You can expect an Indian summer in New York beginning this week when a show of contemporary Indian artists and photographers opened at Bose Pacia Modern on 508 West 26th St featuring the works of Abul Azad, Pushpamala N, Sheba Chhachhi, Samar Singh Jodha, P L DiCorcia, Ram Rahman, D Ravinder Reddy, Subodh Gupta and Sukanya Rahman.
Curated by Ram Rahman, the show entitled Heat, A Picture Show is about pictures and picture shows.
Photography and cinema exploded in the visual consciousness of the South Asian sub-continent, though television had a slower gestation, but entered mass culture in the last decade.
The motion picture became a major visual cultural tradition, no less important than the murals of Ajanta or the sculptural friezes of Sanchi, Konark or Mahabalipuram.
The visual artist, therefore, engages us both in our mental and physical space as contemporary images carve themselves in our consciousness just as the traditional arts did through every stage of Indian civilisation.
It is this that the New York exhibition is documenting as it unravels the new erotic myths of cinema (as compared to Khajuraho
