Latitude 28 brings forth an eclectic mix of new media art at India Art Fair, 2012 January 25, 2012

New Delhi: As the much awaited India Art Fair (formerly India Art Summit) comes up with its 4th Edition slated from January 25, 2012 to January 29, 2012 at a brand new venue at NSIC Exhibition Grounds in New Delhi, art curator, gallerist and magazine editor Bhavna Kakar brings forth an eclectic mix of senior and younger Indian contemporary artists on behalf of her gallery Latitude 28. Bhavna Kakar has successfully presented and promoted new media art and once again she has chosen some of the most talented new media artists for her Art Fair outing! That the gallery has grown from strength to strength is evident from the fact that her artists are not only being shown in the gallery booth but also in the sculpture park and the video lounge. She has also chosen to show veteran and reclusive printmaker Anupam Sud’s work, apart from having a solo show of Dilip Chobisa in a separate booth.

Says Bhavna Kakar, curator & Director, Latitude 28: “India Art Fair is a wonderful platform to showcase the gallery collection and interact with the art fraternity. The gallery is presenting some of the most sought after younger names like Nityanand Ojha, Siddhartha Kararwal, Rajesh Ram and Kartik Sood apart from seniors like Krishen Khanna, Baiju Parthan and Anupam Sud.”
The artists whose works will be shown by Latitude 28 (Stall No.F-6 and S-5), India Art Fair include: Nityanand Ojha, Siddhartha Kararwal, Rajesh Ram, Chila Burman, Baiju Parthan, Nandita Kumar, Dilip Chobisa, Prajjwal Choudhury, Karan Uppal, Kartik Sood, Anupam Sud, Krishen Khanna and Deepjyoti Kalita.
The Hangover Man (T-Shirt material, Wax on armature, 8 x 9 x 3.5 ft, Ed. of 3, 2011) that will be displayed at IAF is Kararwal’s first sculpture meant for the open air, and follows a series of sculptures made from knotted tee-shirts and other everyday domestic materials. Kararwal uses everyday objects as tools to create a satirical account of the time and space that he lives in, modern-day Baroda. Hangover Man depicts the historical figure Sayajirao Gaekwad III, the Maharaja of Baroda through the use of cloth and wax. The artist through this tall representation aims to project that the Maharajas were not just figures of Indian authority covering for Britain’s indirect rule. Gaekwad III promoted a university that became a model institution in modern India. Kararwal, himself a product of this University (M.S.U) is imparting a message that goes beyond the local dynamics of progress and historicity and employs the way culture is formed and the art comes to exercise authority in their dynamics of social and political engagement.

Latitude 28 is showing a solo show by Dilip Chobisa at Booth S-5 who will be showing seven works including an untitled charcoal and graphite on paper. Chobisa’s art occupies a space between the being and absence of the third dimension. The intimate and the minute things in life attract his interest and hence come up as subject matter for his works. Chobisa with his renditions in alluring as well as noxious medium graphite animates the dimensional propositions of constructed spaces. Working in the margins of relief and installations, Chobisa combines light and drawing, to achieve the effects of set design inducing the viewer to peep in and explore. The use of graphite and light conjures up connections with black and white photography and the stage.

