Bose Krishnamachari
Bose Krishnamachari is an artist with many talents. He works on different mediums with the same artistic verve. Studied in Sir.J.J.School of Art, Mumbai and Goldsmiths College, London, Bose started off his career with abstract paintings. Though he used to paint in a hyper-real style during his formative years, the language of abstraction attracted him considerably after his studies in Mumbai. He crossed the barriers of conventional surfaces and started using books as his painterly surface. He worked on book based installations during early 1990s. Also he worked on perforated sheets.
During late 1990s Bose started working on hyper real paintings and his series on the portraits of internationally acclaimed artists attracted a lot of critical attention. In his project titled ‘De-curating’, he painted the portraits of the Indian contemporary artists in a photo-realistic style. A few years later he started working on a new style of abstraction, where he employed the free floating brush strokes of rich acrylic colours. In this action oriented paintings, Bose displays his expertise in the control of brush work and colours. A plane of subconscious feelings is manifested in these works, which are generally titled ‘Ghost: Stretched Bodies’ or simply ‘Stretched Bodies’.
Working between two diametrically opposite art languages, namely figurative and abstraction, Bose gives accent on concepts rather than the actual images or surfaces that he paints. His works are the physical manifestation of certain concepts on art and its engagement with the society. Experimenting with various surfaces of different dimensions, Bose even worked on kinetic paintings, the paintings that simulated the idea of movable hoardings.
Bose, as an artist, engages himself with the society that he lives in. He has done several installations that exemplify the life in Mumbai, where he is based now. He used hundred and eight dubbas (the tiffin carriers) fitted with small LCD monitors, which played out interviews of Mumbaikars from different walks of life. In his project called LaVA (Laboratory of Visual Arts) he engaged the viewer with the knowledge industry that has become a huge supplement to the contemporary art scene in India and elsewhere, by converting the gallery space into a ‘real time library of art related books and other audio visual materials’.
Besides being an artist of worth, Bose finds time for curating the works of other artists. He has done several path breaking shows that include, Bombay Boys, Double-Enders, Maarkers, KaaM, Soft Spoken and so on. He has been instrumental in forming several artists’ collectives. |
