Limited Security / Security Ltd.

Amitesh Shrivastava and Bhuvanesh Gowda

Limited Security / Security Ltd.

4 – 25 September, 2009

PREVIEW – Friday, September 4, 6.30 to 8.30 pm

The Guild Art Gallery is pleased to present ‘Limited Security / Security Ltd.’ recent works of Amitesh Shrivastava and Bhuvanesh Gowda at The Guild previewing on September 4, 2009.

“Security has become an obsessive notion to worry about not only for the nations but also for the individuals. The more the world dissolves its borders using technological means, the more the borders are conceptually strengthened by the preoccupation with security issues. While security measures re-draw the map of our social spaces, they facilitate a change in the philosophical and cultural attitudes too. It could go deep into the negotiation of personal fears to the negotiation of socio-cultural mechanisms in the individual lives.

‘Limited Security/Security Ltd.’ looks into the aspects of how the notion of security moves from the socio-political spheres to philosophical and cultural realms... Also it attempts to focus on the notion of ‘insecure viewing’ or to put it in other words, how certain works of art try to push the viewer out of the comfort zones of viewing. The realm of aesthetic enjoyment, which is secured by the physical conditions of a gallery or a museum space, is sometimes threatened when the works of art in question themselves are intended to rupture the secure notions of viewing.” – Johny ML.

Bhuvanesh Gowda obtained his BFA from CAVA, Mysore and MFA from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.. Formally speaking, Bhuvanesh’s works are minimal sculptures. Affected by acrophobia (vertigo), Bhuvanesh makes an attempt to overcome his insecurities with heights by visiting high altitude places in the Himalayas.. His personal experiences transform into minimal sculptures, that he generally uses to destabilize the ‘security of viewing’.

Amitesh Shrivastava obtained his BFA from Khairagarh University and MFA from MSU, Baroda. Amitesh’s works intensely debate the socio-cultural and philosophical notions of security in his painterly works. Qualified as quasi expressionistic works, Amitesh deliberately chooses an action oriented style to develop his pictorial surfaces. An artist who is an avid researcher on social hierarchies, he visualizes a human drama which is related to both the agrarian and technological economy.

The Guild
02/32, Kamal Mansion, 2nd floor
Arthur Bunder Road,Colaba Mumbai 400005
+ 91 22 2288 0116 / 0195
admn office
+91 22 2287 5839 /6211 fax + 91 22 2287 6210
www.guildindia.com
www.theguildny.com

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.

THE GUILD’S RESIDENCY EXHIBITION

JULY 24 – AUGUST 4, 2009

10.00 AM – 6.30 PM

We are pleased to present The Guild’s Residency Exhibition featuring the artists from the first batch (17- 23 June 09). The Residency provided a platform to artists and writers to interact with each other and create room for exchange of newer ideas.

The exhibition is an attempt to present the works produced during the week long residency. It shares the views and ideas of the artists/ writers which took place in form of presentations and discussions on various issues pertinent to visual art and the art world.

The exhibition features works of Balaji Ponna, Hemali Bhuta, Himanshu S., Kedar Dhondu, Om Soorya, Remen Chopra, Shreyas Karle and Ved Gupta and Writers - Mohd. Ahmad Sabih and Shubhalakshmi Shukla.

Balaji Ponna’s works are “textual” and it is here that Balaji’s earlier engagement with the popular sign boards and vehicle paintings come to the fore. Balaji’s use of specific visual devices, grids, frames, photography, text, repetitive compositions and attempts at subversion can be read as the post modern tools of visual articulations. Hemali Bhuta’s installations come across as occurrences, seemingly independent of the artist’s presence as they grow, breathe, move, and shed. She does mostly site-specific works and installations. Documenting and archiving seem to become curious nodes of enquiry into Hemali’s works as she is constantly dealing with the dilemma about how to show her work. Himanshu S has no predilection towards any medium. He even doubts his role in being an artist. With activities that range from children’s workshops, teaching, activism, painting other artists’ paintings, and selling little booklets, Himanshu’s main anxiety seems to return again and again to the institution of art. Kedar Dhondu often uses the language of miniatures for expressions in his works but his underlying themes deal with the core of violence. He brilliantly juxtaposes the beautiful watercolour medium in his work. He uses animals and their expected behavior as metaphors for human behavior ranging from aggressiveness and violence to fear, sensitivity and concern. He invites viewers to involve themselves empathetically, identifiying their own personal experiences.

