 15 paintings portrays the breaking down of the idealism in the political environment. In a tongue and cheek sort of way, or at the obvious levels, the series reflects the anarchical situation around us.

The paintings, in bright and bold colors, continue to have Rodwittiya's language in the form of feminine figures and decorative but, symbolic tapestry. Giving an insight into her usage of bright and bold colors, she states that the colors bring about an optical association that further forges you into an association with my work." Her basic philosophy is to visualize beauty even in the most trivial of things, and the same holds true for art; she believes you need to cultivate that fundamental appreciation within you.
courtesy:saffronart

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Gulammohammed Sheik

Artville Artist Of The Day 
Gulammohammed Sheikh
Speechless City
Oil on canvas , 
42 x 42 in.
1975

"You would never paint a religious picture in the secular and liberal atmosphere of an art school. You would never paint anything that you believed in. Someone should really work on how many themes artists deal with. They will find there are very few fit subjects for art."

Painter, art historian, and writer Gulam Mohammed Sheikh taught art history and painting for nearly three decades at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda. He has edited a book on 'Contemporary Art in Baroda' that traces the evolution of Baroda as an important center of contemporary art and art education from the nineteenth century up to the last decade of the twentieth century.

The literary sensibility of Gulam Mohammed Sheikh is as fine as his artistic sensibility, for he is also a distinguished Gujarati poet. Says he, " There is a very meaningful relationship between writing and painting. Our painting tradition has been suffused with it. But now we have developed a purist's mode where we have separated the two. This is like saying that when you see you should shut your ears, while you hear you should shut your eyes. You don't. You can't. Those who have studied perception will realize the correlation between the senses."

Sheikh paints on formats ranging from hand-held paper to architectural scale, to bring the world he knows, sees and seeks, into his life; to illumine it in its complexities and contradictions, reinventing art history while painting.

"Occasionally, I place an image upon another image to depict a journey of the spirit on the landscape of the face. There is mysticism and, at the same time, the device of reversal is used in an almost surrealist mode, quizzical and explosive," he says. The idea of a dialogue has been a very central one in his work and this idea imparts a dynamic quality to his works.

The impressions, especially of the early years of life, the tales he heard and the myths he grew up with, found expression as images in poetry first, and later, in painting.

But where his paintings are concerned, Kabir (the legendary poet / saint) has always been his source of inspiration, right from his schooldays. As the artist himself says, "Kabir has been a seminal figure from the period in which he lived up to the present day. People live with his thoughts and words ... he was not a preacher and spoke against sects. If people have made a sect out of Kabir, it is not of his making."

Over the years the theme of Kabir kept returning to him and Gulam Mohammed Sheikh created a relationship between his own images and Kabir's words. He has worked on the 'Alphabet Series' based on his relationship with Kabir.

Years ago Sheikh's paintings used to have a labyrinth like spaces. Now all his characters are not so much connected in a dreamscape as inscribed in or mapped on a body. Now he paints to stir people out of their cocoons and his obsession with Kabir remains because he thinks that we on earth need an icon, especially now that violence is so much a part of our daily lives.

It has often been said of him that he has been influenced by other artists' works. He responds to this and explains his repeated reference to Kabir saying, "If you respond to something, if you have liked it or loved it, it's because the space for that is already existent within you, which is waiting to be filled. But when I invoke an artist's painting, it is a different painting that recurs to me. It has to be inscribed by me, in my memory and my subjectivity. And that's what inspires me to create something new."

Born in 1937 in Surendranagar, Saurashtra in Gujarat, this Padma Shree recipient took his Master's degree in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts at the MS University in Baroda. Subsequently, he taught art history at the same university and between 1982-1993, he was a professor of painting.

In 1987, he was a visiting artist at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, US, and in 2000, writer/artist-in-residence at the South Asia Regional Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.
courtesy:saffronart
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Vivan Sundaram

Artville Artist Of The Day 
Vivan Sundaram
Barricade (with mattress)
2008
Digital print on paper
38.5 x 66.5 in

Vivan Sundaram, painter, sculptor, installator is a key figure in a group of contemporary artists, who have, over the last decade, moved away from the enterprise of easel painting.

