Ben Avram

Ben Avram , Indian Painter Ben Avram is regarded as the artist of richness, who has brought east and west together in his paintings.  Ben Avram was born in 1941, in Mumbai. He immigrated to Israel in 1956. He received his education from Bezalel Academy of Art in Jerusalem and he has trained under the illustrious Israeli Art professors, Jossi Stern and Jona Mach. Ben Avram is regarded as the artist of profusion, who has brought together east and west, the Eastern tradition of his parents home and the Western tradition of painting taught at Bezalel. He has also received training under the celebrated Israeli artist Avram Ofek, considered as his patron. Ben Avram set up his first studio in Meah She`arim in Jerusalem in 1964. Since then he has exhibited his work throughout Canada and USA in numerous shows till 1978. The works of Ben Avram can be regarded as the `mixture of the surrounding ultra orthodox environment, together with his secular approach, creating the most amazing paintings- full of Jewish mysticism and symbolism, yet colourful and joyful`. He had also exhibited a solo show in 1977 in Safrai Gallery, Jerusalem. His artworks were demonstrated both at the Art Expo in New York and at art exhibitions in Los Angeles between the years 1981 to 1985. His artworks are embellished throughout Israel, adorning the Israeli Prime Minister`s home, his Office and the Jerusalem Municipality. At present he is residing in Jerusalem and his artworks are shown at the Blue and White Art Gallery in the Old City on a regular basis.

Ratan Parimoo

Ratan Parimoo, Indian Painter
Ratan Parimoo is reckoned as one of the most prominent art historians and painters in modern India.

 "The Romanticists` explanation of creativity convinced me so that the painterly skills seemed to me to be more in the realm of technique as in the case of craftsman and the creativity implied what a painter could be beyond this. That is why how a poet or literary person sees the world around him, gets involved with experiences of life and how they effect his emotions, are according to me the sort of situations that a `feeling person` encounters, contributing to the making of the creatively endowed artist."---Ratan Parimoo. Ratan Parimoo is reckoned as one of the most prominent art historians and painters in modern India.

To Ratan Parimoo the life of an artist is full of imagination, where an individual stays with the feelings and experiences that he or she has gathered from life. This notion is reflected through his paintings. Viewers can feel the urge in order to express the world as he conceptualises it. Ratan Parimoo has served as the Faculty of Fine Arts, in M.S. University, Baroda. The subjects of his teaching were Art history and Aesthetics. The genre or style that is reflected through his paintings cannot be bracketed. He floats smoothly from one form of manifestation to another.

Ratan Parimoo was born in 1936 in Srinagar, Kashmir. Illustrious artist Naina Dalal is the proud wife of this celebrated painter. Ratan Parimoo obtained his graduation in Fine Arts from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda in 1955. Afterwards he obtained M.A. in (Fine) Creative Painting, Post Graduate Diploma in Museology under M.S. University, Baroda in 1957. Ratan Parimoo obtained his graduate degree in History of Art from London University in 1963. He obtained Ph.D. in Art history from M.S. University, Baroda in 1972. He has ornamented the esteemed posts of- Lecturer in Art History, Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda 1959; Reader and Head, Department of Art History and Aesthetics 1966; Professor in Art History and Aesthetics from the years 1966 to 1978; and also the Dean, Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda from the years 1975 to 1981.

Apart from these posts, Ratan Parimoo was also the member of Executive Board, Lalit Kala Akademi, Delhi from the years 1981 to 84; Member of UGC Panel Art History/Museology in 1982; Executive Secretary, Indian Association of Art Historians from 1982 to 88; Member, UGC Pay Scale Revision Committee in 1985; Member, Central Advisory Board Museums, Government of India in 1987; Member, History of Science, Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi from 1993 to 95; Member, UGC Panel for Art History/Fine Arts from 1994 to 97; Member, Art Purchase Committee, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi from the years 1998 to 2000; Member, Programme Committee, National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi from the years 2002 to 2005.

