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The Feb Show 2008

Red Earth Gallery, Baroda presents its 6th ‘Feb Show series’ with 23 artists from all over India. Curator and writer Aarti Desai visits the show and says that this open platform has given confidence to younger artists to do confrontational works and most of the works deal with the predicament of young people in the urban spaces.

When you enter a space, which is displayed with the works by a group of young artists there is definitely a different sensitivity resonating off the walls. The Feb Show began as an artist initiative in 2003, with the aim of giving young artists an opportunity to exhibit their works in public for the first time. The criteria for selecting the artists are based on the artist’s work as well as whether they have showed their work in Baroda previously. This year 23 artists were a part of the Red Earth Gallery’s 6th annual endeavour to showcase fresh talent. New names bring along with them a lot more anticipation than expectation, so the attitude towards seeing and experiencing this show is rather different from that of other shows.

Experimenting with different mediums and techniques, discovering on the way, the artists visual language transforms their inspiration and creative ideas. Though one cannot contain such a diversity of thoughts and expressions into just a couple of compartments, the issues which concern this generation of young painters, sculptors and printmakers are more focused on the diversities and casualties of contemporary living. 

Several artists, besotted by the nature of human psyche and emotions, translated their take on the several aspects one generally has to face. Banoj Mohanty’s watercolour titled “Love” directly delivers the hope of love being capable of solving all of human problems, politically as well as socially. At a juncture where one revels in the joy of youth and yet is responsive to a deeper meaning of one’s own existence, there remains a constant investigation for an identity, either ones own or an assurance of its in transience. Buddhadev Mukherjee chooses to establish the regular in an iconic manner using the image of a man pronouncing his presence through his unusually oversized body in ‘Man –1’. Alok Prabhakar’s ‘Journey’ and Anu B .S.’s ‘Do not disturb, already disturbed’ traverse in the realms of their search for the actual while Ambu Rathwa’s ‘Where am I ‘ desires to create a world apart from reality where fantasy permits unrestricted wonderful occurrences. Atma Nand Chauhan’s canvases transcend beyond the secular and create an aura of the spiritual despite retaining a sensitivity, which is very earthy. Using silicon rubber and thread on canvas creating realistic body parts, Atul Mahajan‘s ‘Preserved for safety, removed from body’, directs one towards our obsession to immortalize.

Living in a city makes one a part of the cityscape, sometimes center front and sometimes simply as a part of the enigma of the entity itself. Experimenting with different techniques on the surface of his paintings, Tushar Kamble delves into the motions of being a part of city while Nimesh Patel ‘s vivid canvases titled ‘Work under pipeline – II’ and ‘Work in progress – V’ are images which one cannot miss being a part of a developing metropolis. A sentimentalism recreated in realistic visual grasps the viewer to step back and take another look at the portrayal of a way of living in Sandip Daptari’s ‘But I see them struggling’ and Premkumar Singh’s sensitive portrayal in ‘Red Earth – Baby at hot seat’.

The narrative can never be lost. It shows its presence inevitably. Loknath Sinha’s sculptures are literally stories of today’s youth. The manner in which urbanization has redefined the notion of life styles is also evident in Rohini Singh’s paintings, which indicate that the results of a too fast growing consumer market need not always be positive. Also talking about the man’s basic requirements, Nutan Majumdar predicts the future we may have to live in…mechanical to the core. His sculptures attempt to depict the supremacy that technology has over mankind’s natural mental ability and how this may eventually result in a social calamity. On the other hand, Piyali Ghosh allows fantasy to recreate a narrative with subjective intensity, into a visual that is surprising and enticing at the same time.

Nikita Parikh rejuvenates and discovers the modernistic within the parameters of the traditional bound by religious memories. Her engaging motifs present her need to incessantly go back to the security of familiarity. Continuously reasserting its presence by the use of repeated forms is something one cannot miss in several of the artworks. Patterns when recreated numerously create a body, which assumes a significant part of the imagery.

The evidence of the female form emotes its splendour in the ceramic sculptures of Niharika Dave. Using the female figure as a subject, ‘Served up hot’ is indicative of speed and motion, which juxtaposes movement, that printmaker Nagarjuna Sridhara attains by combining digital and print media in his etchings. Neha Kudchadkar reinvents form by creating a performance within a demarked space in her ceramic works.

The works of sculptor Harendranath Mahato are very confrontal. The object is no longer just an object. It acts as a vehicle of transience of time. Whether it is a spoon or a clock. Print maker and painter Sharath Kulagatti allows a still object to generate a life of its own in his watercolours. In both of these artists work, the form is individual and carries a good deal of perfection and precision in its execution. Expertise in technique is evident in the work of printmaker, Hrusikesh Biswal and series of canvases titled ‘Skin’ by Nitin Agarwal.