Om Soorya’s works are surreal dream-like landscapes that question what is real and what is perceived. They look like ‘hung’ cities, a site of exploding activities, a crucible of profit production, a field of contesting ideologies, a program of multi tasking capabilities, but ‘hung’ for a while. Remen Chopra works mostly on paper. But she employs various media, and her images are arrived at through mediation, twice, thrice, and many times over, of techniques similar to the process carbon copy. Her aim is to present work as if it’s some kind of theatre where one can maybe see all the props, characters, and the mise-en-scene, to not so much see what all is visible, but in how they are barely visible.Shreyas Karle plays various roles in his every work. Working on community-based art, collaborative projects, and a range of new media, the one common aspect in all his works is his insistence on conducting ‘research’.Little dwarves of corporate giants and ministers, caricatures, metaphors and proverbs distorted, this is what Ved Gupta’s fiberglass painted sculptures come across as at first glance. His work principally concentrates on social hierarchies, class in particular, and the common man. - Excerpts from Mohd. Ahmad Sabih’s Essay.

Balaji Ponna received his B.F.A in Graphics from Andhra University with Gold medal and M.F.A in Graphics from Visva - Bharati University, Santiniketan. Balaji Ponna has participated in various group shows over the last couple of years including’ The July Show’ at The Guild and Art Basel 09. Recently the artist had a solo show at Bose Pacia, Kolkata in collaboration with The Guild, Mumbai.

Hemali Bhuta, completed her M.V.A. (Post Diploma, Painting) at M.S.U., Baroda. She is a recipient of the Senior Scholarship from Lalit Kala Akademi for the year 2004-05.

She has participated in various group shows like a photography exhibition titled “Visuals of a post-visual world” curated by Gitanjali Dang in 2008 “.

Himanshu S. has been involved in teaching, and has participated in a number of group shows. He has had two solo shows at The Guild namely ‘An Interval between Two Non-occurrences’ and ‘this is himanshu s. maybe’.

Kedar Dhondu has been in participating in various group shows and camps. In 2008: The July Show at The Guild, Mumbai .He is the recipient of "Kava4”, Kashi Award For Visual Art. Kedar D has also partcipated in a print-making at a workshop in Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal,

Om Soorya obtained a BFA in painting from College of Fine Arts, Kerela University, Thiruvananthapuram and a MFA in painting from the University of Hyderabad. Om Soorya’s solo shows include 2007: Random Mirrors in the City of Villagers at THE GUILD ART USA INC, New York, 2007. He received the Emerging Artist Award in 2007 given by Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art (FICA).Om was a part of the Prohelvetia Residency program at Zurich in 2009.

Remen Chopra completed her B.F.A and M.F.A in Fine Art from the College of Art, New Delhi. She has participated in various group shows and residency programs including a residency program at School of Visual Art New York.

Shreyas Karle obtained his M.V.A in visual arts at the M.S.University, Baroda in the discipline of painting in 2008. He is the recipient of the Bodhi art award 2008. Shreyas has participated in various shows, site specific workshops.

Ved Gupta graduated from Faculty of Fine Arts 2004, Baroda (B.F.A, M.F.A Sculptures). He has earned many awards and participated in various shows and also in the Al Bastika Art Fair Dubai, U.A.E. He is the recipient of the Kashi Award for Visual Art, Kochi, Kerala .

Mohd.Ahmad Sabih did Bachelors in Visual Arts, specializing in Art History from the M.S. University of Baroda, following which he completed the interdisciplinary M.A. programme at the School of Arts & Aesthetics (SAA), JNU in 2009. Sabih has been involved in doing research and archiving with art-critics, artists, and auction-houses, and his area of interest is in investigating the infrastructure and institution of Art in the country.

Shubhalakshmi Shukla completed her Masters in Visual Arts specialising in Art History from M.S. University in 1997. She has curated shows and also has a teaching experience at various schools of Art. Shubhalakshmi has a number of publications accredited to her including ‘Body and Transcendence : Two Women Artists, An essay on the paintings of Nasreen Mohamedi and Anita Dube’ in the book Towards New Art History: Studies in Indian Art and ‘Indexing Spaces and Images’, in the art journal Lalit Kala Contemporary.

