Fwd: getting back...planning ahead

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rahul bhattacharya
managing editor
Art&Deal Magazine, 23, Hauz Khas Village
New Delhi - 110016. Ph. 011- 26531819
www.artanddealmagazine.com
----------------------------------
Can it be Done in Any Corner You Like?
http://theblackyellowarrow.blogspot.com

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: rahul bhattacharya <theblackyellowarrow@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Dec 30, 2009 at 9:37 AM
Subject: getting back...planning ahead
To: rabindra.com@gmail.com, raj mohanty <rajmohanty80@gmail.com>, pratibha sing <singapratibha@gmail.com>, saumya ananthakrishna <saumya_akrishna@yahoo.com>, Kumar Kanti Sen <kumar_k_sen@yahoo.com>, anindita bhattacharya <aninditabhattacharyaa@gmail.com>, vinita.dasgupta@gmail.com, nidhi khurana <champakali3@rediffmail.com>, artmaharaj@gmail.com, bihookanak@gmail.com, Megha Joshi <meghajoshiray@gmail.com>, alsaidihassan <alsaidihassan@gmail.com>, rajiba pani <rajibapani@yahoo.com>, "puja.vaish" <puja.vaish@gmail.com>, paribartana mohanty <paribartana@yahoo.co.in>, m.vinima@gmail.com
Cc: theblackyellowarrow.driters@blogger.com

hi hi hi, :)

lwent off for a short break to almora, just to calm my head. ittle by little the show is looking better. shantanu's framing problems are (nearly) sorted. nidhi's will be taken care of in a day or two...the exhibition name is up as wall text... lighting is being taken care of.

there seems to be some misunderstandings about the prices. please talk to siddarth and take care of it. 

people are liking our show...i must say a bog thank you to you all for responding so wonderfully. 

we need to re energise our show...get more people to see it. 

on the 5th of january am planning an artist+curators presentation. 

each of us take 10 mins and through a presentation we will  chalk out our journey as drifters.

it is also going to be a meet the media event if we can do it properly....

we will start at 4 pm. and end at 7...

hope all of us are ending this year on a high :)

best

rahul

--------
rahul bhattacharya
managing editor
Art&Deal Magazine, 23, Hauz Khas Village
New Delhi - 110016. Ph. 011- 26531819
www.artanddealmagazine.com 
----------------------------------
Can it be Done in Any Corner You Like?
http://theblackyellowarrow.blogspot.com

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just a discussion

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Rahul Bhattacharya

Open. Cahier on Art in the Public Domain, no. 18 / e-flux

www.e-flux.com

Announcing the publication of Open. Cahier on Art in the Public Domain, no. 18: '2030: War Zone Amsterdam. Imagining the Unimaginable'.Open 18 throws a radically different light on Amsterdam's contemporary social reality through the fictitious device of a war in Amsterdam in 2030. ...

6 hours ago · Comment ·  · Hide feedback (1) · Share

Megha Joshi

now that's some curatorial brief! a hypothetically-real scenario to create for...kuchh aisa karna chahiye rahul!

2 hours ago · Delete

Rahul Bhattacharya

dekh..yea mera taste nahi hai....its too much of a spectacle...and for me entierly 1st world concerns. of course in its own context and for the promise of the spectacle i like the idea. but it is like a hollywood disaster movie...something i will watch but never want to direct.

2 seconds ago · Delete

1 2 3 check...yup, it works! This could have been such a great forum to share ideas and works...are we are all self-obsessed artists or scared to put out opinions?

about my work-

My works are a personal interpretation of a

collective experience woven in and around the traditional consort of

miniature paintings. Having lived and studied in baroda and witnessing the perpetual communal tension in the state I was drawn to explore Mughal history as an attempt towards not ghettoing art as hindu or muslim. Visually what drew me to mughal and later Persian miniatures was the incorporation of the patterns within the composition, the compartmentalized spatial structure, the fine line renderings and the way at times the composition moves out of the rigid structure of the frame in the latter . I began with incorporating mughal patterns in my works which later got infused with everyday and mundane objects such as immersion rods ,scissors , gynaecological instruments, slippers, irons etc mostly woven into a vine-like pattern in the centre of my composition making them the protagonist of the painting with the narrative constructed around the central image as a frame or the margin. The frame, being an integral part of Mughal and Persian miniatures, became a place for me where I could approach the subject of the painting in visually narrative ways. With an intention of bringing what traditionally would have been relegated to the margins, to the center. This has been my way of exploring the way in which visual dialogues can be initiated between the abstracted central image and the linear narrative that is woven around it on the frame, like in the work “The ninth of may”.

The title of the paintings “the ‘9th of May’ I and II has been appropriated from Goya’s ‘the third of may’. For me the political connotation associated in the latter’s case does not entirely change here, by some what retaining the title of goya’s work , I have tried to express the gravity of the distress and disgust felt over the unjust turn of events on the date I have emphasized on , to title my work .

Pattern making remains an integral part of my work; patterns for me are not simply an ornamental design. The more I have explored pattern the more I have learnt that they may be used to - abstract an experience ,even of disturbing events and deal with temporality and memory through repetition. I use repetition as I like the idea of camouflaging my images so that they don’t become too didactic and at the same time demand certain intimacy from the viewer in order to be able to decipher it . Repetition of form enables me to emphasize on the image, importantly for me the process of repeatedly making these images is like a cathartic act.

