Happy Thanksgiving
From Tamarind Art

Book Reading 12/2/08 At Tamarind Art

Harper Perennial, in Connection with the South Asian Journalists Association and Tamarind Arts Council, Presents: "An Evening with Karan Mahajan", Author of the book Family Planning December 2, 2009 7 -9 pm

Join us for a reading and an opportunity to meet author Karan Mahajan who will be reading from his new book Family Planning at Tamarind Art. Copies of the book will be available for purchase.

About Family Planning–

The patriarch of a chaotic family living in a hectic land must come to terms with himself and what he's wrought at home and at work in this excellent debut. Rakesh Ahuja battles the twin bedlams of his sprawling family and overcrowded home city of New Delhi while simultaneously trying to save his career as the minister of urban development. Rakesh attempts to manipulate and cajole his way through the corrupt and sometimes illogical Indian civil service, often finding himself embroiled in absurd intrigues. Home is no less fraught, where his 13 children battle each other for their often-absent father's love. The lone exception is Arjun, the eldest, whose adolescent rebellion and nascent romantic inclinations prompt him to form a rock band and pull away from his frenetic family. As Rakesh clumsily reaches out to his first-born son, the twists of fate that shaped both their lives are revealed, providing a portrait of a family that is both comical and heartbreaking. Mahajan's effortless blending of comedy and tragedy is irresistible and should help his book stand out.

Tamarind Arts Council 142 East 39th St, New York, NY 10016 www.tamarindarts.com 212-200-8000 to attend RSVP to

audrey.harris@harpercollins.com

212-207-7185

Spotlight on Maneesha Doshi

Post-Modernity in Indian Art has often dwindled in two directions: one mostly cerebral, the second thriving on passion or emotive faculty. Maneesha Doshi follows the later mode of expression.

The daughter of an eminent architect, with a Bachelor in Psychology, Maneesha studied painting at Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, under the tutelage of well-known artists such as Jeram Patel, Bhupen Kakkar, and Ghulam Mohammad and Nilima Sheikh.

Drawing close affinity with Mexican master Rufino Tamayo’s philosophy, Doshi’s art germinates from her inner being. It involves her emotion and passion for life and existence. Human persona coupled with the divine is the basic theme and characteristic of her expressions. She explores her very self, delves deeper into it and from the depth of her being tries to comprehend the world around her. She uses jubilant colors, carefully meditated atmosphere, flat compositions and simplified conception of forms to decipher the complexities of realities. When she steps out of herself and enters the world around her, the process of assimilation between ‘heart’ and ‘head’ begins. The end result is divine, tranquil, internal landscapes with vivid imageries narrating fables of her life as she lives each day.

By portraying woman as a deity in allegorical representations against mythological backdrops, decorated with devotional motifs such as flower garlands and lighted lamps in temple-like sanctums, Maneesha glorifies the feminine by raising it to the level of divinity.

How far she can control this synthesis of personal ideologies and spiritual themes depends upon her aesthetic success.

To invest in Art or Not that is the question

Recently the word investment has been a bit of a dirty word. The stock market and real estate have gone from being a sure thing to an incredibly risky proposition. So what about art? Is it a safer area to invest?

As with any type of investments it is always good to have a diverse portfolio this goes for art as well. Over the long run fine art can be a great investment, that said buying art is long term investment. Over the past 10 years auction prices have been rising as has the celebrity of many artists. Even as the stock market began to tumble this fall Damien Hirst, a rock star artists if there ever was one, managed to sell over 200 artworks at Sotheby’s for nearly $200 million.

Since that auction buyers have become more cautious, at the recent Impressionists and Modern Art auction at Sotheby’s only 45 of the 70 lots up for auction sold. With shrinking returns on other investments art buyers are becoming more cautious. This is understandable with news stories telling us how everyone is cutting back, but if you can afford to do so now is the time to buy art.

With the sudden market panic, prices on art will begin to creep down, many works of high quality will be coming to auction as companies begin liquidating their corporate art collections. In addition investors who need extra cash will also be selling leading to a great opportunity for collectors. But what if your interested in investing in art but don’t have a Monet budget what can you do?

Look at art galleries, many galleries handle a variety of artist at various stages in their careers, younger artist or artists who are from countries that are becoming global player are a great area to look into. If you are looking at this from an investment standpoint start by visiting galleries; a gallery with a smart staff will be able to point you in the direction you want to go. Contemporary Indian Art is an area that has been growing steadily over the past 10 years both in India and in the West. Many of the older and mid-career artist are commanding prices that rival their western contemporaries. But the younger artist are creating high quality work that is proving to be a good area to invest.

