Delhi-based artist Ranbir Kaleka insists that the title of his latest exhibition, Waking to the Face of the New Dawn, comprising five works in all and covering all three floors of the Vadehra Art Gallery in Delhi, speaks for itself.
The exhibition coincides with the release of a book on his work, Ranbir Kaleka: Moving Image Works, published by Kerber, Berlin. Kaleka was not interested in a mere book launch. Being a visual artist, he wanted an exhibition. All the works in the exhibition, which opened on March 7 and will be on till April 6, were made after the contributing authors had written their essays, he says.
Recently conferred with the Punjab Gaurav Samman by the Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi in Chandigarh, Kaleka’s paintings, with themes of sexuality and tradition, are surrealistic and often permeated with the enigmatic, the narratives being open to interpretation. For me, a thought has potential only if it is abstracted, for only then would diverse meanings take birth from it. I like the richness of ambiguity in a narrative, says the painter who studied at the Royal College of Art, England in the 1980s.
A cinema buff, Kaleka has, over the years, combined his love for still images and paintings with cinema in his video installations.