Throughout his professional career he has exhibited his creations in various solo and group exhibitons. The worthy exhibitions are-- 1958 First one-man show, Srinagar; 1972 Retrospective Exhibition at Rabindra Bhavan, Delhi; 1973 & 1975 One-man show, Mumbai; 1976 One-man show, Delhi; 1979 One-man show, Ahmedabad; 1999 Retrospective Exhibition at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai; 1999 Retrospective Exhibition Part II, at Cymroza Art Gallery, Mumbai; 2000 Retrospective Exhibitions, Ahmedabad, Baroda; 1955 onwards National Exhibitions of Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi; in the years 1956,57, 58,59 Baroda Group of Artists Exhibitions in Bombay; 1962 South Asian Artists, Durham, U.K; in the years 1964,1965 & 1975 Joint shows with Naina Dalal at Mumbai, Delhi and I.P.C.L., Baroda; in the years 1975,1976 Alumni Exhibition, Faculty of Fine Arts, Silver Jubilee, Mumbai, Baroda; 1990 organised and exhibited with eight Baroda artists, CMC Ltd., New Delhi; 1991-92 Artists Against Communalism, Delhi; 1992 Birla Academy of Art, Calcutta, Silver Jubilee Exhibition, West Zone; 1995 Bharat Bhavan Biennale, Bhopal; 1995 Tribute to Husain on 80th Birthday, Aurodhan Gallery, New Delhi; 1996 Contemporary Indian Painting, Bombay Art Society, Mumbai; 1997 Major Trends in Indian Art, Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi; 1997 Participated in Artist`s Camps: 1996 Pavagarh, 1976, Srinagar, Kashmir.

Some of Ratan Parimoo`s creations include-- Woman with Matka, oil on board (Exhibited, National Exhibition of Art, LKA, New Delhi); Habba Kadal, oil on board, 1957 (Exhibited, Baroda Group of Artists, Mumbai); Lotus Valley, digital print (original with Air India, oil on board); Baroda Station I, oil on board; Marriage Procession, oil on canvas; Baroda Station II, oil on canvas; Still life with Kashmiri objects, oil on canvas; Kashmiri Family, oil on canvas; Rice Fields, oil on canvas; Kingdom of Cards, oil on canvas; Dal Lake, oil on canvas; Baroda Station III, oil on canvas; Baroda Zoo, oil on canvas; Tongas, oil on board; Composition (Scarlet Pearls), oil, sand, encaustic on board; Composition, encaustic on canvas; Bio-morphic Forms, oil on canvas; Fear, Despair, Death (Fear: Dragon`s Visit), oil on canvas; Self Portrait as Icarus Transformed, oil on canvas; Sea of Eyes, oil on canvas; Dromedary as Nemesis, oil on canvas; Dromedary as Nemesis, oil on canvas; Penumbra, oil on canvas; Road of Nirvana, oil on canvas; Water Buffaloes, oil on canvas; Dance of Death II, oil on canvas; Mahishasuramardini, oil on canvas; Encounter with Nothingness, oil on canvas.

As a recognition to this outstanding talent, numerous laurels have been conferred upon Ratan Parimoo, like-- Cultural Scholarship for Painting, Govt. of India 1957-59; Commonwealth Scholarship to study in London for the years 1960-63; obtained First prize in Painting, Annual Exhibition, J & K. Cultural Academy in 1966; Rockefeller 3rd Grant to study and travel to USA in 1974 and Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship 1991-1993. Ratan Parimoo in a widespread way has written and published many articles and books on classical Indian and Modern Indian art as well as in films. His main aim was to evolve a new direction in art historical studies. Some books written by him are-- `Paintings of the Three Tagores` (Published in 1973); Studies in Modern Indian Art (Published in 1975); Life of Buddha in Indian Sculpture (Published in 1982); Sculptures of Sheshashayi Vishnu (Published in 1983); The Paintings of Rabindranath Tagore (Published in 1989); The Pictorial World of Gaganendranath Tagore (Published in 1995); Studies in Indian Sculpture (Published in 1999); Ceaseless Creativity, Paintings, Prints and Drawings, edited by Gauri Parimoo Krishnan, published in 1999.

The creations of Ratan Parimoo embellishes places like-- Hermitage, Leningrad; National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi; Punjab University, Chandigarh; Air India, Mumbai; Shyamal Builders, Vadodara; Gujarat State Lalit Kala Akademi, Ahmedabad; Sahitya Kala Parishad, New Delhi; Madhavan Nair Foundation, Cochin; Cymroza Art Gallery, Mumbai; Welcome Group of Hotel, Vadodara.

