B16
The most urgent and topical discourses of our times seem to stake claim on trends of rupture. In the melting pot that is the contemporary moment, we find historical narratives fracturing themselves into the present even as the present bubbles and fissures off towards different futures. Our world is wounded, but there is still hope. Pessimistic thinking shrouds the future in inevitability, while optimism acknowledges enormous possibility in how the world can be. Along this spectrum, perhaps our dystopian impulses are speculative measures of mobility that denote the lengths and breadths of our escapes from either codifying bind.
In his tome Paradise Lost poet John Milton wrote, “Solitude sometimes is best society” – a dialogical assertion of our fundamental human need to seek refuge in community and shared knowledge even as we intensify our subjectivity. Inspired by such themes of self-surveillance and a persistent negotiation with chaos, we present a special curation of artworks by leading and emerging Indian contemporary artists Rameshwar Broota, Anju Dodiya, Atul Dodiya, Praneet Soi, N.S. Harsha, Biraaj Dodiya, Shailesh B. R. and Shrimanti Saha, who explore illusions of the universe through fragmentation and narrative, inclining themselves towards a world structure fraught with complexity, anxiety and instability at which they themselves are at the center.
Memoirs from a Fool’s Paradise explores provocations in philosophical moods regarding identity-based relationships with the world at large, as seen in:
Praneet Soi’s formalist pursuit of figuration through interpretive distortions and layered juxtapositions that chart the migration of cultural ideas, symbols and patterns of imagery in this mixed media work;
Shrimanti Saha’s voluminous digestion and perceptive re-plotting of intellectual references across historical and contemporary sources, presenting distortion as an inherent value in cognition in an oil on linen;
Atul Dodiya’s suite of watercolours featuring his iconic solitary figure laid bare in compelling moods of calm, solitude, vigour or intensity, offering myth-like explanations for experiences and events of the world that can be poetic or aggressive;
Anju Dodiya’s shaped mattress speaks to tender mercies in a theatrical postulation of a life lived in weight and wait, through disorientations in objects that are by default related to the intimate and domestic;
N.S. Harsha’s satirical approach to the human condition, rendering the prophetic tensions of everyday experiences such as over-consumption and manufactured hunger in capitalist society in a bronze sculpture;
Biraaj Dodiya’s hybrid works presenting her well-regarded abstract expressionist oil paintings in sculptural form, evoking the façades and spirits of the nocturnal landscape while postulating distance and temporality in unknown or absent territories;
Shailesh B.R.’s exploration of the sculptural nature of the imagination through disparate truths, creating a kind of dialect for day-to-day existence that reconciles the eccentricities of the contemporary world in a collection of painted collage works on paper;
and Rameshwar Broota’s quintessential mark-making relying as much on concealment as on reveal, with serendipitous images emerging illuminated with a cosmic charm – from celestial references to representations of Earthly conflict – as he aims to explore the textural and transcendent qualities of life itself.
To view the show virtually, please visit our website www.vadehraart.com. An e-catalogue, with more information on our presentation and artists, is also available on request. For all inquiries, please write to art@vadehraart.com.