Creating multiple layers in my paintings allows me to juxtapose various experiences from different time frames in a single matrix and I often use “jaalis” or paper cut stencils to add another layer to my work , the source of these jaalis were the “jharokhas” , customary in the Mughal architecture, as in the earlier times women in most of the Indian cultures were confined to the walls of their houses, their only access to the outside world being these ‘jharokhas’ / windows, but the design of the jaalis prevented them from the sight of the external world . The fact that these women lived in enclosed and claustrophobic spaces, restricted and yet at the same time being able to observe and view without getting noticed intrigues me. Keeping the historic purpose of the jaalis in mind and in an attempt to subvert it a bit I use them to ‘control’ the gaze of the viewer , playing a sort of game of hide and seek where I can decide what areas of the images beneath I want to be revealed through the jaali.

For instance in my work titled the ‘Scissor Blues’, I intend to address the pertinent issue of female foeticide, in this work I have repeated a pattern of ovaries layered with a lattice of scissors , scissors being a surgical instrument ,used here to not give, but to take life. By juxtaposing the car Nano , with these images, which for me is an indicator of pseudo development of the region , I want to comment on the manipulative election frenzy that subsumes all motives of humanitarian ethics.

just a joke??

Updates and Upgrades

ok...so, monday meeting happened..well..almost. kanak, saumya saw the blog too late; have been out of touch with anandita; shantanu called up to say his daughter is ill; jenson is still in karela and raj+parivartan are at home. nidhi and megha came. saw some great works. we discussed display and which were the works we could consider using for the show.

today shantanu came in. we had a long long discussion. i think his display is going to shape up well.

rajib please come to the gallery. we need to discus the placement of your work. i have an idea. need to run it through you.

kumar da stop posting as anonymous and come join the blog so i can close the blog and make it private.
]visited pratibha and vineeta's studios. wondering if vineeta's printing is done. pratibha 25th is the recheck date.

kanak and saumya, i will come down to mayur vihar in a couple of days. badly need to chat with you guys.

vinima where are you?

megha is the only one who continues to use the blog to initiate discussions. megha help me to push others.

megha and anandita, i am looking to hit gurgaon on monday. will call you tomorrow.

best
the stubborn blogger-curator

meeting monday|monday meeting

going to vinita's studio in the morning...

pratibhai i will come tomorrow afternoon...and nidhi tomorrow night for dinner.

cant find megha ...please call me.
kanak, somya, anindita, vinima, nidhi, raj, paribartan, megha can we meet tomorrow evening? around six

surya are you back?

jenson is in kerela

no body is really using the blog :(

saturday evening at 4.30?

at art konsult gallery 23 hauz khas village

lets meet up?

anindita and nidhi have asked to meet up. so have i   . making blog for private viewing only. so evryoune please accept the invitaion. and pile in your numbers.

keeping it open for one more day. for everyone to sign in.

my number is 9868664510

uploading the gallery view

from the back -facing the entrance

gallery view- next room

                                           looking into room 2 and three from gallery 1

                                         gallery -3 view

expanding curatorial concerns

Hi..it seems that some of you have joined the blog..while some are still just following it.


the blog is meant as a platform for notes and thoughts about the show..its concept and also about the works one would display..and how.

We should plan a gallery visit soon..before the week gets over
its not that curatorially i am necessarily looking for new work from everyone. What i am looking for is for the participating artists to collaborate with the with the curator in terms of display and representation.


thus the blog is ideally a platform for us to upload our work images...for me to upload the gallery view...
beyond that i would like it to be a space for exchanging views on art, galleries curation and writing. (which pratibha and megha have already started)  :)


lets see where we can go from here


but will definitely. 

just a note...should we have a curator's text?

"During the boom, reviews didn't matter. Good reviews didn't hurt. But they didn't make artists either. The big money winners of the '80s, generally, hit the big time without anointment from the critics. Dealers wielded whatever power the critics once had. But why? Why didn't anyone pay attention to the critics anymore?

What killed criticism was its parochialism. Art writing separated itself from writing. It circled the wagons into a closed system of self-referential language studed with fancy opaque buzzwords. I've been reified till I felt refried. Art criticism began to look like it was written by lawyers. It was written in a clubby language and this club was pre-dated. Its semiotic shoptalk sounds like bellbottoms look. And despite the seemingly political correct posture of the most flagrant practioners of this jargon. Collins and Milazzo for example; it was inherently elitist and obscurantist. It said considerably less than could be said in a similar volume of plain language, although with an infinitely more precious veneer. In short this sort of critical writing was a joke that didn't know it was funny.

Art writing should expand the audience for art, expand the understanding of art and empower powerful art. Art writing should be written for a big audience, not an inner circle. Generally, today, it is written not to be read at all, but to frame the pictures in the catalogue with important looking markings, texts so impenetrable the seem intelligently by default."

                                                                                                                                                                                                Think or thwim ArtForum, Sept, 1993 by Glenn O'Brien

note: an introduction

This show is a complex snap shot of new contemporary Indian artists who work out of (the culture scape called) Delhi. The show puts together a mix of artists’ whose works the city has not quite engaged with (in terms of the dominant gallery structures) and are curatorial deemed important to be viewed and engaged with. The snapshot claims complexity because it does not fit into the conventional idea of upcoming artists, yet it is constructed out of a curatorial hunch regarding an array of artists who have been working in the city for sometime now and have worked away from the market glare and the all consuming stylistic homogeneity. One key aim of this show is to establish that art exists outside of dominant trends and often such work often reflect a layered sense of artistic practice and a kind of personal engagement with art making which was being rendered unfashionable during the market boom that clouded our taste.

It is a non thematic show, thought the pressure to bestow a theme on every curated show is hard to ignore one feels that this goes against the nature of this curatorial endeavor. The curatorial enterprise instead chooses to focus on a critical selection and working out display in close collaboration with artists.

This blog , as a part of the confirmation, the participating artists are invited to join the blog (separate invites for which are being sent). The blog proposes to be a site where in the participating artist and the curator meet and exchange ideas. It is also a site where in artist are invited to upload the works/ concepts being prepared for the show. This will enable a closely worked out planning of the display.