Opposed to the comfort of looking at art from a drawing-room perspective or with disengagement, Sundaram, is more committed to realising multidimensional projects which invite audience participation as in open-stage theatre where, the distance between spectator and performer is minimal. You can sit inside a room, or on a car-seat or bed or within a sheltered space, for instance, in a hut with live video and music to experience and evoke multiple meanings.

Sundarama’s work is conceived as a cultural product or debate rather than fine art to hang on the wall. It crucially relates to social and political history, the environment and to historiography itself. The viewer can take part in looking and thinking about event and issue and story in response to painted, crafted constructions and enclosures which are placed as excavated phenomena on the stage or, what can be a museum-like gallery space. Alternatively, the exhibition arena resembles an abandoned machine workshop or the karkhana (factory,in Urdu) of a toy-maker.

Sundarama’s monumental artworks or relic-like objects acquire different meanings on different sites. An industrial landscape, is polemically represented as a totem-like structure, made with charcoal on paper and a tray of gleaming engine oil; the body of a man, killed in a communal riot, photographed by a reporter is an appropriated image, used by Sundaram as a "Fallen Man" emblem for many exhibitions; the memorial cum gateway,(a recurrent theme) made with tin trunks, the dwellings, cast as the House/Boat compositions or the dilapidated trawler-boat and its fragments are the image-structures which recur as the grammer of the environmental condition he models and re-models. The sculptures are erected and dismantled for shows in different cities.Their architectural instability, their incompleteness, along with the recently, added animistic exhibits of a bed with soft toys and the shell of an old fiat car with velvet seat and neon lights, point to a willful narration about strife, about the seduction and control of mechanical-electronic paraphernalia and about wishing and dreaming.

Unsettling the gaze of the viewer is towards a purpose. It is to solicit an intellection to invite participation in the construction of history, and to jostle personal memories his and ours-so that the installation area becomes a speaking space.

Sundaram had put up a mammoth installation at the Durbar Hall, Victoria Memorial, (A British-built building in Calcutta, which houses one of the largest libraries in Asia) in 1999. This site specific, turn-of-the-millenium endeavour was an alternative look at history, seen through artifacts of the colonial period and after, put together as cinematic montage and illumined as fragments of a mis-en-scene. (A theatrical- cinematic term, literally, Â’to put into a scenea’)

In his latest venture, shelter the structure of the cube, the boat, the carcass-shell of the car, turned into a sofa or turned into an advertisement-object with blinking lights, an odoriferous bunk bed reeking with childhood memories, are things and forms which become a collection to be re-used and hauled from one exhibition into another.

The shows demonstrate the aspiration to the condition of architecture, theatre, and the cinema where, remembrance is the key motif and the solid objects are like images in a pop up picture book.In the manner of an itinerant bard, Sundaram rephrases, transforms, renews his artworks as he exposes the deeds and words he has witnessed, heard or conjured himself. In the role of narrator, or a cine-theatrical director, he eliminates himself as author/individual artist. He collaborates with workmen as carpenters, masons, stone-cutters and photographers and video film makers so that the collective effort of many persons is dramatised as though he were unraveling hero-lauds.

The actors, in the scenario are expectedly, the visitors to his exhibition. Sundaram has made space for that : To view and walk through the gallery or location in a way so as to be able to re-construct time and saga, individually, and by means of his contrary, often ragged artwork-document.
courtesy:saffronart

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Sudhir Padwardhan

Artville Artist Of The Day
Sudhir Padwardhan

The large-scale painting ‘Mumbai Proverbs’ marks a culmination of Sudhir Patwardhan’s forty-year engagement with Mumbai. Patwardhan’s relationship with Mumbai has changed through these four decades, as the metropolis itself has undergone drastic transformation. In the past, writes the artist, “I have mainly employed three strategies to paint the city: the street-level view of a participant; the panoramic view of a observer; and, lately, the guarded view of a city fragment, viewed while looking out of a window. When I began sketching and thinking about the current project, I realised I wanted to bring into play all these earlier strategies. Given the scale, the panorama would predominate, but it would be inter-spread with breaks and close-ups. Interiors of homes, factories, offices would merge with the streets and aerial views. Inside and outside, near and far, private and public, would be brought together. Mumbai is transforming daily, giving us glimpses of the future; and Mumbai has a past that, too, is everywhere.” Patwardhan chose a seven-panel structure, reminiscent of a Japanese screen: “Binodbehari Mukherjee’s Hindi Bhavan mural at Santiniketan was a point of reference, as were Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry Mural and Leger’s ‘City’.” Read from left to right, the panels narrate the city from its colonial beginnings to the Information Technology age. The other narrative linking the fragments is the flaneur’s roaming, which discovers what makes this one city, indeed, one’s city. Patwardhan will be in conversation with poet and cultural theorist Ranjit Hoskote, who has written extensively on his work.
courtesy:mohileparikhcenter

