 "Art beyond canvas")
SYNERGY OF THE LOCAL AND THE GLOBAL
* INSERT 2014
Art for art’s sake is passe. This year the focus is on meaningful, thought-provoking creations and synergy of international and Indian artists and artistic philosophies. The Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation's Insert 2014 is one such event. It will bring together thinkers and artists from across disciplines to explore encounters with contemporary art in the public domain. The month-long event will include exhibitions, symposiums and performances across cultural sites in Delhi. “Through Insert, we want to start an interaction between emerging and established artists, between global and local sensibilities. We want to bring an international crowd to India to experience the local contemporary art scene and expose the latter to best practices abroad,” says Azad Shivdasani, chairman, Inlaks Foundation. Out of the 20 to 25 international creations coming to the event, four have been especially commissioned. Some of these are being showcased for the first time. A must-see is a room installation, titled ‘Also the real thing’, a collaboration between India’s Zuleikha Chaudhari and Swiss Boris Nikitin at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. There is an interesting symposium on infrastructure and abandonment by Taipei’s Yao Jui-Chung at Jawaharlal Nehru University. “One of the agendas is to see if we can use contemporary art to explore social issues. We want to inspire people to think rather than just make this a benign exhibition,” says Shivdasani
When: January 17 to February 28
Where: Across venues in Delhi
* INDIA ART FAIR 2014
The India Art Fair has just grown bigger and better with each passing year. Currently in its sixth edition, the event is spread across more than 91 booths and will showcase the best of South Asian modern and contemporary art, even as the focus will be on best museum practices and aesthetic sensibilities from countries like China, USA, Argentina, Latvia, Hungary, Portugal and Israel. “I think the India Art Fair is a great curtain raiser for the overall art scene in 2014,” says Kishore Singh, publication and exhibition head, Delhi Art Gallery. A couple of new things that have been added this year include a specially curated art project that includes 22 large mixed media creations, a speaker forum over nine sessions, five book launches and a new space design. “We are also exploring the ‘in-between’ art spaces like jewellery design. So for the first time we have a jewellery exhibition by Nirav Modi who will showcase creations inspired by Mughal miniature paintings. This is in sync with international art fairs where they have special exhibits by Cartier and the likes,” says Neha Kirpal, founder and director, India Art Fair. “Also, for the first time we have a museum from China showcasing its best practices. The idea of 10,000 museums coming up in China has generated so much talk that we thought it apt to get them to share their practices.”
When: January 30 to February 2
Where: NSIC Exhibition Grounds, New Delhi
INDIAN MASTERS IN THE SPOTLIGHT
* GAITONDE: PAINTING AS PROCESS, PAINTING AS LIFE
With his untitled painting becoming the highest priced work by an Indian artist at the recent Christie’s auction in Mumbai, international interest in VS Gaitonde has reached new heights. Gaitonde enthusiasts can look forward to the first exhibition dedicated to his work at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York. Comprising 35 major paintings and 20 works on paper, the exhibition will trace the evolution of Gaitonde as an artist from his early figurative, mixed-media days to his signature oil canvases. “I believe Indian art is yet to be fully discovered by the international audience. But it has certainly developed in the past decade and, of course, one of the highlights of 2014 would be the Gaitonde retrospective, especially after Zarina Hashmi’s retrospective at the Guggenheim last year,” says Nadia Samdani, founder of the Samdani Foundation and organiser of the Dhaka Art Summit.
When: October 2014- February 2015
Where: The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York
* CELEBRATING MID-CAREER AND SENIOR ARTISTS
Subodh Gupta’s solo exhibition of works, ‘Everything is Inside’, at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi, in January starts the celebration of works by important senior artists. “The ongoing exhibition at the Asia Society Museum in New York of Nalini Malani titled ‘Transgressions’, which will run until August 2014, is also a very important show as Malani is one of India’s pioneering new media artists,” says Roshini Vadehra, director, Vadehra Art Gallery. “There are other international museums that are including Indian artists in major exhibitions, such as Atul Dodiya and Husain’s participation in an exhibition at the Picasso museum,Barcelona.” In January-February, Vadehra Art Gallery will also host Malani’s exhibition, ‘Cassandra’s Gift’ . Also, an interesting book, titled Atul Dodiya, co-published by Vadehra Art Gallery and Prestel Verlag, will be launched in India on January 27, 2014.
