Patterns of Intensity | Curated by Ranjit Hoskote
Patterns of Intensity | Curated by Ranjit Hoskote
3rd April 2021 - 30th April 2021
Art Alive Gallery, S-221 Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110017View WorksPatterns of Intensity brings together eleven young artists from various locations across India, each one engaging courageously with the urgencies of our historical present, each one demonstrating a passionate emphasis on artisanal process and a vibrant desire to extend the boundaries of studio practice as it opens itself to the contested street, the volatile public sphere, the web of social relationships that are being re-negotiated, and the violated landscape.
We marvel at how these artists – Anil Thambai, Barkha Gupta, Chandrashekar Koteshwar, Ghana Shyam Latua, Kaushik Saha, Meghna Patpatia, Purvai Rai, Savia Mahajan, Suman Chandra, Teja Gavankar, and Vipul Badva – commit themselves to exploring the porous between art and life, imagination and material reality. Some of them produce layered or mixed-media surfaces, others arrive at their provisional conclusions through assemblage or through bricolage. Some engage with built form or organic and natural forms. Deep geological time provides a seminal context for some of them, while for others, their chosen matrix is the urban or peri-urban situation, with its ephemeral, makeshift mechanisms. Their media span terracotta or ceramic sculpture, found metal, and drawing. They cite the mappings of geometry, the protocols of architecture, the textures of conservation, and the intricacies of textile surfaces.
This constellation of artists is strongly engaged with the challenges of habitation and its relationship to the perennial questions of belonging, settlement, design, and the environment. In a world assailed by pandemic, dislocation and uncertainty, they offer us hope in crafting a way out of the seemingly impossible predicaments into which we are pushed in the Capitalocene epoch. They inspire us with the freshness of their approach to problems and materials, their recalibration of traditional questions of form, content, and intention. Even as they bear memorable witness to the processes of society and the natural world with great intensity, they remain preoccupied with the great existential questions that all artists have addressed: How to map spaces of repose and consolation, healing and mending, for the fragile and embattled self?
Curator
Ranjit Hoskote
