New Delhi based Threshold Art Gallery recently presented ‘Landscapes of Memory’ an imaginative configurations of sensorial memory of cultural landscapes in the artistic creations of Anindita Bhattacharya, Pandit Khairnar , Shaurya Kumar & V.Ramesh strive to transform loss into gain, sorrow into consolation and the past into redemptive visions of the present and future at Abu Dhabi Art.
In the regional imagination, representational landscapes, whether real or imagined, are at the heart of critical inquiry in the formation and re-construction of identities through markers of differences in social and cultural processes. Narratives of identity are constructed through conflict, whether it be through the evolution of species over time through the metaphor of the lunar nodes as in Bhattacharya’s ‘Becoming a Tree ' or in the memory of history and artifact as in Shaurya Kumar’s ‘If In A Sacred Land A Traveller’. Contested interpretations of the legacies entwined in the man-made and the natural world emphasize the highly complex, multifaceted encounters that we perceive in their works. Bhattacharya’s artistic background in the tradition-based contemporary art of the Indian miniature style stretches and explores the figurative and representational trope into interlocking cycles perpetually under construction. Kumar uses a variety of mediums in his artmaking indicating presence, absence and the transient displacements over time. Visual, sensorial and tactile components of landscape come together in the works of Pandit Khairnar illuminating transmutations of memory and nostalgia. Khairnar’s symbolic and non-representational approach contrasts with that of Bhattacharya and Kumar and yet dovetails with their metaphors of the palimpsest of power and control, loss and longing.
One of the themes that have occupied V Ramesh is the connectedness of mankind through a oneness of human experience or existence. He constantly questions the physicality of the body and tries to go beneath the skin in order to develop a plural idiom in his art practice The idea of the sacred runs through his works as a muted melody, however this coexists in a dynamic diversity of images from disparate origins, through sustained connections. Ramesh speaks of suffusing his subjects with his feelings and strong emotional resonances during the act of painting. This makes the ordinary-looking mundane daily objects become extraordinary. This intertextuality has a profound impact on the readings of meaning in this collection of works. The world is constantly refashioned by human agency. The cultural process of complex and constant dyadic shuttling between ideas and material allows for dualistic interpretations to emerge that nurtures this new vision. The artists have succeeded in the grounding of imagery in time and place by re-imagining and even creating memory.
Date 24-11-2021
In the regional imagination, representational landscapes, whether real or imagined, are at the heart of critical inquiry in the formation and re-construction of identities through markers of differences in social and cultural processes. Narratives of identity are constructed through conflict, whether it be through the evolution of species over time through the metaphor of the lunar nodes as in Bhattacharya’s ‘Becoming a Tree ' or in the memory of history and artifact as in Shaurya Kumar’s ‘If In A Sacred Land A Traveller’. Contested interpretations of the legacies entwined in the man-made and the natural world emphasize the highly complex, multifaceted encounters that we perceive in their works. Bhattacharya’s artistic background in the tradition-based contemporary art of the Indian miniature style stretches and explores the figurative and representational trope into interlocking cycles perpetually under construction. Kumar uses a variety of mediums in his artmaking indicating presence, absence and the transient displacements over time. Visual, sensorial and tactile components of landscape come together in the works of Pandit Khairnar illuminating transmutations of memory and nostalgia. Khairnar’s symbolic and non-representational approach contrasts with that of Bhattacharya and Kumar and yet dovetails with their metaphors of the palimpsest of power and control, loss and longing.
One of the themes that have occupied V Ramesh is the connectedness of mankind through a oneness of human experience or existence. He constantly questions the physicality of the body and tries to go beneath the skin in order to develop a plural idiom in his art practice The idea of the sacred runs through his works as a muted melody, however this coexists in a dynamic diversity of images from disparate origins, through sustained connections. Ramesh speaks of suffusing his subjects with his feelings and strong emotional resonances during the act of painting. This makes the ordinary-looking mundane daily objects become extraordinary. This intertextuality has a profound impact on the readings of meaning in this collection of works. The world is constantly refashioned by human agency. The cultural process of complex and constant dyadic shuttling between ideas and material allows for dualistic interpretations to emerge that nurtures this new vision. The artists have succeeded in the grounding of imagery in time and place by re-imagining and even creating memory.
Date 24-11-2021
Becoming a Tree by Anindita Bhattacharya