If you decide you do want to invest in art, learn a bit about your poetical investment. Don’t just buy what you love – educate yourself first. Visit museums and galleries. Look for work by any artist studying with artist who you are interested in and who hasn’t “hit” yet. Also look beyond paintings on canvas, drawings, watercolors, and fine-art prints tend to be undervalued, so you might just get a real deal on one of those.

And in the end if the market falls out of the art world too you still have more than you did when you invested in stocks, after all who decorates with stock certificates?

Spotlight on Nimesh Patel

Nimesh Patel’s works show a jumble of objects - electronics, metal parts, wires and dials as a background to represent the cacophony of modern existence. Patel’s urban landscapes are illustrated as garbage heaps of cars, factories, and pollution, all neatly connected by an intricate network of wires. One of his earlier drawings depicts a wall of human beings impotently shooting spears and arrows at this junk heap of technology across a great divide. Patel’s work makes us question the progress of a world in which we are hooked-up, linked-in and tied-up to a constant barrage of information and misinformation, sound and sound-bytes, blocking out our finer sensibilities, sensitivities and humanity.

Works from his recent series “Reproduction before Revolution” shows a controlled format which is hybrid of miniature painting and comic strip layouts. The underlying narrative, continuous or splintered as the case may be, defies a literal readability in spite of the very specific juxtaposition of super imposed images which constitute it. It represents a unity which is connective rather than whole. Nimesh portrays the production house, one of a kind with simultaneous exploration of the repercussions of its products on the society. The seduction and intimacy offered by laboriously rendered images, far from being repellent or horrific, makes an everlasting statement which finds complete acceptance in our minds.

Spotlight on Eleena Banik

Eleena Banik debuted in the contemporary art scene over a decade ago with a series of abstract expressionistic paintings that invited viewers to contemplate mainstream modernism in a feminist light.

Through the use of contrasting textures and materials, Eleena creates art that conveys myriad layers of meaning and feeling. Her large canvases, rich with additive, expressionistic marks and bold lines have a strong epic presence. Her work’s dark obsessions operate internally in the viewer, playing on their psyche, their own doubts, fears and prejudice.

Still in her thirties, and a graduate of Vishva Bharati University, Santiniketan, Eleena has already covered much ground with 28 solo exhibitions, numerous group shows and a considerable body of work to her credit, commenting on most issues of contemporary interest ranging from violence to environment. While feminist concerns and sexuality continue to be the undercurrents for much of her distinct work, “Journey through a time of terror” (118 x 54in.) voices a protest against the violence and terrorism in the world. The iconography of three rickshaw pullers displays the ravages of time and pain. A crescent moon, crows on the hoods of carriages, a decapitated human head on a seat, pale expressions and twisted body language of the rickshaw pullers unfolds volcanic turmoil of human tragedy.

Spotlight on Nikita Parikh

In contrast with other women artists of her time, there is neither idea of feminine dominance nor feminine vulnerability in Nikita Parikh’s work. Nikita ingeniously bypasses the classic feminist issues of equality and social justice simply by taking inspirations from traditional Indian art such as Pichwai paintings and Shekhavati Murals. Born to a religious Vaishnava family, Nikita received MFA from M S University, Baroda. Like many Indians, Parikh in her childhood imbibed a rich storehouse of mythical and magical narratives. As an artist, she carefully reconstructs Indian myths and fables mingled with nostalgia to achieve an atmosphere of alternative fantasy in her work. While one cannot categorize her works as naïve art, there is a definite and deliberate naivety and innocence in her unique style which is reminiscent of modern masters such as Ken Kiff, Chagall, Miro and Kandinsky. Oddity of form, clumsy application of color and a tinge of humor in her earlier work has evolved into subtlety of statement gaining mature adaptability of style where Western influences do not remain as alien in Indian context. She often embellishes her work with playful, narrative captions that add ambiguity more than giving a clue to the images shown by her. In the current series “Sab Bhumi Gopal Ki’ she fabricates serene visual statement with repeated images of cows and flowers with traditional block printing methods in the composition to symbolize Lord Krishna’s Gokul with many cows and vegetation. In the course, she has subverted the modernity of high art practices by bringing traditional craft practices and material as Post-Modern art practice. This statement also merges the differences between the high art and craft practices, highlighting the labor involved in traditional artistry.

