GROUP SHOW
The (Pro)found Object
25 August – 24 September 2021
Monday – Saturday | 10 a.m. – 6 p.m.
Vadehra Art Gallery
D-53 Defence Colony, New Delhi – 110024
Vadehra Art Gallery is pleased to announce a group exhibition titled The (Pro)found Object, featuring artists Biraaj Dodiya, Shailesh B.R., Youdhisthir Maharjan and Moonis Ahmad Shah.
From the orientations they take up or make up in our worlds, found objects – or what the French often refer to as objets trouvé – are in possession of intrinsic contexts and posit themselves with linguistic values, much like artworks themselves. When pursued by an artist’s insightful acknowledgement and intervention of their immanent or interpreted meanings, and the roles they play in life’s experiences, these objects can reflect a renewed aesthetic outlook veering on powerful metaphors of making and creation. In effect, objects maintain an inert psychology framed by parameters of identification, nomenclature, utility and symbolism. Their objectivity is seemingly retained by the context they appear to us in, but they urge an aesthetic, emotive or sensitized response in viewers, who promptly and profoundly become involved in the production of meaning as it pertains to relationships of existence.
The (Pro)found Object celebrates an artist’s reverent curiosity for curios through the recent works and practices of four exciting contemporary artists: Biraaj Dodiya, Moonis Ahmad Shah, Shailesh B.R. and Youdhisthir Maharjan. These artists engage with a speckled roster of found objects from published books and appropriated telegrams to personal relics and everyday objects, illustrating a sensory intellectualism necessary for transfiguring dispositions of identity into interactive archives of persons, time and place yielded through collective access. Together Shailesh, Dodiya, Ahmad and Maharjan deliberate on form and function as much as translations of meaning from each of their activations, weaving expanded notions of materials and meditative processes into traditional collage, painting and sculpture, therein transgressing the otherwise measured interplays between art and its utilitarian faculties.
We’re happy to welcome visitors to the gallery, where we’re undertaking all safety protocols, and are also pleased to make engaging with the show a virtual possibility as well. To view the show virtually, please visit our website for a multi-dimensional mapping of the show. An e-catalogue is also available on request. For all inquiries, please write to art@vadehraart.com.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
Born in 1993, BIRAAJ DODIYA is a Mumbai-based visual artist. She received her MFA from New York University in 2018, and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2015. Her selected exhibitions include (ME)(MORY), Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi (2021); Stone is a Forehead, Experimenter, Kolkata (2020); Burn Your Finger, and Kiss it Yourself, 80WSE, New York (2017); and Send Your Location, 33 Orchard, New York (2017). Dodiya is the recipient of the 2021 Civitella Ranieri Visual Arts Fellowship, the 2018 Jack Goodman Scholarship in Art and Technology, and was nominated for the 2018 Dedalus Foundation MFA Fellowship in Painting and Sculpture. The artist lives and works in Mumbai.
Born in 1986, SHAILESH B.R. received a bachelor’s degree in fine arts, specialising in painting, from the Chamarajendran Academy of Visual Arts, Mysore, and has a post-graduate diploma from the Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU, Baroda. Shailesh’s solo exhibition Tarka was held at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi (2017). Shailesh has participated in various group shows, including the CIMA Art Award Show, Kolkata (2014); Drawing 2014: Seven Decades of Indian Drawing, Gallery Espace, Delhi (2014); Student’s Biennale, Kochi 2014, a parallel event to the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014; Remembering the Present, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi (2018); and, Narrow Road to the Interior, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi (2019).He has been part of the Khoj Peers 2015 as an artist-in-residence and was invited for the Khoj Peers Share in October 2013. In 2014, Shailesh has received the Inlaks Fine Arts Award and was also invited to Sandarbh Art Residency, Partapur, as an artist-in-residence. In 2016, he was awarded the FICA Emerging Artist Award and travelled to Switzerland for a residency. In March 2017, he was invited for the Khoj residency in Goa. Shailesh’s solo exhibition The Last Brahmin will be held at the prestigious Villa Arson in Nice, France from 14 February to 13 May, 2020. The artist lives and works in Vadodara, Gujarat.
Born in 1984 in Nepal, YOUDHISTHIR MAHARJAN completed a bachelor’s of arts in creative writing and art history from New England College, New Hampshire, USA, and a master’s of fine arts at the University of Idaho, USA. Maharjan has since exhibited extensively in India, Nepal, the United States and the UK. Some of his noteworthy exhibitions include solo shows at TARQ, Mumbai; Prichard Gallery, Idaho (2012); New England College Gallery, New Hampshire (2012); and Nite Light at Indigo Gallery, Nepal (2004), as well as group exhibitions including Desai/Matta Gallery, San Francisco (2017); Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, New Hampshire (2017); TARQ, Mumbai (2016); Saffron Art, New York (2016); Winchester Gallery, UK (2016); and Seraphin Gallery, Philadelphia (2016), among others. His work has also been part of large-scale exhibitions such as the Kathmandu Triennale (2017) and the Boston International Fine Art Show, Boston Center for the Arts (2015). The artist currently lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts.
Born in 1992 in Kashmir, MOONIS AHMAD SHAH works across various media such as installation, sculpture, programming sound and video. He is currently a doctoral candidate and a sessional lecturer at the University of Melbourne and is a recipient of the Australian Graduate Research and Training Programme Scholarship. In 2017, he received the Emerging Artist Award from the Foundation of Indian Contemporary Art. He has shown his work at various national and international exhibitions, including the Margaret Lawrence Gallery, Melbourne (2021); Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi (2019); Goa Centre of the arts (2019); Sattlekamer, Bern (2018); Auckland Art Fair, New Zealand (2018); Rohtas Gallery, Pakistan (2017); 1 x 1 Gallery, Dubai (2017); UNIDEE, Cittadelarte, Italy (2016), to name a few. He also completed a three-month residency at Stadtgalarie, Bern, and HSLU, Lucerne, Switzerland organized by the Pro Helvetia Swiss Arts Council. The artist lives and works between Kashmir and Melbourne.
ABOUT VADEHRA ART GALLERY
Established in 1987, Vadehra Art Gallery is among the most well-respected art galleries in India representing a roster of artists spanning four generations. Modern masters like M.F. Husain, Ram Kumar, S.H. Raza and Tyeb Mehta find prime spot in the gallery’s calendar alongside the subsequent generation of modernists like Arpita Singh, Nalani Malani, Gulammohammed Sheikh and Rameshwar Broota. VAG’s contemporary programme includes some of the most exciting names in Indian art such as Atul Dodiya, Shilpa Gupta, Anju Dodiya, N.S. Harsha, Jagannath Panda, as well as young emerging talent. As a key artistic interlocutor to audiences in India the gallery expanded its exhibition programme in 2007 to exhibit important names from the international contemporary art scene. Since then VAG has exhibited works of significant international artists including Yoko Ono, Wolfgang Laib, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud. Vadehra Art Gallery ventured into publishing in 1996, finding a crucial need for adequate documentation, critical writing, and quality reproduction of images. In the last two decades the gallery has published hundreds of illustrated exhibition catalogues, and several important artist monographs, some in collaboration with international publishing house, Prestel.