Shukla Sawant

OUTSIDE THE FOLD

Shukla Sawant

Anant Art Gallery - New Delhi

F 213-B, Lado Sarai, 110030 New Delhi, India

August 18, 2009 - September 18, 2009

A Look at Shukla Sawant

by Alana Hunt

The first images one sees upon entering Shukla Sawant’s current solo exhibition, "Outside the Fold," are of a young woman’s peeling hands holding an open book close to her body. The tightness of the image makes you wonder – if we could see just beyond the frame (or outside the fold), – would we find her face, looking down and reading the pages that rest in her hands, or is she holding the book close to her while gazing off somewhere else? Walk to the end of the room, and there lit softly against the back wall, is a woman’s face now crystallized and hovering itself within the pages of a solid glass book.

What does it mean for a woman to read?

In different times, in different places, to different people and across different kinds of reading material the possible answers to this question appear impossibly endless. But for Pandita Ramabai, the subject of Sawant’s new body of work "Remembering Pandita," reading within the context of nineteenth century India was something that carried her outside the fold of social and religious norms and into a life of radical questioning – particularly in regard to the kinds of social injunctions against women laid down by religious texts. It is this spirit of dissent and heresy that Sawant’s "Remembering Pandita" seeks to celebrate,

However, the story of Pandita Ramabai is only half of the work that makes up Sawant’s "Outside the fold"; "Sirop and Desert Islands and Other Texts" is the other. Similarly drawing upon history (and books), "Sirop and Desert Islands and Other Texts" takes the touristic vision of Mauritius as a tropical paradise and turns it inside out, revealing some of the darker histories such island mono-economies possess through an exploration of indentured labour as a part of colonial ventures and its contemporary legacy. This body of work, which includes print, photography, souvenir scratch cards and a range of sculptural installations involving whips and sugar, stairs and handcuffs, is really brought together by the use of sound that hauntingly connects across the exhibition space both the materials and ideas. Seagulls squawking as waves hit the shore just don’t seem so innocent and sugar isn’t quite so sweet – appearing instead, somehow sharp and dangerous.

On the whole, Shukla Sawant’s "Outside the Fold" is a new body of work that explores histories. But history, as Walter Benjamin has argued, is not something stuck in the past but rather a dialectical image created by the collision of the past into the present – so, in relation to Sawant’s evocation of the past in "Outside the Fold" we can ask: what do the stories of a radical nineteenth century Indian woman and indentured labour in Mauritius illuminate for us in Delhi today?

Vivek Vilasini

Born 1964 in Trishur, Kerala, India Lives and works in Bangalore, India Before multimedia artist and photographer Vivek Vilasini began studying art and sculpture with traditional Indian craftsmen he was a radio officer at the All India Marine College in Kochi. In his art Vilasini is known for working with the social structures prevalent in contemporary Indian society. He is interested in defining cultural identity while also taking a critical stance on globalisation. In the photo collage Between one Shore and several Others (Just what is it…after Richard Hamilton) from 2008, Vilasini refers to an iconic work of art by Richard Hamilton. Hamilton was a British painter and collage artist who, with his 1965 collage Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?, created one of the very first Pop Art works. Vilasini uses digital manipulation to reinterpret Hamilton’s iconic image, imbuing it with a particularly Indian sensibility. By using image fragments from Indian popular culture, from news media, advertising, and Bollywood films he meshes Eastern and Western iconographies. Vilasini reintroduces predefined roles in a new context while discussing the modern global age. For example, the work explores how the vitality of modern Indian art is born out of economic and political change, media impacts, and by the rivalry between cultural traditions and globalisation. Vilasini’s collage highlights how our own history is always related to social history – to the mutual interdependencies affecting the development of both. Thus, the work can affect and generate cultural and social awareness in the spectator. Stine Kleis Hansen

Vivek Valasini Between one Shore and several Others (Just what is it...after Richard Hamilton), 2008

