India’s first art museum Devi employs student curators for its second show – review Livemint

Shilpa Gupta Blame

 

INDIAN ART MUSEUM SHOW

Where in The World to 3 May 2009 Devi Art Foundation

Renowned Indian art collector Anupam Poddar opened India’s first art museum, the Devi Art Foundation in 2008. ‘Where in the World’ is its second exhibition and contains works from the Lekha and Anupam Poddar collection of contemporary Indian art. According to Devi’s website

This collection will be the future’s memory of this phase in Indian art. In the absence of other such collections, it may be our only memory of these years.

”Where in the World’ was curated by the students from the first class on art curating at Jawaharlal Nehru University and the result is  ‘adolescent’ says Livemint which at the same time lauds collector Anupam Poddar’s ‘noble’ efforts to promote art education.

while the curating of the show may be weak, it speaks volumes for the foundation that it chose to work with students rather than experienced curators for its second show. It shows that the foundation’s mission is to encourage education just as much as it is to display and promote art.

Happily the  ‘shaky’ execution of the display in which artworks overlap and descriptions are taped to the wall, is more than compensated for by the quality of the works

the artwork is without question some of the best contemporary art in the country.

Poddars before Jaguar in love

In particular Livemint likes

Atul Dodiya’s mixed media painting B for Bapu, which traps Gandhi behind a rolling grill shutter and Sudarshan Shetty’s giant T-Rex fornicating with a Jaguar (the car) in Love (both of which) have rarely been displayed in the public sphere before.

And overall the show can be enjoyed for its

  sense of playfulness: Rooms hum with the clattering of typewriters and odd machines blow bubbles. Viewers must walk into Shilpa Gupta’s strange apothecary shop, Blame, where the word “Blame” pulsates off flourescent-lit glass bottles.

Newer work, such as the installation Untitled by Susanta Mandal that plays with bubbles; and the video installation piece Pan(i) City by Gigi Scaria, are also given space alongside more monumental pieces from the recent past.

In sum

While there are still some kinks to work out, the exhibit proves Poddar’s genius. The foundation is a force to be reckoned with: It is not about consumerism or the marketability of Indian art, but the simple pursuit of celebrating contemporary art in India.

Livemint

The exhibition includes works by A Balasubramaniam, Atul Bhalla, C. Nannaiah, Sheba Chhachhi, Krishnaraj Chonat, Nikhil Chopra, Atul Dodiya, Anita Dube, Nicola Durvasula, Sheela Gowda, Probir Gupta, Shilpa Gupta, Subodh Gupta, Sonia Jabbar, Bharti Kher, Sonia Khurana, Susanta Mandal, N. Pushpamala, Jeetander Ojha, Jagannath Panda, Srinivasa Prasad, Ashim Purkayastha, Gigi Scaria, Mithu Sen, Tejal Shah, Sudarshan Shetty, T.V.Santhosh, and Navin Thomas.

Related:

• New non-profit museum Devi ground-breaking first for India September 2008
• Contemporary Indian art group show at Mori in Japan November 2008
• show Indian contemporary art Highway at Serpentine December 2008
• Indian contemporary art reaches a new stage of development December 2008

More about Indian artists, reports from India, events on now and events coming, survey shows, collectors, 

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Indian contemporary art reaches a new stage of development

TV Santosh

INDIAN ART SHOW

Signs Taken For Wonders: Recent Art from India and Pakistan to January 31 2009

Indian contemporary art is reaching a new audience with large-scale museum surveys such as ‘Indian Highway’ at London’s Serpentine Gallery and ‘Chalo! India: A New Era of Indian Art’ at Japan’s Mori Art Museum. As the Aicon Gallery Signs Taken For Wonders show press release points out, this is a ‘pivotal moment’  when international curators, writers and galleries articulate how, which and whether Indian artists will become part of international art history.

Compared with art scenes in other locations, this new exposure to rigorous and objective criticism is all the more significant for contemporary Indian art which lacks its own museum and curatorial infrastructure. And unlike other emerging Asian markets such as China, there is a limited history of patronage, collecting and connoisseurship. This fascinating cusp for Indian art marks an unusual opportunity for collectors, critics and connoisseurs around the world to assess and shape a response.

Justin Ponmany Salt Friends

 

The Financial Times says that the two London exhibitions, the Serpentine Gallery’s Indian Highway and Aicon’s Signs Taken for Wonders, are the UK’s most ambitious attempts yet to distil coherence into the chaotic rush of art emerging from the Indian subcontinent.

