An aspect of contemporary Indian art is the manner in which mid career artists have accomplished the making of (bodily) forms. Informed by Indian modernity, issues of feminism and post structural thought, they are the products of the global art residency, museum and gallery shows, and the intense activity of the Indian art scene. In their paintings and sculpture, the human body, its parts and its gestures extends into multiple spheres, of aspiration, desire and narratives of the self. The artists engagement with a rapidly globalizing India, and how she locates herself in the growing city, are some of the sub themes. In the process partial stories, memory and the free associations of the mind come into play.
The artists on view represent a segment of leading artists who have emerged from different schools of thought and practice. Chittrovanu Mazumdar represents a dovetailing of late modernism with sculptural installation. He uses light, dramatic atmosphere and a theatrical mise-en-scene to stage his work. At another end of the spectrum, Shibu Natesan works in an apparently photorealist style even as he compels the viewer to search his painting and locate in it psychological meaning. Anju Dodiya’s narrative painting invariably involves aspects of her self, and set out a psychological template of womanhood. Mithu Sen who teases out shades of surreal meaning from forms, creates veiled meaning through visual provocation. Sen’s easy cross over between the animal and human world is echoed in the work of Jagannath Panda who completely alters scale and injects an element of imaginative play in his interpretation of the natural world. In each of the artists the narratives and readings are multiple and complex.
- Gayatri Sinha