Artists: Aditi Singh, Anju Dodiya, Atul Dodiya, Areez Katki, Biraaj Dodiya, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Jitish Kallat, Mahesh Baliga, Nilima Sheikh, Ranbir Kaleka, Ratheesh T., Sudhir Patwardhan, Sujith S.N.
A special exhibition held in memoriam of beloved artist Gieve Patel, curated by respected poet, art critic and cultural theorist Ranjit Hoskote. The exhibition – featuring a collection of works by artists Aditi Singh, Anju Dodiya, Atul Dodiya, Areez Katki, Biraaj Dodiya, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Jitish Kallat, Mahesh Baliga, Nilima Sheikh, Ranbir Kaleka, Ratheesh T., Sudhir Patwardhan and Sujith S.N.
A celebrated cornerstone of the Indian art community, Gieve Patel passed away in 2023. His oeuvre exemplified a passionate concern for the psychological complexities of the subaltern human condition, surviving their indistinct everydayness and emerging resilient in the face of hardship, inequality and violence. Patel’s compositions ascribe a narrative depth to observed realities in a steadily modernizing post-colonial India, particularly around his home city of Mumbai, articulated in charged arrangements of imbued forms, performative actions and emotional consequences that invoke the reactive underbelly of cultural strife.
“Gieve’s engagement with the arts was wide as well as deep, ranging across poetry and fiction, theatre and cinema, painting and sculpture, Western as well as Hindustani classical music, and dance. In every art, he found himself attracted to the virtuoso’s flawless command over technique – yet he was also greatly moved by the more experimental practitioner’s con brio gift for discovery and openness to revelation. Nothing was ever entirely fortuitous in Gieve’s understanding of the world of imaginative endeavour: he prized the role that training played in an artist’s refinement of intuition, the preparation that brought an artist to the threshold of unasked epiphany. Correspondingly, art works spoke best to him when they could be parsed through the intricate, replenishing interplay between expression and context.”
– Ranjit Hoskote, To Break and To Branch (2024)
