New media art showcased in first Indian festival of its kind

INDIA FESTIVALS NEW MEDIA ART

Artists, critics, historians and art lovers gathered at the First National Art Week of New Media in late September this year at the Government Museum and Art Gallery in Chandigarh, India, through the collaboration between the National Lalit Kala Akademi and Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi. The six-day panorama is a showcase of contemporary artists exploring new mediums and possibilities when it comes to visual art. According to the Akademi’s chairperson Diwan Manna, “Art lovers will be amazed at the myriad possibilities in art.”

The first four days featured lectures and slide shows by some of India’s best known contemporary artists. For the first day Bharti Kher whose work encompasses sculpture, paintings and installations, delivered her talk. Her featured works tackled the topic of “traditional vis-à-vis modern” while at the same time explored the issues of feminism, class, identity and race.

Bharti Kher, 'Solarium Series I', 2007-2010, fiber glass and metal. Image taken from artnet.com.

Day two presented Sudarshan Shetty and his innovative and uncanny installations that re-establish his reputation as an acclaimed conceptual artist.

Sudarshan Shetty, 'Untitled' (from the Stab-series), 2009, wood and scissors. Image taken from artnet.com.

The third day was for Raqs Media Collective, a group of three media practitioners – Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula and Shuddhabrata Sengupta. In addition to their degrees in Mass Communication, the trio has extensive experience when it comes to curating exhibitions and planning events, as well as working with various writers, architects and directors that have greatly contributed to the contemporary art of India.

Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra’s collaborative work in several diverse media such as painting, sculpture, video and fashion have also been well-received.

On the fifth day, Dr. Alka Pande, curator, professor and author on Indology and art history delivered her lecture. The sixth and final day featured a panel discussion with professors Dr. Alka Pande and Dr. Awadhesh Misra, journalist Rahul Bhattacharya, writer and art critic Dr. Rajesh Kumar Vyas, and artists Sheba Chhachhi and Vibha Galhotra.

Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra, 'Now in Your Neighbourhood', 2008, plastic bottles. Image taken from artinfo.com.

The event was an interactive and absorbing series inviting guests, students, critics and art lovers to explore more than the usual two or three-dimensional way of experiencing art. Talks from the artists themselves provided an insight into artistic creation and people from different areas of the industry provided another kind of perspective in viewing the works and Indian art in general.

The National Lalit Kala Akademi and its Chandigarh chapter, the Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akademi are institutions established for the promotion and preservation of the fine arts of India.

CMMS/EN/KN/HH

Related Topics: Indian artists, new media, Indian venues, festivals

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• India’s Experimenter focusses on the “now” with RAQS and Kolkata location – an interview with Prateek Raja – September 2010 – Art Radar speaks to Prateek Raja of Experimenter
• Saffronart once again pioneers new technology within art industry – July 2010 – using mobile technology, these specialists in Indian art secure ten lot wins
• India artist Raghava KK’s “magic carpet ride” at TED2010 – video – June 2010 – a synopsis of the video Raghava KK: Five lives of an artist
• Reji Arackal is new kid on contemporary Indian art block – May 2010 – guest poster and veteran art writer Deepanjana Pal reviews Reji Arackal’s “Sans Divine Machines”
  
• Indian contemporary artist Reena Kallat: Art Radar exclusive interview – April 2010 – an exclusive interview with India’s Reena Kallat
• Anish Kapoor given sculptural commission in London’s Olympic Park – April 2010 – more on Kapoor’s work to commemorate the London 2012 Olympics

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Curator Tobias Berger talks about Korean contemporary art scene in 4 questions

SOUTH KOREA CONTEMPORARY ART INTERVIEW CURATOR

Art Radar Asia recently spoke with German-born curator Tobias Berger, who currently holds the position of Chief Curator at the Nam June Paik Art Center, about the Center’s exhibition “The Penguin that goes to the Mountain“. During this interview, Berger also revealed a few of his observations on living and working in the Korean art environment.

Korean art has always been in the shadow of Japanese and Chinese artistic success, often “dismissed as a mere conduit between the two mega cultures.” This may be because few of the local magazines, exhibition catalogues and other art texts produced on Korean contemporary art are available in English. As Berger states, “There are none. They’re all in Korean. There’s nothing really good in English.” And while the local art scene is perhaps not on par with what can be experienced in these neighbouring countries, Berger notes that the art that is being produced in Korea is of a very high quality, due to good art schools, a diversity of art spaces, talented pioneers and governmental support.

'Shamoralta Shamoratha' (2007) by Inbai Kim was shown at "Korean Eye: Moon Generation" in 2009. Korean Eye was founded in 2009 as a way to support emerging Korean artists by providing international exhibition opportunities.

As a European who formerly lived and worked in the Hong Kong art scene, how do you find the South Korean art scene compares?