While some of the artists are in both this show and at the Serpentine (MF Husain, Raqs Media Collective) it is worth visiting both shows which together cover many of the emerging names. At Aicon you will see some of the auction favourites  (TV Santosh and Justin Ponmany) as well as up and coming Pakistani art which is absent at the Serpentine . (Aicon Gallery for more images). Visit the Serpentine to see female artists  and video work. These were both given a smidge of approval in a generally bleak review by The Independent.

I thought Nalini Malani had something, painting flights of female figures on clear acrylic panes, where swirling smears of pigment get transformed into snaking bodies – The Independent) and  Kiran Subbaiah’s brief video, Flight Rehearsals, about an introverted young man climbing the walls of his bedroom, was tight and funny.

More positive reviews are linked below.

Artists included in the Aicon show include MF Husain, Adeela Suleman, Amjad Ali Talpur, Atul Bhalla, Bose Krishnamachari, Chintan Upadyay, GR Iranna, Justin Ponmany, Muhammed Zeeshan, Raqs Media Collective, Riyas Komu, Sajal Sarkar, Shibu Natesan, Talha Rathore, TV Santosh and Vivek Vilasini.

Related:

• More reviews: Financial Times on Serpentine and Aicon, Bloomberg, Independent, Standard
• More on Chalo India at Mori Japan, Indian artists, reports from London, events on now, museum surveys
• Devi Museum of Indian art ground-breaking first September 2008 post

What do you think about Indian contemporary art? Take part in the discourse, leave your comments below.

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New nonprofit museum of Indian art groundbreaking first for India – Christies, New York Times

Anupam Poddar and his mother Lekha

MUSEUM INDIAN ART NEW MEDIA EXHIBITION to 30 September 2008

Spread over two floors and 7,500 square feet in an office tower in the Gurgaon suburb of New Delhi , the Devi Art Foundation, as it is called opened in August 2008 with an inaugural show of photography and video called “Still Moving Image.” It features the work of 25 artists, a fraction of the roughly 2,000 contemporary pieces that make up the collection of 34 year old hotel magnate and leading art collector Anupam Poddar, along with an estimated 5,000 folk and tribal pieces, which are his mother’s passion.Devi is India’s first noncommercial, nonprofit exhibition space for contemporary art from India and the subcontinent. Yamini Mehta, director of modern and contemporary Indian art at Christie’s auction house in London, described it as “a truly groundbreaking first for India.”

The New York Times says “the birth of the Devi Art Foundation signals a sort of turning point in the Indian art scene, in that it opens up a private family trove to the public and is devoted entirely to contemporary art.””The Poddars are known in the art world here for their daring eye, for seeking out artists before they start fetching high prices or become recognizable names at fashionable Delhi dinner parties. Mr. Poddar scouts art college graduations for new talent, though it must be said that many of the artists he sought out years ago, like Subodh Gupta and Sudarshan Shetty, are now among the most recognizable names at those fashionable parties.”

The post-Indian-independence generation of artists known as the Progressives collected by his mother did not resonate with the son. He gravitated toward artists of his own generation. “Their vision of India was similar to mine,” he said. “It was being part of this – I hate this word – global world. It wasn’t just India. It wasn’t so isolated. They were working with sculpture, installation, with new media.”His first acquisition, in 1999, was a life-size pink fiberglass cow by Mr. Gupta. “It was quintessentially Indian but modern in its essence,” he said. “That’s what spoke to me.”

The inaugural exhibition of contemporary photography and video brings together the works of Aastha Chauhan, Baptist Coelho, Atul Bhalla, Avinash Veeraghavan, Bharti Kher, Kiran Subbaiah, Mithu Sen, Nalini Malani, Navin Thomas, Pushpamala N., Ram Rahman, Rameshwar Broota, Ranbir Kaleka, Ravi Agarwal, Sheba Chhachhi, Shilpa Gupta, Sonia Khurana, Sudarshan Shetty, Surekha, Susanta Mandal, Tejal Shah, Tushar Joag, Valay Shende, Varsha Nair and Vivan Sundaram.

 Related:

• Latest Indian contemporary art news
• Review of Still Moving Image by Asia Art Archive
• Devi Foundation website
• Recent posts on collectors of Asian art, important museum surveys, events on now, events coming

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