‘India Art Fair’
Various Artists
January – February 2014

For the India Art Fair 2014, Art Musings is showcasing the works of six artists; S H Raza, Baiju Parthan, Smriti Dixit, Raghava K K, Nilofer Suleman and Ajay Dhandre. Padma Vibhushan awardee, S H Raza is one of the most prominent artists living today. He has shaped the face of Modernism in India with his unique vision and style. Raza’s work has formalism as well as mystic aspects of Hindu philosophy. His geometrical painting with the iconic circle or ‘Bindu’, sacred in its symbolism, places his work in an Indian context. Baiju Parthan is an inter-media artist, working with painting and digital technology based installation art. On display are his works in the digital realm consisting of explorations into the constantly mutating interstice where the virtual and real bleed into each other. Through a range of computer generated virtual objects presented in lenticular prints, Parthan manages to present a critique on high technology and its impact on our life and experience of reality. Nilofer’s painting is a witty and colorful illustration of India, offering vibrant vantage points and comical observations about the city. The characters which animate her canvases produce a signature effect with their elongated almond eyes and stylized features. Pictures, posters and icons within the works spill into a painted space that is inhabited by Suleman’s quirky and idiosyncratic figures. Raghava K K is a multidisciplinary artist, working in disparate genres. In his work, iconic cartoons and popular memes are placed beside prominent figures in a space where each character transcends its usual association and takes on new identities. Raghava approaches his paintings as his own personal historical documents, where the linearity of time has been distorted and rearranged creating parallel and orthogonal universes. Smriti Dixit’s art is an indelibly feminine procedure, finding its foundations in the process of its creation as much as in its final form. However, Dixit’s art cannot be dissected into a celebration of femininity. Instead, it acts an antidote to a reified archetype of the feminine experience. Her palette consists of variously textured fabrics and plastics. The aura of science fiction surrounds Ajay Dhandre’s meticulously detailed paintings. His frames are populated by mechanical-organic composite forms: cyborgs, robots, prosthetic devices that extend the reach of body as well as consciousness and interstellar probes. Dhandre’s interest in hybrids and devices is significant. It articulates his understanding of the future as an outcome of crossovers, genetic experiments, laboratory side effects and the confluences of diverse impulses.

30.01.2014 – 02.02.2014