“The Empire Strikes Back – Indian art Today” at Saatchi Gallery: critics’ review roundup

INDIAN CONTEMPORARY ART

“The Empire Strikes Back: Indian Art Today” opened on 28 January 2010 at Saatchi Gallery in Chelsea, London. It has received attention from critics interested in both the cultural implications of contemporary Indian art in British society and the exhibition’s impact on the art market.

Intensity and violence are found in some stand out works but the consensus suggests an uneven show.

According to the Business Standard, over 100 works of 26 Indian artists are being displayed. Price estimates are included for some works.

Also concerned with the art market, Colin Gleadell of The Daily Telegraph contemplates the impact of “The Empire Strikes Back” on the value of Saatchi’s investment in Indian contemporary art. He also summarises the fluctuations in the Indian contemporary art market.

Generally, critics’ reviews have been mixed: though they support the concept of showing contemporary Indian artists, many claim that there are only a few standouts.

The Financial Times‘s Peter Aspden is intrigued by “contrast between the work’s wholesome message and the gruesome imagery used to deliver it” in Jitish Kallat’s Public Notice 2, the first work in the show.

Jitish Kallat, Public Notice 2

He then interviews Rebecca Wilson, the associate director of Saatchi Gallery. She explains Saatchi Gallery’s reasons for organising the show, focusing on global trends regarding Indian and Pakistani contemporary art and the sheer volume of new artists from the region.

The Guardian’s Adrian Searle begins with “One might expect Charles Saatchi to show just the sorts of things that are presented,” listing works like Huma Mulji’s Arabian Delight and Atul Dodiya’s Fool’s House as expected works. He concludes “A lot of the work looks exoticised for the gallery, the artists playing their post-colonial otherness as a gimmick, rather than making art of substance.”

JJ Charlesworth of Time Out London also concedes that there are works of “bog-obviousness,” but especially praises Chitra Ganesh’s Tales of Amnesia, consisting of 21 comic-inspired prints that question the role of femininity in society.

Husband-and-wife Subdoh Gupta and Bharti Kher impress Ben Luke of London’s Evening Standard, though he mentions the “collection’s unevenness.”

Bharti Kher, An Absence of Assignable Cause

Luke is especially interested in Bharti Kher’s An Absence of Assignable Cause, which is her conception of a sperm whale’s heart covered in bindis.

The Times’ Joanna Pitman is fascinated by the artists who “push their media into almost illegible territories, as if to say that art could not possibly be adequate to record what really matters.”

Probir Gupta’s painting Anxiety of the Unfamiliar and Tallur L.N.’s Untitled both depict what she describes as “bleary fragments, the chance events, and barely registered perceptions of this imbalanced, disturbed country.”

However, Pitman also comments on the unevenness of the show: “Many works resemble the outpourings of pained and confused undergraduate minds.”

Mark Sheerin of Culture 24 is also struck by the intensity present throughout the works. He  claims that, “At best, such high impact work can astound and violently re-orient you” and cites Tushar Joag’s The Enlightening Army of the Empire’s “skeletal, spectral band of robotic figures” as a prime example.

Tushar Joag, The Enlightening Army of the Empire

He encourages the reader to “come and let the works do violence to you. They should be resisted, if at all.”

Related Posts:

• Indian artist Anish Kapoor’s solo at the Royal Academy– what did the critics call it? – January 2009
• A common man uncommonly direct – Indian contemporary sculptor Subdoh Gupta in conversation in Hong Kong – December 2009
• Which 5 Indian artists would you dare buy now? – May 2009
• Indian contemporary art survey Chalo at Mori in Japan to March 2009 – November 2008

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Indian contemporary art survey Chalo at Mori in Japan to March 2009

Bharti Kher The Skin Speaks a Language not its Own

 

 

INDIAN CONTEMPORARY ART SURVEY

Chalo! India: A New Era of Indian Art 22 November to 15 March 2009

From the press release:
“Chalo” is Hindi for “Let’s go.” With the words “Chalo! India” (Let’s go! India), we invite you to discover an explosion of creativity and vitality in Indian contemporary art. “Chalo! India” will take you on a journey through more than 100 works by 27 artists and artist groups from all over India. Encompassing a broad range of media, including painting, sculpture, photography and installation, this exhibition examines the latest movements in Indian contemporary art.

Movements and themes: modernisn, political criticism, urbanisation and globalisaton

Following independence from Britain in 1947, Indian artists began exploring new forms of artistic expressions-drawing inspiration and ideas from Western modernism, and India’s own distinctive culture. Over the next 60 years, new types of work that powerfully embodied political and social critiques emerged. More recently, Indian artists have been making works that respond to urbanization and changing contemporary lifestyles-art that reflects the rapid economic development, and globalization that has taken hold since the 1990s. Today the lively Indian art scene is spreading its wings both at home and abroad, and has been attracting a great deal of international attention.