POOJA IRANNA

Of Human Endeavor:

The Super Exposed City and the New Possibilities of Space

6 – 22 August, 2009

PREVIEW – Friday, 6 August, 7 to 9 pm

Conversation between Pooja Iranna and Deeksha Nath– 7 to 7.30 pm

The Guild Art Gallery is pleased to present ‘Of Human Endeavor: The Super Exposed City and the New Possibilities of Space’, solo show of recent works by Pooja Iranna at The Guild previewing on 6th August 09.

Born in 1969 in New Delhi, Pooja Iranna received her BFA and MFA in Painting from the College of Art in New Delhi. Some of her prominent shows include ‘Metamorphic Mathematics’ at The Guild, Mumbai; Trends & Trivia at The Visual Arts Centre, Hong Kong; Walk the Line at Avanthay Contemporary, Zurich; ‘India Revealed’, curated by Antonio Manfred at Cam Casoria Contemporary Art Museum, Naples, Italy; Korea-India Contemporary Art Exchange Exhibition, Seoul, Korea and Emerging India’, by art Alive at the Henry Moore Gallery, London. Her works are in private collections in India, New York, Bangkok, and Hong Kong.

“Pooja’s art has made slight visual shifts every few years since she began working after graduating from the College of Art, New Delhi in 1995 but she has remained true to her inspirational precedents – built urban structures, how they order and articulate space and the response of the human body and the human psyche to these spaces. The particular brand of her visual language has existed in the blurred boundaries between painting, photography, mixed media collages and sculptures and between architecture, urban spatiality and abstraction.

When looking at the photographic works we are aware firstly of the soaring access, of spatiality articulated as a spectacle. This free movement is aided but also ordered by the architectural elements, creating frames which are patterned by grids, reducing the magnificence to the manageable. What they are present day high-rises, headquarters of Multinational Corporations, Banks or World Agencies, shiny glass clad buildings that belong to no-place and can be seen in every-place. But what they have become in Pooja’s works are radical architecture, emptying space of time and event thus creating a shock of absolute fragmentation and dislocation.

These spatial imaginations can not be dissociated from the material corpus of the city. The artist takes pleasure in multiplying architectural perspectives in order to mislead the spectator. This architecture may cause anxiety due to its potentially limitless character, yet it is the limitlessness of the constructed that also frees it, and us, from the shackles of confinement and thus urban imprisonment. The ever-expanding boundaries of the built space become our new frontiers, our anxious landscapes.”

(Excerpt from Catalogue Essay by Deeksha Nath)

The Guild
02/32, Kamal Mansion, 2nd floor, Arthur Bunder Road,Colaba Mumbai 400005
+ 91 22 2288 0116 / 0195, admn office : +91 22 2287 5839 /6211 fax + 91 22 2287 6210
www.guildindia.com, www.theguildny.com , Time: 10.00 am - 6.30 pm

'With a Pinch of Salt' by K.P. Reji

The Guild Art Gallery is pleased to present With a Pinch of Salt, by K P Reji from July 3rd, 2009 to July 18^th, 2009 at The Guild.

“It’s a delight to find paintings in the common and everyday...”

K.P. Reji

The present body of works by Baroda based artist K. P. Reji are a continuation of his explorations into the organization of community life in India and the manner in which this has become a political issue in contemporary India. However, what makes the present set of works distinct from some of his more recent works on community is the way he has pushed the conceptual thresholds of his visual language in order to probe further into the areas of community life in India, particularly the ways in which the Indian nation state has arranged the lives of its people. He focuses on the way the nation state has set up a seemingly coherent bio political order for its own legitimacy as a sovereign power. The sites where Reji has chosen to work for the mapping of the ‘national’ and ‘modern’ in India are of course the paradigmatic sites of the family and the state, the domains of the private and the public. What one sees across these set of works is a collapsing of these seemingly separate spheres of life with their distinctions becoming historically irrelevant in the face of an emerging biopolitical order in India. Reji’s works map this order of life and the ways in which the lives of various communities are imagined in it.

Reji’s representations of this new order are structured around an incisive examination of the category family. The family, as it emerges in this body of work, is caught in the interstices of nation and capital. Rendered at moments of the intensely personal—during sleep, at play, setting up a house or making love—the family nevertheless is shown relentlessly tied to governmental forces that shape its very contours. There is a sustained hint in these dramatic, even melodramatic depictions, that these figures are hardly individuated, in fact, they call to mind populations and demographics, the subjects of a national order.