THE EMERGENCE OF SOUND ART
* THE POWER OF SOUND
How do we perceive sound? What is the effect of the spoken word? These are some of the notions that sound art explores. 2014 will see a host of such projects making their presence felt in the Indian art scene. “There is ‘Listen Up!’— the first public sound art project to be launched in India. It links venues across Delhi, from art sites like the India Art Fair to public places like Select CityWalk in Saket,” says Kirpal. ‘Listen Up!’ focuses on making sound art publicly accessible through mobile phones. Another project is ‘Word, Sound, Power’, a curatorial collaboration between Khoj International Artists’ Association and Tate Modern, and focuses on “the poetics and politics of voice”, while featuring works by artists from Denmark, Jordan, Norway and five from India such as Mithu Sen and Amar Kanwar.
When and where: Listen Up! can be heard at theIndia Art Fair while ‘Word, Sound, Power’ will be exhibited at Khoj, New Delhi (January-February ).
INDIA’S OWN BIENNALE
* KOCHI-MUZIRIS BIENNALE
The second edition of Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India’s first such event, has raised lots of expectations with artist Jitish Kallat declared the curator for the event. “While in art fairs artists create work for commercial purposes, they can come to a biennale without such limitations. They can create thought-provoking works and challenge their existing skills, unlike a fair where you need marketable work,” says Kishore Singh. Kallat is already working on a list of artists, and it will be declared in Delhi on January 29. “Instead of selecting a theme, I am circulating a list of prompts to artists. These will be a means to produce new themes, rather than oft-used ones,” he says.
When: December 2014 at various venues around Kochi
* INSERT 2014
Art for art’s sake is passe. This year the focus is on meaningful, thought-provoking creations and synergy of international and Indian artists and artistic philosophies. The Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation's Insert 2014 is one such event. It will bring together thinkers and artists from across disciplines to explore encounters with contemporary art in the public domain. The month-long event will include exhibitions, symposiums and performances across cultural sites in Delhi. “Through Insert, we want to start an interaction between emerging and established artists, between global and local sensibilities. We want to bring an international crowd to India to experience the local contemporary art scene and expose the latter to best practices abroad,” says Azad Shivdasani, chairman, Inlaks Foundation. Out of the 20 to 25 international creations coming to the event, four have been especially commissioned. Some of these are being showcased for the first time. A must-see is a room installation, titled ‘Also the real thing’, a collaboration between India’s Zuleikha Chaudhari and Swiss Boris Nikitin at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts. There is an interesting symposium on infrastructure and abandonment by Taipei’s Yao Jui-Chung at Jawaharlal Nehru University. “One of the agendas is to see if we can use contemporary art to explore social issues. We want to inspire people to think rather than just make this a benign exhibition,” says Shivdasani
When: January 17 to February 28
Where: Across venues in Delhi
More From This Section
More info: The event is supported by the Goethe Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, and Pro Helvetia, Swiss Arts Council, with Raqs Media Collective as artistic directors
* INDIA ART FAIR 2014
The India Art Fair has just grown bigger and better with each passing year. Currently in its sixth edition, the event is spread across more than 91 booths and will showcase the best of South Asian modern and contemporary art, even as the focus will be on best museum practices and aesthetic sensibilities from countries like China, USA, Argentina, Latvia, Hungary, Portugal and Israel. “I think the India Art Fair is a great curtain raiser for the overall art scene in 2014,” says Kishore Singh, publication and exhibition head, Delhi Art Gallery. A couple of new things that have been added this year include a specially curated art project that includes 22 large mixed media creations, a speaker forum over nine sessions, five book launches and a new space design. “We are also exploring the ‘in-between’ art spaces like jewellery design. So for the first time we have a jewellery exhibition by Nirav Modi who will showcase creations inspired by Mughal miniature paintings. This is in sync with international art fairs where they have special exhibits by Cartier and the likes,” says Neha Kirpal, founder and director, India Art Fair. “Also, for the first time we have a museum from China showcasing its best practices. The idea of 10,000 museums coming up in China has generated so much talk that we thought it apt to get them to share their practices.”