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Iranna G R

Artville Artist Of The Day
G R Iranna
Detail of “En Light,”
2012
Acrylic on tarpaulin
Aicon Gallery of New York

G R Iranna is an artist whose work transcends the boundaries of time and space. Born in 1970, its been barely ten years since he started painting professionally, and already his work is mature and profound.

Many of Iranna`s paintings depict pain as an abstract force that is translated visually in bruised textures and razor sharp cutting edges. His painting has always been far removed from an overriding, postmodern logic. Instead, Iranna uses the idealistic, representative and modernist language of Indian contemporary art. His most recent works are all visions of resistance. In just a glance, one can tell a sense of massive dynamic energy that pervades the surfaces. An energy that is fueled by torment and the struggle against it. Upon further inspection, one sees that these conflicts being played out on the surface are present also in those between one colour and another, between figure and hue, and between the crudeness and the expertise employed.

These works, set on canvas as well as tarpaulin, are symbolic of an important change in Iranna`s work. Maybe symbolic even of an attempt to break free from an establishment, or a style that is beginning to become claustrophobic. The large, fundamental figure that used to appear in Iranna`s early paintings emerges only twice in this later series, and though the artist continues to employ repeated motifs in his work, they seem now to be less figurative, leaning more towards form.

These pieces seem to have an almost romantic undertone: the result of Iranna`s attempt to break away from his own mould and reform his work. They cater to contemporary expectations, and reflect his need to pander many contradictory demands. Those of society as well as those of the artist himself.
courtesy:saffronart
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Prajaktha Palav Aher

Artville Artist Of The Day
Prajakta Palav Aher
Fast and synthetic (a curtain)
Tapestry on machine using synthetic threads
82 x 314 in
Prajakta Palav Aher paints every detail from a multitude of photographic references that she has archived over the years. The candid medium of photography allows her to unpretentiously penetrate the many aspects of middle class life in India, and capture its varied truths.

Her works in acrylic on canvas depict images from her own background and reflect the insecurities and complexities of middle class life. With great skill and photographic perfection Aher paints pictures of fake plastic flowers adorning doors and staircases; newspaper stacks lying behind wooden cabinets; suitcases and bags perched on top of the cupboard; torn papers and documents covered in plastic sheets filling old wall units; and the iconic image of Lord Ganesha, the remover of obstacles, traveling the routes of an everyday commuter.

Although the artist’s portrayals are realistic, they do not come across as documentaries but instead, allow the viewer to realize the disposition of the situations, and find humour in them.
courtesy:saffronart

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Madhu Venugopalan

Artville Artist Of The Day
Madhu Venugopalan
(Reassurance)

History tells us how the erasure or neglecting of a linguistic system and the resultant displacement of people to the fringes is a mutual process. When the state that is expected to protect its citizens and their life styles, pushes the citizens to the fringes and the wastelands of the mainstream society, in the name of progress and development, the patterns of life that these people have developed over the periods of ‘civilization’ too get displaced and abandoned. There is a great amount of injustice in this act of the State. Madhu, in his work titled ‘Reassurance’ makes an ironic, witty but poignant statement on behalf of these displaced peopled. In the background we see the simulated image of the Supreme Court of India and in the upper foreground we see a garland of crackers horizontally hung as if it were about to be lit up to celebrate the ‘justice’ handed out to the people.
courtesy:johnyml.blogspot.in

