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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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