When: January 30 to February 2
Where: NSIC Exhibition Grounds, New Delhi
INDIAN MASTERS IN THE SPOTLIGHT
* GAITONDE: PAINTING AS PROCESS, PAINTING AS LIFE
With his untitled painting becoming the highest priced work by an Indian artist at the recent Christie’s auction in Mumbai, international interest in VS Gaitonde has reached new heights. Gaitonde enthusiasts can look forward to the first exhibition dedicated to his work at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York. Comprising 35 major paintings and 20 works on paper, the exhibition will trace the evolution of Gaitonde as an artist from his early figurative, mixed-media days to his signature oil canvases. “I believe Indian art is yet to be fully discovered by the international audience. But it has certainly developed in the past decade and, of course, one of the highlights of 2014 would be the Gaitonde retrospective, especially after Zarina Hashmi’s retrospective at the Guggenheim last year,” says Nadia Samdani, founder of the Samdani Foundation and organiser of the Dhaka Art Summit.
When: October 2014- February 2015
Where: The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York
* CELEBRATING MID-CAREER AND SENIOR ARTISTS
Subodh Gupta’s solo exhibition of works, ‘Everything is Inside’, at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Delhi, in January starts the celebration of works by important senior artists. “The ongoing exhibition at the Asia Society Museum in New York of Nalini Malani titled ‘Transgressions’, which will run until August 2014, is also a very important show as Malani is one of India’s pioneering new media artists,” says Roshini Vadehra, director, Vadehra Art Gallery. “There are other international museums that are including Indian artists in major exhibitions, such as Atul Dodiya and Husain’s participation in an exhibition at the Picasso museum,Barcelona.” In January-February, Vadehra Art Gallery will also host Malani’s exhibition, ‘Cassandra’s Gift’ . Also, an interesting book, titled Atul Dodiya, co-published by Vadehra Art Gallery and Prestel Verlag, will be launched in India on January 27, 2014.
THE EMERGENCE OF SOUND ART
* THE POWER OF SOUND
How do we perceive sound? What is the effect of the spoken word? These are some of the notions that sound art explores. 2014 will see a host of such projects making their presence felt in the Indian art scene. “There is ‘Listen Up!’— the first public sound art project to be launched in India. It links venues across Delhi, from art sites like the India Art Fair to public places like Select CityWalk in Saket,” says Kirpal. ‘Listen Up!’ focuses on making sound art publicly accessible through mobile phones. Another project is ‘Word, Sound, Power’, a curatorial collaboration between Khoj International Artists’ Association and Tate Modern, and focuses on “the poetics and politics of voice”, while featuring works by artists from Denmark, Jordan, Norway and five from India such as Mithu Sen and Amar Kanwar.
When and where: Listen Up! can be heard at theIndia Art Fair while ‘Word, Sound, Power’ will be exhibited at Khoj, New Delhi (January-February ).
INDIA’S OWN BIENNALE
* KOCHI-MUZIRIS BIENNALE
The second edition of Kochi-Muziris Biennale, India’s first such event, has raised lots of expectations with artist Jitish Kallat declared the curator for the event. “While in art fairs artists create work for commercial purposes, they can come to a biennale without such limitations. They can create thought-provoking works and challenge their existing skills, unlike a fair where you need marketable work,” says Kishore Singh. Kallat is already working on a list of artists, and it will be declared in Delhi on January 29. “Instead of selecting a theme, I am circulating a list of prompts to artists. These will be a means to produce new themes, rather than oft-used ones,” he says.
When: December 2014 at various venues around Kochi