Nityanand Ojha’s work titled Condition 1 is made in stainless steel. Disquieting states of mind synthesize the existential and political in Nityananda Ojha’s oeuvre - forces central to his practice. The evocative works mediate their existence through a fascinating materiality evolved through the language of sculpture, although most unconventionally. Imbuing meaning to his form through use of material with innate qualities, the artist seeks to plumb into depths of human psychological needs and drives, transcribing a universal appeal and language for his works.
Rajesh Ram is showing an untitled oil on canvas and a bronze and iron sculpture titled Wheel of Life.
The Wheel of Life, shaped like a wheel, references the drudgery of the villagers who travel to the city in search of work, food and a better life for what is often a worse bargain and their routine journeys back to the village. The artist addresses the fate of these dreams as multitudes make this trek back and forth their life, hopes pinned upon what they envision city life to be.
Rajesh Ram’s art can be viewed from the angle of the pain in responding to something that is beautiful, grounded in harsh reality and which addresses its viewer. One of the main characteristic of Rajesh’s work is the representation of everyday life, often using non-professional actors mostly the common characters from society with a realistic depiction. Rajesh is not one to cloak the world in despair, he points gently, beautifully, imaginatively towards situations. Rajesh’s art is heroic, true, but it does not valorize his subjects’ suffering, which can have disturbing ideological undertones. What it does is show reality in all its honesty, despair but also beauty and gives us the simple path towards betterment.
In his photographic print on archival paper titled Tying threads underneath the skin, Kartik Sood creates an interface with the element of 'time' - preserving the past and mapping cultural metamorphosis through the medium of photography. This work is about how certain moments in different time and space seem to appear similar in retrospect. In the photographic print taken from his video titled Hearing breath, Sood takes an image of a performance/video, where the protagonist (the artist) kept still for hours tries to hear his own breath. He says: “It’s a very simple act but enacted to experience something common deeply.”
Deepjyoti Kalita’s untitled work in acrylic, fibreglass, LED lights and paper is titled The one with bad blood. The artist says: “To resolve a predominant problem, I have established a system. It satisfies the problem only for a transitory time. The answer is unable to eradicate the question. I restart to establish a new solution for the same old problem. But the question remains the same. I can’t find out the starting and the end point of the circle I drew.”
Prajjwal Choudhury has brought an intriguing installation made up of matchboxes that he himself prints digitally, apart from a bronze sculpture.
Baiju Parthan’s 3-D photographic print Smear is about the overlap/collision between the virtual and the real experience in the current technology saturated world.
Says Parthan: “Smear alludes to the smudging, erasing, and overlapping of references and memories. This particular piece is from a series, where historic structures and monuments of various kinds are transformed through interventions that take place entirely in the realm of virtual spaces generated in 3D graphics software. What is presented here is an event that never occurred, but is nevertheless carried away as a recollection by the viewer who engages this image.”
Apart from this, there will Chila Kumari Burman’s canvas embellished with gold leaf titled Band of Gold will also be shown. The multimedia collage, Band of Gold, is one of Chila Burman’s most recent works and reflects both ongoing and more recent concerns about identity and roots. It features a powerful and strident female warrior figure playfully sucking an icelolly. This flirtatious gesture parodies provocative advertising and imagery, which uses seduction as a tool. The figure also references Burman’s early experiences as she helped out selling ice cream in her dad’s ice cream van in the 1970s.
Amidst the strong image of the female figure is a golden backdrop of colourful swirls and lines that encrust the vibrant surface. This exuberance is made up of tiny elements of bindis, gems, stickers and rhinestones, which can be appreciated in close up as well as the gold leaf background. These jeweled aspects also reflect the glamour and madness of consumerist life in Western society where time never stands still. The figure then becomes a symbol of a cultural bricolage; the coming together of different traditions – Hindu traditions with Western influences of capitalism. In a satirical twist she becomes the goddess of spending, where all that glitters is not gold.
Nandita Kumar’s installation in the show is titled Midas Elemental Touch which is in glass, solar cells and circuit chipboard! Apart from this Kumar will also be showing a video titled Tentacles of Dimension where the the visual landscape is made up of a mélange of experiments in collage, live action, maya, after effects, hand drawn, paint on film and multi plane. Says Kumar: “Tentacles of Dimensions is a journey of a brain that decides to unplug its cultural programming (or awakens to the fact of constant programming), and purely indulges in the senses. It accepts it sexuality and duality of existence and evolves with each painful birth. It goes through acceptance of life as it is, in its naturalness, and lives in its totality. This journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices, and progressing past fragmentation and the acceptance of love. It is within this body of blood, flesh and bones are hidden that is beyond the body. In the form lives the formless; in the visible lives the invisible.”

Official Website: http://www.Indiaartfair.com