A graphical ode to pop-culture

Breathing a new lease of life into some of the cult films and books, an art show here has reimagined their posters and covers in a contemporary minimalist graphic style.
'Ink, Reels and The Graphic Gang', underway at the Lodhi hotel here, is a homage to the great books and movies that have influenced and created the very phenomena of pop-art and culture, says Arjun Sawhney, the curator.
"Through this show I am trying put out graphical art as an art form. Around the world best and leading museums showcase amazing digital and graphical art while in India there is nothing," he told PTI.

Sawhney worked with 14 graphic designers who chose from a list of 25 books and 25 movies and created a piece of art, one for a book and one for a movie in art or poster form.
Some of the reinterpreted cult classics are Kamal Amrohi's "Pakeeza", Satyajit Ray's Bengali-drama film "Pather Panchali" and American author F Scott Fitzgerald's novel "The Great Gatsby".
The artwork based on the Raj Kumar-Meena Kumari starrer shows a dancer's foot with a pair of of wings - symbolic of the Kumari's character of a courtesan in 'Pakheeza'.

For the work on "The Great Gatsby", artist Kapil has used archival print on metallic fine art paper to look at the money, materialism, society, love and the mutability of identity weaved by the author in the book.

The graphic art was printed on to a canvas and is being showcased as a collective tribute to the great and popular pieces that found love and admiration across the world.
"The two most enduring forms of pop-culture remain books and films that have been around for the longest time and are also perhaps the ones that will remain relevant down the ages.
"Both forms are translatable into many languages and are easily distributed and consumed specially through modern devices," Sawhney explains.
The exhibition will continue till November 22.