Having selected the works of five artists — four Indians and a Pakistani for the iconic New York art fair — Gallery Nature Morte has pushed the envelope, says Uma Nair
By featuring the works of Gauri Gill, Subodh Gupta, lN Tallur, Imran Qureshi and Tanya Goel — Nature Morte has ensured that it’s participation in the 2018 edition of Frieze New York on Stand D24 is the stuff of cutting-edge dynamics in contemporary art. The gallery has been instrumental in introducing important Indian and South Asian artists to the global graph of the international scene. Peter Nagy brought their first presentation to Frieze New York in 2016.
Acts of Appearance
Gauri Gill’s photographs of her epic sojourn in Acts of Appearance coincides with her current exhibition at MoMA PS1 as part of a series Projects 108. Acts of Appearance are a series of colour photographs made in collaboration with the members of an Adivasi community in Jawhar district, Maharashtra, India. Gill’s subjects specialise in making paper-mâché masks for spiritual rituals and festivals.
Gill commissioned them to make masks that described their daily activities in the village and at the same time conceive and act in scenes of friends and family with physical characteristics of humans, animals or valuables throughout the village. The images unveil as a diary of quaint positions with the stunning masks that add a surreal edge.
Wall reliefs
Two wall reliefs by Subodh Gupta were a crowd puller — they are part of a series of works that use compressed kitchen utensils, impregnated with stains and memories of innumerable family meals prepared and consumed. Design dynamics and dictates of rural rhythms come to the fore in these two reliefs that offer a new language in the portrayal of culinary patterns that cut across boundaries in time. The compressed utensils jammed together to create a matrix of kitchen kitsch.
Friction and fusion
The paintings of Imran Qureshi (Pakistan) juxtapose random splashes, seemingly violent, with precise markings, control of fusion and abandonment in an orchestrated whole. Qureshi’s practice expands upon his training in the traditional medium of miniature painting to reflect on current events and the troubled state of his native land. The red paint simulates blood, while the finely painted petals, the gold grounds, and the feeling of a garden at night are “germs of hope” (as the artist calls them), all standing for the persistence of life force, against all odds.
Qureshi’s works on canvas combine the precision of his training in miniature painting with the bravery of abstract expressionism, creating a fusion between Eastern and Western styles.
Votive figure
Sculptor lN Tallur uses sculptures, wall pieces, interactive works and specific installations to expose the absurdities of daily life and the anxieties that characterise contemporary society. Tallur’s complex sculptural works reference subjects as wide-ranging as Hindu iconography, popular culture as well as broader political and societal issues, such as the nature of value and the globalised economy. Tallur studied art and museum studies and his sculptures frequently appropriate classical Indian works of art or reference museum displays and the institutional presentation of objects.
His work incorporates handmade crafts, found objects, organic and industrial material; symbols of the development of India, often creating a correlation between traditional and contemporary customs. At Frieze New York, Tallur’s new sculpture will once again invite attention and awe — the traditional Asian votive figure will be transformed by additional objects and materials opening out commentaries and references that go back and forth in time and history. Entitled Halo X Body Two 2017, Tallur has created the figure as an ensemble of bronze, concrete and iron. Measuring 36x20, 6x64 inches — Tallur says, “A body is the personification of a being, but the image of that personification may or may not fit within that body… there is always a tension between these.”
Urban landscape
Inspired by architecture and the urban landscape, Tanya Goel creates large-scale diagrams inspired by her interest in the relationship between light, colour and material. An exploration of abstraction, the index of her canvases is born from the map of a file of material collected from deconstructed houses built in a modernist style in Delhi from the 1950s to 1970. Goel manufactures her own pigments from a wide range of materials, which include coal, aluminum, concrete, glass, earth, mica, graphite and sheets, many of which come from architectural demolition sites. Goel’s works are also on display at the 21st edition of the Sydney Biennial.