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Jitish Kallat

Artville Artist Of The Day
Jitish Kallat
Humiliation Tax - I
2004 - 05
Mixed media on canvas
69 x 47 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. 
courtesy:saffronart 
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Manjunath Kamath

Artville Artist Of The Day
Manjunath Kamath's digital print Pink Elephant in Bathtub

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:saffronart
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N S Harsha

Artville Artist Of The Day
N S Harsha
Peripheral nirvana
2012
Acrylic on canvas
114 x 66 in

N.S. Harsha’s work demonstrates his unique artistic practice based on the manipulation of traditional Indian miniature painting, known for its intricate illuminations and delicate brushwork, into bold, even absurd images that reflect his narrative bent and strong political views. The astuteness of Harsha’s work lies as much in the scale of his depictions as it does in the meticulous detail of his painting.

Recognized as an artist with many skills, Harsha’s body of work straddles a variety of genres and mediums. His oeuvre includes large, detailed figurative paintings, miniature drawings, site-specific installations, community-based art as well as research projects. In his monumental, tapestry-like canvases, Harsha weaves detailed stories, skillfully depicting the daily goings-on of his own community alongside significant global events. Almost always figurative, these large-format works are populated with people who seem to be focused on an ordinary event, an activity the viewer would not typically consider uncommon. However, within these customary settings, the artist might discreetly point out something that is unusual, something comically strange.
courtesy:saffronart

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Azis TM

Artville Artist Of The Day
Azis TM
Oil On Canvas
34x60 in
2006

"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.
courtesy:saffronart
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Gigi Scaria

Artville Artist Of The Day
Gigi Scaria
Title: Stuck
Medium: Acrylic On Canvas
Size: 46' X 48" 
Year: 2014
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.
courtesy:saffronart
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Murali Cheeroth

Artville Artist O fThe Day
Untitled
Murali Cheeroth
Inches : 60 x 60
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:artalive

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Shibu Natesan

Artville Artist Of The Day
Shibu Natesan
The Dancer (After Verner Bischof)
2000
Oil on canvas
47 x 59.5 in

Shibu Natesan belongs to a generation of artists from Kerala who studied at the College of Fine Arts in Trivandrum during the early eighties, a time of continuing change and rebellion against a bureaucratic and stultified art establishment. The films of John Abraham and G. Aravindan were one aspect of the cultural climate of the time, and formative, along with translations of Latin American and African literature, of the minds and attitudes of young artists. His first significant body of work, a series of paintings entitled "The Futility of Device" derives from a feudal history excavated in painstaking detail, the relics displayed in the grim chambers of memory, symbols of aggression which repeat themselves with oppressive regularity. The atmospheric quality of these works, some of them based on photographs of archaeological remains such as the caves at Ajanta, is heightened by the use of metallic paint on canvas.

Shibu spent two years, between 1996 - '97 at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam, and his recent "Missing" series of paintings is representative of the change that occurred duing the time. The use of photography here is even more literal, though still adhering to a stubborn involvement with the processes of painting, their capacity to shift and re-focus the gaze to glean hitherto unperceived information.

There is a simulation which resembles the original to a startling degree, but which in fact prompts a set of readings which are contrary to what was intended, thus displacing the meaning without significantly altering it's appearance. Things are not what they seem to be; the actuality and sanity which these images once claimed is suddenly suspect.
courtesy:saffronart

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Minal Damani

Artville Artist Of The Day
Minal Damani
I Need a Boat in My House
Oil on canvas
72" x 96"
2008

Born in 1979, Minal Damani received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in painting from the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, in 2000 and 2002 respectively. Working in a wide range of media, from ink and watercolour to gouache and acrylic, Damani’s works are an exploration in colour and form.

Stemming from a deeply autobiographical narrative, her works are peppered with images of stars, flowers, flying birds and other objects that make personal references to her environment. Each painting has a new pattern for the story which reveals the inner life of the 'self' and the hopes, optimism, dreams, opportunities, fears, pulls and pressures it experiences. Gradually, the visuals in Damani’s work changed from fantasy-like narratives to highly patterned visuals, in which the arrangement of images is done in such a way that they form an 'even -pattern' and thus give an abstract feel to the painted surface.