“Chalo! India” is a significant survey of new Indian art, including a sociological research project involving architects and intellectuals, and state of the art interactive media work-as befits an IT giant such as India. Most people see India in terms of its rich and influential history, its Gods and devotion, Bollywood movies, or its awakening as an economic giant. However, there is so much more to the complex and dynamic India of today. “Chalo! India” explores and celebrates the depth of this country; the contradictions of its society, the dreams and hopes of its people, and its energy and passion toward the future.

See tags for participating artists, click here for Exhibition website, more on Indian art, surveys of Asian art

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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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Art fair Shanghai breaks new ground with Best of Discovery emerging artists – Financial Times, Artkrush

 

Tushar Joag 

ART FAIR CHINA EMERGING ARTISTS

“Best of Discovery” is a unique curated section of Shanghai’s premier art fair ShContemporary 08 featuring over 30 selected emerging artists from the Asia Pacific region who are presented to a global audience for the first time. 

In a “ground-breaking move”  ShContemporary founder Rudolf has commissioned a team of  independent curators with knowledge of their given regions to make an informed selection of work by promising younger artists largely unknown on the international stage says the Financial Times.  They have scoured not only China but Australasia, Central Asia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, the Middle East, Taiwan and Thailand.

The works are on display in an open-format, museum-like installation in the grounds of and inside the imposing Soviet-built Shanghai Exhibition Centre, where the ShContemporary fair is held from September 10 to 13 2008.

Selected on merit not gallery affiliation

The pieces have been selected not on gallery affiliation but on merit alone. “In fact” says the Financial Times “half the artists selected had no gallery representation at all. For the purposes of the fair, exhibiting dealers have sponsored these artists, forging temporary relationships that may well continue after the event.”

“Markedly experimental”

The 11 international curators selected a range of “markedly experimental” works says Artkrush. “Pieces by better-known figures such as Beijing’s Wang Luyan – a muscular satirist of consumption and politics – share space with Yael Bartana who employs cultural symbols to unpack political concerns, and from Japan, upstart provocateur Tadasu Takamine – most notorious for his controversial Kimura-san video, which shows the artist helping a disabled friend masturbate – is grouped with his more sedate countryman Sakae Ozawa.”

Intriguing art from Central Asia, Caucasus

The Financial Times notes that “the most intriguing is the work being produced in those regions where creativity has been frozen, corrupted or isolated for decades, even centuries”. Perhaps least known is the art of the new Central Asian republics which first made their debut on the international stage at the Venice Biennale in 2005. To represent Central Asia and the Caucasus, curator Sara Raza has alighted on the work of the outlandish Kazak performance artist Erbossyn Meldibekov and also on the emerging Georgian artist Sophia Tabatadze.

List of Asian artists: Cambodia: Sopheap Pich (1969 Cambodia), Central Asia: Sophia Tabatadze (1977 Georgia), Erbossyn Meldibekov (1964 Kazakhstan), China: Wang Luyan (1956 Beijing), Zhu Jinshi (1954 Beijing), Wang Zhiyuan (1958 Tianjin China), Shi Yong (1963 Shanghai), Chen Yenling (1969 China), Taiwan: Effie Wu (1973 Taiwan), Huang Po-Chih (1980 Taiwan), India: Tushar Joag (1966 India), Vibha Galhotra (1978 India), Ved Gupta (1975 India), Sumedh Rajendran (1972 India), Indonesia: Agus Suwage (1959 Indonesia), J Ariadhitya Pramuhendra (1984 Indonesia), Japan: Tadasu Takamine (1968 Japan), Sakae Ozawa (1980 Japan), Hiraki Sawa (1977 Japan), Korea: Jina Park (1974 US works in Korea), Clara Shin (1974 Brazil works in Korea), Jo Jong Sung( 1977 Korea), Thailand: Dearborn K Mendhaka (1979 Thailand), Vietnam: Nguyen Thai Tuan (1965 Vietnam), Israel: Yael Bartana (1970 Israel), Iran: Reza Aramesh (1968 Iran)

List of Asian specialist curators: Erin Gleeson (Cambodia), Sara Raza (Central Asia, Western Asia, Middle East), Huang Du (China), Sean CS Hsu (Taiwan), Deeksha Nath (India), Rikky Effendy (Indonesia), Reiko Tsubaki (Japan), Shin Young Chung (Korea), Sutee Kunavichayanont (Thailand), Din Q Le (Vietnam)

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• more posts on emerging artists
• latest on Chinese, Indonesian, Thai, Indian, Iranian, Israeli, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese art

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