www.guildindia.com

The Guild at India Art Summit 09

Booth B 12

The Guild Art Gallery is delighted to present

Balaji Ponna Remen Chopra

Prajakta Potnis Sathyanand Mohan

Pooja Iranna

Curated Section by Gayatri Sinha

Riyas Komu T.V. Santhosh

Sculpture Park

Iranna G.R.

Video Lounge

Navjot Altaf

At India Art Summit 09, New Delhi

Date: 19 – 22 August 2009

Balaji Ponna:

Born 1980

Ponna obtained his Masters in Graphics from Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan. His first solo titled ‘Black Smoke’ was held at Bose Pacia, Kolkata in collaboration with The Guild. He has exhibited in Art Basel 09 and has also participated in "Contemporary Exoticism" curated by Marco Meneguzzo at Studio La Citta, Verona. His works have been currently selected for the France print Biennale 2009. Balaji’s new sculpture is another take on the contemporary issues that remain apparent but sometimes neglected. With an overt formal reference to Gilbert & George’s 'Singing Sculpture’, Balaji addresses the issue of class and brings in the question of popular into the discourse of elite Indian art practices.

Prajakta Potnis

Born 1980

Prajakta Potnis received her graduate and postgraduate degree from Sir J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai and is a recipient of several awards and scholarships. In 2008, Potnis had two major solo shows including “membranes and margins” in Seoul, Korea and then ‘Porous Walls’ at The Guild, Mumbai. She is a growing name in the Indian and International art scene. “Walls perform as a significant analogy in her works. They are a metaphor of the chosen human territories through which a city designates order and planning and at the same time an organic substance like a visceral membrane. Through and within these walls Potnis creates notations of the fragility and disregard observed in everyday situations.” – Nancy Adjania

Remen Chopra

Born 1980

Remen Chopra completed her B.F.A and M.F.A in Fine Art from the College of Art, New Delhi and she continued her education program and residency at the School of Visual Arts New York. She was a participant in the Rotterdam Art fair 09 presented by Willem Baars Foundation. The centrality of her work deals with freeing oneself from the contradictions and holds of the post modern society, where, virtues start to lose meaning, and the dark valleys of self hood grip man, where violence, anxiety and antagonism take over and the virtues of self correction, become linked to the fanaticism of religion, and the words peace, family and security become strangers in one’s own world.

Sathyanand Mohan

Born 1975

Born in Kerala, Sathyanand Mohan has obtained his BFA in Painting from College of Fine Arts, Trivandrum and MFA from Faculty of Fine Arts, Ms University Baroda. His recent solo show ‘Reliquary’ was held at The Guild, Mumbai. Sathyanand’s works may perhaps be called private metaphors wherein he tries to evoke various aspects of the self. Play and irony are generally employed in his paintings to draw attention to the language and its materiality. His current work ‘Mumbai- Shots’ explores various aspects of the city and how it has a magnetic field attracting people from across the country in lure of opportunity. Here Sathyanand employs a cinematic visual language stirred with adventure and inspiration from the pervasive influence of cinema in Mumbai.

Riyas Komu

Born 1971

Riyas Komu was a participant in the 52nd Venice Biennale 2007 curated by Robert Storr. Other prominent museum shows include Milan Museum show, curated by Daniella Polizolli and 'India Contemporary', GEM, Museum of Contemporary Art, Hague. Komu graduated with Painting as his specialization and has since than extended himself to sculpture, photography and video installations. Komu says that his work draws from the public domain. His subjects are charged with significance bringing about a disturbance depicting an element of political disquiet. For Riyas, art is a medium for social comment on the situations the world is facing today. “Take Away is a work that provokes the agenda of capitalism (in order to occupy the world of a renewed material reality) which a dominant country surreptitiously unleashes to exploit aspirational labour and imprison it in an intangible enclosure that makes them proudly compromise their dignity and freedom.” - Riyas Komu

T.V.Santhosh

Born 1968

Born in Kerala, T.V.Santhosh obtained a B.F.A in painting from Shantiniketan and Masters in Sculpture from MS University, Baroda. Santhosh has had several successful shows with many international art galleries and museums. His recent sculptural installation from ‘Passage to India’ is in the Frank Cohen collection at Initial Access. Some of his prominent museum shows are ‘Aftershock’ at Contemporary Art Norwich at Sainsbury Centre, England in 2007 and ’Continuity and Transformation’ Museum show promoted by Provincia di Milano, Italy. “Santhosh’s art is attentive to the specific idioms of contemporary global conflict, to the diabolical pact between knowledge and terror and the skewed antagonism between puissant globality and weakened locality. T.V.Santhosh’s sophistication lies in the use of aesthetics of digitally transmitted news, replacing explicitness with ambiguity and evoking a remarkable hypersensitivity in his viewers.” – Ranjit Hoskote.

G.R. Iranna

Born 1970

Sculture Park: ‘Still Saddled’

Born 1970 in Karnataka, Iranna obtained B.F.A. from the College of Visual Arts in Gulbarga and M.F.A. from Delhi College of Art. Iranna is a recipient of National Academy award in 1997 and the M.F.Hussain and Ram Kumar award. G.R Iranna has been nominated from India for the ABPF Signature Art Prize 08, Singapore. His works are philosophical reflections, revolving around the interactions and explorations of a man’s inner world with the existential issues of today. Through his present sculpture he comments on human civilizational growth and its intrinsic follies consisting of aggression and ideological indoctrinations, violently inflicted upon human beings in the name of territorial growth. Iranna’s intention is to capture the trauma of human kind.

Navjot Altaf

Video Lounge: ‘Water Weaving’

Navjot studied Fine and Applied Arts from Sir J. J. School of Arts, Mumbai. She is one of our earliest video artists. Navjot’s work has always been a part of wider concerns on social and educational issues, through which she has sought alternative art practices and communication outside the gallery space. She has been associated with varied fields, being an Artist, a Researcher, an Anthropologist, a Social Worker and a Political Activist. Since 1991-92 Navjot has been engaged with interactive / co-operative/collaborative projects with Indian and international visual artists, classical vocalists, documentary filmmakers, crafts persons and technicians. Her recent works titled ‘Lacuna in Testimony’ will be on display at the Frost Museum in October 09.The sparkling abstract film in this exhibition is crafts-based: weaving is its theme. The film is based on a legend told to Ms. Altaf by a Bastar weaver named Sukhman, who is in the film.