Spotlight on Mahula Ghosh

Many of Ghosh’s works appear deceptively serene from a distance. However, upon closer inspection, one sees depictions of war and terrorism, destruction and chaos. Tanks and war machines, automobiles broken by bombs and the silent faces of witnesses all express a world where car bombings and death has become the day-to-day backdrop for many as they go about their lives. As newspaper articles and news programs bombard us with images of war, terrorism and torture, there is poignancy in seeing these topics represented in acrylic, watercolor and gauche. Works with titles such as ‘Stain,’ ‘Burn,’ and ‘Wounds’ present an abstract representation of what for so many have become commonplace, and give homage to their experience.

“View from Distance” and “ Eyewitness” traces the trail of bloodshed in the Northern states of Jammu and Kashmir. Places like Pahelgaon and Gulmarg, once considered heaven on earth, are under constant turmoil both socially and politically. Culled from theatres of war, women and children endeavor to make sense of the apparently senseless bloodletting as they as they see it through the window.

Spotlight on Dipanker Dasgupta

Dipankar Dasgupta, we are also shown a world that is bleak, empty, and sometimes dark. The rough side of existence is juxtaposed with ornamentation, which can be interpreted as the divisiveness of a caste system or modern society’s enticing cover-up, distracting us from the darker, bleaker side of an industrialized world. Dasgupta shows the devastation left behind when an industry has eaten its fill and moved on to greener pastures. Modern architecture is depicted as a maze of jagged lines and, like Patel, man and nature is shown connected by wires rather than the natural flow of energy and emotion between all living things.

“Connectivity I &II” and “The Hill, The Moons, The Sea…” communicate the advancement in the world of technology while three waning celestial bodies trapped in an eclipse, hover over the lifeless golden hill. In this body of paintings the surface of the canvas serves as a signifier against which the artist develops on his language of coded symbols.

Spotlight on Sharmi Chowdhury

Figurative in nature the paintings of Sharmi Chowdhury depict the complexities of human relationships that the artist presents from personal experiences. The artist is a passive observer of the scene she has created. Multiple perspectives, reminiscent of miniature paintings, have been used by Chowdhury very effectively in order to delineate various related events at different space and time. The use of theatrical backdrops adds drama to the overall composition.

Born in 1974, in Kolkata Chowdhury received her B.F.A in painting from Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan in 2003 and M.F.A in painting from M.S. University, Baroda in 2005. Chowdhury’s first solo show was at Sarjan Art Gallery, Baroda in 2005. In 2008 she had a solo show at Art Alive Gallery, New Delhi. She was also in a two person show at Hacienda Art Gallery in Mumbai; Chowdhury has participated in many group shows in India and Abroad. Among the most recent shows include ‘Emerging India’ organized by Art Alive Gallery in New Delhi at the Royal College of Art, London, UK. The Singapore art fair , Singapore, RL Fine Arts Gallery in New York, Birla Academy of Art & culture in Kolkata, Sarjan Art Gallery in Baroda, Art Consult in new Delhi, Mon Art Gallery, Kolkata, Akkriti Art Galary, Kolkata, Trends &Trivia at Hong Kong, SA Fine Arts at London, UK.

Chowdhury has been the reciepient of a number of prestegous awards some of these are, the ‘Kala Bhavan merit scholarship’ from Visva Bharti University in 1998-2002 the Nokia art award in 1998 and Camlin art award in 2003.

Chowdhury currently lives and works in Baroda, Gujrat.

Spotlight on Mind Matter & Mystique

In Tamarind Arts Current show Mind, Matter & Mystique a number of extremely talented artists are featured. In our press materials we are only allowed a few sentences to focus on each of these wonderful people in the next few posts I will highlight each of theses artists giving the reader an opportunity to learn more about each artist.

Within the context of contemporary Indian art, the last decade of twentieth century is very important towards the development of modernity. Indian artists today are living simultaneously in several cultures and times. As times and cultures converge, the past exists as a living entity alongside the present, illuminating and sustaining each other. Many young and promising artists have tried to come out of conventional ways of image-making practiced by their predecessors of the past decades. They have absorbed in themselves the turmoil created by globalization and its outcome- the market economy, which brought along with it an enormous shift in socio-political and cultural values. They have reacted, restrained or raised a voice of rebellion against these changing spheres through their art.

Mind, Matter and Mystique is an attempt to bring together the conventions of conceptualism, unification of multidirectional norms, mystical faculty of vision, and other varieties of the Indian Contemporary Art practice.