Damani’s solo shows include 'Drawing Lines' at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, in 2008; and ‘Refilled’ at Gallery Beyond, Mumbai, in 2006. Her work has been also a part of several group shows, including 'Size Matters or Does it?' at Latitude 28, New Delhi, in 2010; ‘Evidentia' at Gallery Sumukha, Bangalore, in 2009; and 'Vicissitudes of the Constructed Image' at Tangerine Art Space, Bangalore, in 2009.

Damani was honoured with the ‘J.J. Teachers Award', by her alma mater in 2002, and also received the Human Resource Department’s Young Artist Scholarship from the Government of India, New Delhi, for 2001-03.
courtesy:saffronart

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T.V Santhosh

Artville Artist Of The Day
T.V. Santhosh
UNTITLED
2005
Oil on canvas
54 x 70 in.

Through a silky, infra-red lens Santhosh creates emotional portraits in which the subject is, interestingly, part of the middle ground of the composition. Smoldering in reds and orange, the texture and color of their flesh evokes metal that glows orange as it’s heated. Tending towards imagery sourced from media coverage of terrorism and war, Santhosh provides us with provocative and challenging pieces. The inverse, monochromatic quality of the shadows and highlights allude to film negatives, suggesting an element of supervision and subjection by the media. Santosh is also an accomplished sculptor, using white fiber glass and scrolling neon messages to evoke the “banality of evil”—term coined by Hannah Arendt.

Images presented through high contrast pearly filters are characteristic of Santosh’s work. In a series of paintings from the late 2000s, red-orange and light bulb yellow is puddled with waxy, minty green impressions; the air is ablaze and the message is feverish. In the foreground “X”s and crosses and distant suns float in space as if between the subject of the piece and us the viewer, an apparition witnessed by both.
courtesy:aicongallery

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Paresh Maity

Artville Artist Of The Day
Paresh Maity
Title: Lamp in the Silent Dusk
Medium: Watercolour on Paper
Size: 40x60inches
Size:2011

"Water-colours are my heart & soul" says Paresh Maity who over a period of the last 20 years has achieved proficiency in the medium a few can claim. Paresh Maity , on whatever surface he may choose, be it paper, canvas or any other medium, creates magic. The colours are vibrant, and echo the passion of the artist.

The sand dunes of Rajasthan, the backwaters of Kerala, the canals of Venice, to the lake of Geneva, Paresh's paints have captured it all. In fact Paresh says that it was his stay in Rajasthan that made his works explode with colour, and there has been no looking back since.

Paresh has also briefly experimented with abstracts, which was more of freeing the limitations of a landscape. One would still see an odd ship or a tree though not in a representative manner. Even when he did go back to painting figures the contextual setting was more often neglected. The focus was on the figure, specifically the faces, with their myriad expressions, closely cropped and juxtaposed with their surrondings. The colours are vibrant and dazzle the viewer. The stylized, simplified figures have a story of their own, transporting one to an exotic land.

Virtuosity of medium is not the message the spirit behind the man and his talent are. It has taken a long time for Paresh Maity to reach where he is, "the execution of the work itself may take little time, but to get there it has taken me 20 years"
Courtesy:saffronart
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Reena Saini Kallat

Artville Artist Of The Day
Reena Saini Kallat
Title: White Yarn (Silt of reason)
Year: 2008
Medium: bonded marble
Size: 36 x 54 x 24.5 in. I 91 x 137 x 62 cm
edition of 3+AP

Reena Saini Kallat (b. 1973, Delhi, India) graduated from Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai in 1996 with a B.F.A. in painting. Her practice – spanning painting, photography, video, sculpture and installation, often incorporates multiple mediums into a single work. She is interested in the role that memory plays, in not only what we choose to remember but how we think of the past. Kallat frequently works with officially recorded or registered names of people, objects, and monuments that are lost or have disappeared without a trace, only to get listed as anonymous and forgotten statistics. One of the recurrent motifs in her work has been the rubber stamp, both as an object and imprint, signifying the bureaucratic apparatus, capable at once of confirming as well as obscuring identities. Her more recent series using salt as a medium explores the tenuous yet intrinsic relationship between the body and the oceans, highlighting the fragility and unpredictability of existence.
courtesy:reenakallat

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