“The Seoul art scene is probably the most sophisticated art scene in Asia. It has really good independent spaces, good commercial galleries, interesting art schools and good museums. It has this whole pyramid of different art spaces, exhibition possibilities, and it has a lot of really good and wonderful artists. That level of depth and the level of different kinds of art spaces is incomparable. Certainly in Beijing [you] have galleries, but you don’t have any independent spaces, and in Tokyo it’s also very different.”

How do you keep up to date with the Korean art scene?

That is a problem because it’s all in Korean and it’s very difficult to keep up [with]. I mean, you just go to the 10-15 [art] spaces once a month … and you talk to your friends and your colleagues that go to the big exhibitions…. You just have to look at how it is. There was a [recent] survey show called “Bright Future” but it only had twelve artists.

Tell us about the art school system in Korea? How does it differ from other places?

It’s the most sophisticated [system] because it had some good pioneers [and] a lot of governmental help. [South Korea] has some good art schools and it has a lot of good artists that have studied overseas and come back. This allowed a lot of critical discourse and [there were] a lot of magazines. That allowed the art scene to grow well and in the right way.

Korean art is becoming popular with international collectors. “Korean Eye“, for example, was shown at The Saatchi Gallery in London earlier this year. Can you tell us why you think this is happening now?

“Here in South Korea you don’t feel that there’s much happening. The Korean scene is nothing compared to what’s happening in China…. On the one side, these shows, where this is popular or that is popular, don’t really mean a thing. There is a lot of good art in South Korea and the quality of the art is really on a high level, because art education has been good for 15-20 years. A lot of people are educated in Europe and America and have very good support and certainly output good quality art…. I mean, you don’t want to buy or you don’t want to show an artist because he’s Korean, you want to show an artist because he’s a good artist.”

JAS/KN/HH

Related topics: Korean artists, interviews, Tobias Berger, curators

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• Follow “The Penguin” to the mountain – Tobias Berger on the NJPAC Show – August, 2010 – in an earlier interview we speak with Berger about curating for NJPAC’s “The Penguin”
• Writer Steven Pettifor talks about the old and the new in Thai contemporary art – Art Radar Interview – August, 2010 – an interview with Steven Pettifor about the Thai contemporary art scene
• Busan Biennale pushes for new discoveries in contemporary Asian art  – artist list – August, 2010 – a short summary of the Busan Biennial, includes a list of participants
• Korean National Museum of Contemporary  Art Young Korean Artists retrospective spans 30 years – May, 2010 – an informative primer on this exhibition
• Collector Ciclitira, founder of Korean Eye, makes big plans for Korean art – June 2009 – a summary of a podcast from Arttactic about the Korean contemporary art
  

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New Taiwanese book focusses on personal connection with art

ART HISTORY BOOKS PUBLIC ART PERSONAL CONNECTION TAIWAN SCHOLARS

A Taiwanese scholar has published a book focussing on the stories behind the creation of fifteen of the island’s public art installations. As reported in The China Post and on the Focus Taiwan News Channel, this is the first in a planned series that Lin Chih-ming, also president of The Educational Development Association for Public Art, will write.

Akibo Lee's 'Bigpow', situated near the Zhongshan MRT station in Taipei City, is one of the installations profiled in Lin Chih-ming's new book. Image courtesy of akiboworks.blogspot.com.

To Lin, it is not important that many of the installations he has profiled have not been made by top-selling or popular artists. With this new approach to art-historical recording, Lin wanted to show, as The China Post and the Focus Taiwan News Channel report, “how for many artists or communities the artworks have an emotional attachment.”

“Through these stories, public artwork will no longer seem like cold statues but will actually convey emotion.” Lin Chih-ming

Editors’ Note

Story-telling, and the personalising and humanising of art is something we are seeing more and more of within the contemporary art community. We believe it is part of a larger social trend towards greater connection – initiated in the later part of the 20th century by the development of computers and the technology industry and now crossing into many commercial and social spheres. We believe that it will touch art more and more and as a result, academic art criticism is going to be challenged as new forms of appreciation of and connection with art are developed.

Do you, our readers, have any comments or observations about this “personal connection” trend in art?

KN/HH

Related Topics: Taiwanese artists, scholars, writers, public art

Related Posts:

• Israeli kinetic artist Yaacov Agam helps make “Taipei Beautiful” – July 2010 – outlines the history of and meaning behind the artwork
• Anish Kapoor given sculptural commission in London’s Olympic Park – April 2010 – a brief introduction to this high profile public installation
• What is street art? Top 5 street artists in the art world – Part II – March 2010 – part two of a popular two-part series on this controversial public art form
• What is street art? Vandalism, graffiti or public art – Part I – January 2010 – part one of a popular two-part series on this controversial public art form
• Top 6 research sources for contemporary Chinese art by Asian art history major – January 2010 – an excellent guide to the books, blogs, websites and newspapers used by scholars

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