Bharti Kher’s New Monumental Exhibition

Elisabetta Marabotto of Saffronart invites you to visit Misdemeanours, Bharti Kher’s largest solo exhibition in Asia

London: Misdemeanours is coming soon at the Rockbound Art Museum in Shanghai. Starting on January 11 the exhibition boasts to be the largest solo exhibition in Asia of the celebrated Indian artist Bharti Kher.

Self Portrait, Bharti Kher

Self Portrait, Bharti Kher. Image Credit: http://www.rockbundartmuseum.org/en/exhibition/overview/457gqs

The show, which occupies all six floors of the museum, features a selection of works created in the last 15 years by the artist as well as some site specific installations.

Kher uses different forms of art to express herself such as painting, photography and sculpture yet most of her works have in common monumental dimensions. The artist in this exhibition discusses the relationship between human beings and animals, hybridity, ethics, gender, politics, globalization and cosmopolitanism. The poetics of the body reveals Kher’s interests in entropy, mutation, and transformation, as witnessed by humans and animals alike.

The Skin Speaks a Language not its Own, Bharti Kher

The Skin Speaks a Language not its Own, Bharti Kher. Image Credit: http://www.rockbundartmuseum.org/en/exhibition/overview/457gqs

“The exhibition also includes two site-specific installations that serve as conceptual and physical “skins” that encase the museum’s monumental façade and conjoin two exhibition spaces on consecutive floors. These architectural interventions serve as mirrors to Kher’s own use of the bindi to serve as a carrier of the other, and an object that revels in both in its ability to decorate and enliven attention, as well as to subsume and obscure the gaze. ”

Kher has stated, “If I could remake my artistic career, I think I would be a minimalist painter. All the art that I love comes from the tradition of reduction—but I can’t because I’m super maximum!”

Misdemeanours, Bharti Kher

Misdemeanours, Bharti Kher. Image Credit: http://www.rockbundartmuseum.org/en/exhibition/overview/457gqs

Misdemeanours has been curated by Sandhini Poddar, Mumbai-based art historian and adjunct curator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York and the works on display include loans from leading private and public institutions as well as new commissions.

The exhibition will be on until March 20 and it will be accompanied by events and a catalogue. For more information click here.

 

 

Gaitonde Retrospective coming to Guggenheim NY

Elizabeth Prendiville of Saffronart  announces an upcoming Gaitonde retrospective in New York.

New York: Coming next Fall (November 2014) the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City will be producing an exhibition of the late Vasudeo S. Gaitonde’s work.

This retrospective of Gaitonde is showing a new trend in the recent programming at the Guggenheim. Having just concluded a premiere retrospective of Zarina Hashimi, the Guggenheim Museum is showing modern and contemporary Indian artists more than ever.

For this upcoming retrospective, the first exhibition of the artist’s work since Saffronart’s show in 2011, Associate Curator of Asian Art, Sandhini Poddar hopes to gather forty pieces of Gaitonde’s work ranging in various mediums including oil and pencil.

These pieces will be borrowed from both private and public collections from all around the world.

Gaitonde’s work is considered non-representational and experimental and he is often referred to as India’s foremost abstractionist. However, prior to his death in 2001, the artist was quick to dismiss the term “abstract art” and preferred “non objective” to describe his subliminal imagery.

Throughout his career his work was included in premiere exhibitions, and is part of the permanent collections of institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Gaitonde was awarded the prestigious Padma Shri Award in 1971.

The Guggenheim hopes this expansive retrospective will tour to other institutions such as the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, the National Gallery of Modern Art in Delhi and their international sister institution Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, scheduled to open in 2017.

No matter the institution, a retrospective of Gaitonde’s work is sure to offer a collection of exceptional and pivotal paintings.