Born in Kerala, K.P. Reji has done his graduation and post-graduation in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University of Baroda. He has had three solo exhibitions with ‘Just Above My Head’ being the latest, held in The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai in 2006. He has widely participated in many significant group exhibitions, camps and workshops in India and abroad, including the Shanghai Art Fair (2008), Miami Art Fair (2008), Miart 2008 in Milano, ‘OK Horn Please’ curated by Suman Gopinath at Bern Museum, Switzerland (2007), ‘Beyond Credos’ curated by Shivaji K. Panikkar at Birla Academy, Kolkata (2007), ‘Double Enders’ a travelling exhibition curated by Bose Krishnamachari (2005-6), ‘Are We Like This Only’ curated by Vidya Shivadas at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi (2005) among many others. He has recently been the recipient of the Sanskriti Award for the Young Artist by the Sanskriti Foundation, New Delhi in 2007. He lives and works in Baroda.

Writers / Artists Residency at The Guild

Writers / Artists Residency at The Guild

The Residency is another step taken by The Guild Art Gallery in nurturing young talent. The Residency aims to have an open structure, where writers and artists working across disciplines will work and interact with each other. Such an assemblage of artists and writers will call for a greater exchange of ideas.

It will be an in-house working residency in two batches – the first batch will be from the 17th of June to 23rd of June 09 and second batch from the 25th June to the 1st of July 09. During these days, the participating artists would be getting slides for internal presentation, in which they would be speaking about their art and also about various influences that have made a considerable impact on them. The participating writers would be conducting workshops within the residency; further they would be choosing a few artists to speak about in depth, fostering a greater understanding about the works of the chosen artist.

Apart from the interaction among the artists and writers within the residency, there will be interactive programmes with visiting artists and experts from other disciplines on formal and informal basis. These talks will focus on various issues pertaining to contemporary art. One of which is – Introduction of Market Studies in Academics. For the same there would be a panel of artists presenting their views on these issues and would be discussing it with the participating artists and the audience. Not restricting to the field of fine arts there shall be a poetry reading session by eminent poets, and screening of films too. In these sessions artists / writers could share their own works or those works which have etched in their mind. These sessions would be open for public).
The participating artists and writers are – K.P.Reji, Sandeep Pisalkar, Sathyanand Mohan Lokesh Khodke, Bhuvanesh Gowda, Shrikant Puranik, Amitesh Srivastava, Ashutosh Bhardwaj, Suvitha K.V. & Parvez Kabir
Dates and other details:

The Residency will be held in two batches.

2nd batch from the 25th of June to the 1st of July 2009 (both days inclusive)

Second Batch Schedule:

25th June – 1st July 09

Location: The Guild (New Space), 02/32, Kamal Mansion, 2nd Floor, Arthur Bunder Road, Colaba, Mumbai 400005

Timings: Evening 6.00 p.m onwards. Except on 27th June, Saturday, Film Session at 6.30 p.m
Open to all.


Dates
Day
Event

Panel

26 June
Friday
Writers Workshop

Parvez Kabir

27
Saturday
Film Session (6.30 pm)

Films:

a) Works from the series of ART 21, on Cai Gua-Qiang and Krzysztof Wodiczko.
Duration: 20 mins.

b) Harold Pinter’s Nobel Lecture:
Art, Truth & Politics, 2005
Duration: 40 mins.

- With Riyas Komu


28
Sunday
Informal Talk

Zasha Colah


29
Monday
Market Studies and Academics

Bose Krishnamachari, Chintan Upadhyay and Sanjeev Khandekar



30
Tuesday
Poetry Session

Bina Sarkar Ellias

1stJuly
Wednesday
Informal Talk

Brief presentations of works and an informal talk with the artists and writers



Parvez Kabir is an art critic and historian. He is a faculty member at Santiniketan; and a participant at the Guild Residency Programme too.

Riyas Komu is a Mumbai based artist whose works span different media. Apart from this, Komu has a special interest in films.

Zasha Colah, is a Mumbai based art historian. Currently Colah is working as a curator with the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai.

Bose Krishnamachari, is a Mumbai based, multi-disciplinary artist who has exhibited in numerous solo and group shows and curated exhibitions internationally.

Chintan Upadhyay is a Mumbai based artist. Upadhyay’s works address the notion of the ‘designed’, with respect to contemporary technologies of replication.

Sanjeev Khandekar is a poet, writer and visual artist. The artist lives and works in Mumbai.
Bina Sarkar Ellias is the editor, designer and publisher of Gallerie magazine. She is also a poet & freelance writer, having written for national newspapers.