The Big Picture -Group show - April 10 - 2009

Apr 10, 2009 10:30 AM   to  Apr 15, 2009

Event duration:  07:30 hrs

Event occurs daily

Sumukha Gallery, Wilson Garden

No.24/10,7th Mn, Bts Depot Rd, Wilson Garden, Bangalore
Bangalore - 560027

Genre:	Art Exhibition
Details:	The Big Picture: Art, Artists, India Foundation for the Arts - Art Exhibition. This art exhibition and sale has been made possible by 62 artists who have offered to donate in part or full the proceeds from the sale of their 72 works to IFA. This is the first time so many artists have come together to support the arts. A note from curator Abhishek Poddar I have felt close to art since my childhood. It became a serious passion during my school years and later turned into quite an obsession as my steadily growing collection of art testifies. India Foundation for the Arts - IFA - has been rather inspirational for me in more ways than one. I first came into contact with IFA's superb work in funding the various arts at a presentation by some of its grantees more than a decade back. A documentary film on three women photographers was screened, which is when I first saw Dayanita Singh's work. My love for photography was born at that moment. Funding the arts is serious work, and it comes with a more serious problem - raising money for such work. I have been closely associated with the IFA family ever since that first event and seen the hard work that goes into fundraising. I thought a simpler way to generate support for IFA would be to organise an art show. Also, I thought it would be good to showcase affordable works - by promising young artists as well as more established names. I consider myself fortunate to have a personal rapport with most of the artists represented in this catalogue (many of whose works are in my collection). They were generous enough to give me access to all that was available, from which I could make my choice. I have been able to select works that I considered to be truly representative of their oeuvre, substantial in content, conveying emotional meaning and containing that elusive quality, which I can only call 'soul'. In most cases, artists have produced work especially for this show. I am very satisfied with what this catalogue contains; indeed I had to resist the temptation of keeping many of the works for myself! In fact, I had even to accede to a condition imposed by one of the artists - that I could not buy his work unless it remained unsold till the end. Many of us are patrons of the arts, but this time it is the artists themselves who have come forward to donate, in full or in part, the sale proceeds of their works - for the arts. In doing so, they have paved the way for a greater appreciation of the fact that the cause of the arts is as important as any other, deserving everyone's attention and support. For that I am very grateful to them, as also for making it easy for me and IFA to come up with the name for this show - The Big Picture: Art, Artists., India Foundation for the Arts. These are outstanding works by some of our most talented artists and very well priced too keeping in mind the economic situation. Remember that what you will pay to acquire them will be treated as a donation - giving you tax relief, but much else besides: you will add important works to your collection and, at the same time, encourage worthy artists, arts researchers and arts organisations to realise their aspirations and ambitions. Is there a better way to express one's love for the arts? Become a friend of the arts; become a friend of IFA. The artists are: Gulammohammed Sheikh, Abhimanue, Abul Kalaam, Anand Gadap, Annu, Matthew, Arun Kumar, H G Balaji, Ponna Bhagyanath, C Debasis, Barui, Faiza Huma, Fawzan Husain, George Martin, P J Harsha, N S Jasmeen Patheja, Jayanta Mondal, Jayashree Chakravarty, Josh P S, K G Anto, K Sudheesh Keiko Mima, Kodanda Rao Teppala, Leon, KL Michael, Irudayaraj, S Mahmud Husain, Mithu Sen, N V Santhan, Navroze Contractor, Nirmala Biluka Nishad, MP Parvez Ahmed, Prasanta Sahu, Prashant, Panjiar Pratap, Modi R Balasubramanian, R Jacob, Jebaraj, Raghu Rai, Rajan Krishnan, Rajib De, Ravi Shankar, Ryan Lobo, S Chandra, Mohan, SK Sahajahan, Saibal Das, Samit Das, Sebastian C Varghese, Shahid Datawala. Soumen Das. Swapan Nayak. Sunil Kumar. M C Tadi. Subhakar Tanujaa Rane. Uday Mondal Upendranath. T R Vinay. Mahidhar, Yusuf Zakkir Hussain, Zubin Pastakia, Reba Hore, Chandana Hore, Arunima Choudhury, Mahesh Shantaram & Atul Dodiya. The show is being curated by Mr Abhishek Poddar.

Verve Magazine - review

Rural Legend

Text by Supriya Nair

Published: Volume 17, Issue 4, April, 2009

In the Kerala landscapes of Sebastian Varghese and Leon KL, transience and death not only destroy nature, but preserve it, says Supriya Nair

http://www.verveonline.com/72/life/artmart_kerala.shtml

To the human eye, the layers of movement and construction that lie beneath the tranquil landscapes of nature are something foreign to our own systems. In a recently concluded exhibition, Earth Beneath, at Threshold Art Gallery, New Delhi, Sebastian Varghese and Leon KL both showcased their own images of the sustaining processes of nature in their art.

In the work of both artists, the great outdoors takes on a life of its own. More starkly than in cities, the rural environment that accommodates us is greater than the sum of its parts. The imbalances and corrosion that disrupt the natural transformative rhythms of the world become a sort of organic process themselves. In Varghese’s water colours, the biological essentials of the human body meld into molecular representations of the natural world. “The earth emanates a certain calmness and dispassion about all these transformations,” Varghese observes. This in spite of human confusion, in which “we muddle through fresh realities continuously.”

Leon KL’s approach to the quasi-mystical rhythms of nature are to represent them in acute, almost botanical detail, a method softened by his media, soft pastels, charcoal and watercolour on paper. “Environmental degradation is hinted at peripherally in my work,” he says. “There’s a more microscopic look at change at a cellular level, in the human body, in nature.” In Leon’s work, the landscape loses particularity, grounded only in the striking red soil of his native Kerala, and the changes he documents are almost metaphysical.

Collectively, the works emphasise that the human being is not dislocated so much as accommodated in this bio-landscape. There is a certain optimism reflected in this emphasis on the mutation of nature in spite of an inhabitant civilisation running out of sync with it, a sort of faith in the ‘ashes to ashes’ principle, incredibly tolerant of man’s trespasses, and endlessly hopeful about the capacity of this world for rejuvenation and reincarnation. Creativity in their works occurs in spite of, not because of man.

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