'The title refers to the point in time when contemporary artists currently find themselves today. Even the Post-Modernism of the 1980s still retained an awareness of a particular point on a linear historical trajectory. Think of the architects Ettore Sottsass and Michael Graves, or the painters Francesco Clemente and David Salle. All were conscious that they were inserting a spanner into the historical timeline of High Modernism, which had reached its endpoint with Minimalism and Conceptualism (the art object literally disappeared). They were highly conscious that they were inserting historical references, non-Western and retro imagery into their practices, similar to the Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Classical and Orientalist movements of the 19th Century. But Post-Modernism itself was part of this linear historical trajectory, and deeply self-conscious about it.
But today, some four decades later, the art world has been transformed by a number of seismic shifts: the globalization of the art world, identity politics, relational aesthetics, digital revolutions in both communications and image-making. None of these are particularly concerned with the historical lineage of Modernism, save for the fact of the number of artists that were excluded from it or didn’t fit comfortably into it. The unbridled freedoms artists have today also mean that they are responsible for creating their own context for their works, for building their own foundations, for crafting their own languages, and for maintaining their own cognitive consistencies. Perhaps these are what Charles Darwin sums up as “essential ability.”
The artists in our exhibitions have distinguished their practices through a confident consistency, choosing content and subjects that can maintain rigorous introspection and engage audiences, adopting techniques and materials which allow for long term investigations, balancing aesthetic parameters that can be both challenging and rewarding. By viewing our two exhibitions, no collective movements will coalesce, no trends will be deciphered, rather a steadfast individualism on the part of each artist will be apparent. And this is where each of our artists takes on the mantle of the Soothsayer: an intrepid explorer of metaphysical terrains with the possibilities of transgressing psycho, social, and political realms. The fluidity that has now been granted to all aspects of human identity are also prescribed to not only the art object but also its formulation, context, and reception. The concept of a linear progress, implying competition, inclusion and exclusion has now been replaced by evolution, which involves collaboration, more gradual change, drift, and mutation.'
The Evolution of the Soothsayer will be on view at Nature Morte, Delhi, from 22nd August to 12th December, 2026.
Curatorial Note Peter Nagy
Date 17.8.2026