Hema Upadhyay

Born 1972 in Baroda, Gujarat, India Lives and works in Mumbai, India From a high vantage point – above the shacks with their blue plastic cover-ings seeking to ward off the merciless rain – Hema Upadhyay looks out across her city, Mumbai. Upadhyay views the city as a provisory entity that may disappear or be removed at any time, a disturbing object of desire. By placing photographs of herself in her works she looks for her own place within this city of dreams. Her paintings, collages, and sculptural installations keep coming back to themes such as one’s native soil, loss, migration, and belonging. Upadhyay was born and raised in Baroda, where, in the early 1990s, she began studying painting and subsequently graphic art at the Faculty of Fine Arts. While still a student, she began infusing her works with personal narratives. In 1998 she moved to Mumbai to embark on a new life in this metropolitan city. In her mind, this relocation became intermingled with her family’s memories of their enforced relocation from Pakistan in connection with the 1947 Partition. She peopled her surfaces with photographs of herself while struggling to gain access to her new city. I Have a Feeling That I Belong, a work from 2001 – part of a series entitled Sweet, Sweat Memories – sees the artist poised on the balcony of a tall building, letting her gaze glide across the complex while her body is balanced precariously close to the edge. Critics have interpreted this autobiographical positioning of herself in the role of the main protagonist as a gender-specific comment on spatial issues. These works are characterised by a deliberate play with scale, dimensions, and a sense for diminishing forms, for reducing scale. A particularly poignant work from 2002 was a site-specific installation entitled The Space in Between You and Me created for the Khoj International Artists’ Workshop in Mysore. Upadhyay wrote a letter to her family by sowing millet seeds in the soil. The letters sprung up, grew, and gradually withered away – “as if they never existed”. As far back as 2002 she had already begun work on the first versions of her site-specific installation depicting Dharavi in Mumbai, Asia’s largest slum. If, in earlier works, her multifaceted self enjoyed a sense of freedom and imagination, hovering in the sky above the confines of the slums, the installation Dream a Wish – Wish a Dream was more directly concerned with the materiality of existence, with its details – and with a confrontation with the vulnerability that characterises modern urban life in third-world cities. The installation 8 feet x 12 feet (2009) – which is made out of aluminium sheets, car scraps, enamel paints, tarpaulins, pieces of metal and found objects – swallows up the room, creating a compact whole. Upadhyay is interested in space in its physical sense – in the people, objects, dwellings, and roads that fill out the space and make the city come alive. The installa-tions bring about a bodily experience, possessed of a strong physical at-traction, while also celebrating the wishes, dreams, and hopes that are part of life in the slums, too. Vidya Shivadas

Hema Upadhyay 8 feet x 12 feet, 2009

Kiran Subbaiah

Born 1971, Sidapur, India Lives and works in Bangalore, India Formally trained as a sculptor, Kiran Subbaiah works in a range of media, including assemblage, video and internet art. A common approach of his practice is subverting the form and function of objects, through which he questions the relationship between use and value, highlighting contradictions inherent in everyday life. Irony, deadpan humour and a crude aesthetic provide Subbaiah with simple binaries: functional/defunct, action/reaction and cause/effect to tease out his ideas and observations. Often found-object sculptures are manipulated by Subbaiah into paradoxes. Thirst, 1998, presents a glass tumbler that is anything but refreshing, in that it contains pebbles and is precariously balanced between mouth-drying materials: a mound of salt and a tower of plaster, cloth, tissue paper, expanded polystyrene and cotton wool. Love All, 1999, is a football with a tessellated surface studded by unlit matches positioned for kick-off on a circle of matchbox lighting strips, threatening to ignite the ball should a match commence. In public spaces, Subbaiah uses the language and format of street-signs and official notices. With phrases such as ‘Prohibitions Strictly Forbidden’ and ‘Ignore This Corner’ or symbols such as a bicycle with feet instead of wheels, he challenges the authority of such common directions over the public who are expected to adhere to their rules. The artist becomes actor in his videos, performed in an earnest, deadpan seriousness. Flight Rehearsals, 2003, extends Subbaiah’s interest in subversion beyond objects, to an overturning the conception of gravity and scale. The camera is angled so Subbaiah appears to ‘fly’, having discovered the secret of flight is to repeatedly jump before gravity has time to act. The action moves to a bedroom, where a ringing alarm clock in the “foreground” is actually oversized and distant, creating an unsettling distortion of the sense of space as first perceived. Under the heading of net.art on his website (www.geocities.com/antikiran), Subbaiah presents a number of internet and computer-based projects. These include a series of downloadable mock-viruses that simulate an attack on the computer, complete with shrieks of pain from the machine. Computer viruses interest the artist particularly as something that exists between function and dysfunction - their purpose is to drain the use-value out of a computer. Subbaiah’s website also presents as yet unrealised ideas and propositions, which are themselves social commentaries. These include a toilet roll dispenser that prints sheets with up-to-the-minute news reports, reflecting on the contemporary appetite for uninterrupted access to information and the speed with which news is disposed. He also proposes an amplifier and loud-speaker for bicycle horns, to help cyclists combat the brutal use of vehicular horns in Indian cities. Commenting not only on noisy urban life, but on the tendency to fight fire with fire, rather than more peaceful solutions. The artist considers his work as a form of emancipation, whereby objects no longer need to conform to their original use potential. He sees this extended by defining them art objects – as he states ‘I see the whole advantage of making art in the fact that it need not serve any purpose.’ Rebecca Morrild

Kiran Subbaiah Flight Rehearsals, 2003

Dayanita Singh

Born 1961 in New Delhi, India Lives and works New Delhi, India Dayanita Singh is a photographer known for portraits and interior views of Indian domestic life, especially urban-middle and upper-class families documented in the Steidl publication, Privacy, 2003. Singh reveals the nature of relationships between family members and communities. Her abiding interest in poignant narratives is made accessible to her audience through the medium of photography. She uses alternative means to achieve accessibility that supersedes the gallery system. For instance she has produced posters and calendars that are distributed openly with the expectation that the viewer will take the work home and install it within her own domestic space. This is a response to and comments on the commodification of art and culture prevalent today as well as a means of shifting the interior views of her broad audience. Her first photographic series documented the tabla maestro Zakir Hussain. This developed for Singh into a symbiotic relationship with her subject, as well as the medium of photography. She gained insight and a sense of Hussain’s way of life, while capturing him, which in turn provided insights for him into his photographic presence revealing over their extended exchange depths of his character that were not previously apparent. This relationship initiated a journey of self-discovery both for Singh and her subjects that has resulted in numerous intimate and elegant images. Singh’s earliest photographic series are in black and white. With an absence of colour articulating departure, memory and loss and are depicted most tenderly in Go Away Closer, 2007. With her accordion book, Chairs, 2001 Singh gave 10 books each to friends she felt were vital points of contact and asked them to disseminate the books to other friends, resulting in a sort of aural transfer of her visual production. The concertina format permits expandability making her books constant works-in-progress and allows for a teleological sequencing. Singh has transformed 7 of her journeys into a series of accordion books known as Sent a Letter, 2008 which are like portable museums. Each is addressed to a fellow traveller. Sent a Letter is encased in a handmade cloth box that reads “SENT A LETTER to my friend on the way he dropped it. Someone came and picked it up and put it in his pocket”, embodying the circularity and random nature of disseminating Singh’s ideas while continuing her engagement with intimate subjects through making the books small-scale and cherished objects. Ladies of Saligao, 2005 is a series in which she photographed women from the village in Goa where she lives. The prints were hung at the local community centre and the women were encouraged to carry their prints home from the exhibition to install in their own homes. Another significant series is Singh’s documentation over a period of 13 years of Mona Ahmed, her closest friend. Singh maps Mona’s intimate life, her adopted daughter, banishment from the community of eunuchs for alcoholism and her eventual illegal activities in a cemetery. Singh has documented several subjects, tracking complex and difficult lives. These images of people working, celebrating or resting show life without embellishment. Singh captures a sense of poignancy not only with human beings but with buildings as well. Her more recent photographs, the Blue Book Series has introduced the element of colour into her work. Although Singh has preferred small-scale and finely printed photography, she has recently been experimenting with other formats. Savita Apte

Dayanita Singh Dream Villa 11 - 2007, 2008