Variable Operatives: Works by Baiju Parthan and Prayas Abhinav
The Guild, Mumbai
January 18 to February 29, 2012

The show titled Variable Operatives features varied works by Baiju Parthan and Prayas Abhinav. The Show is dived into industrial works of the artists: Baiju Parthan's Vector & Prayas Abhinav's This and That. Baiju Parthan's art works in this show are located at the interstice of the objective real and the ethereal virtual. These are collision points aimed at presenting the erosion of implicit 'faith in perception' that is the foundation upon which solidity and predictability that we associate with the objective real are built upon.

For Prayas Abhinav, perception of patterns and complexities demand history, memory and a computation. This processing is a learnt characteristic for our epoch and species. The instruction line is the instant, the moment where dimensions get compiled into our experience. This is where resistance is; that which resists compilation floats around as an orphan fragment. And these fragments populate the buffer of our psyche with apparitions.

Somnath Hore: Drawings & Gouches
Art Heritage Gallery, New Delhi
January 20 to February 15, 2012

Art Heritage 2 is presenting an exhibition of the classical and timeless works of one of the most outstanding artists of the post- Independence era, Somnath Hore.

The experience the Bengal Famine of the 40's left an indelible impression on the artist, compelling him in a sense to discover a means to evoke the extreme conditions under which those who dwell on the periphery of society exist. Through a masterful use of threadbare lines or ink washes, the sparse yet charged images of Somnath Hore create a powerful empathy between the subject and the viewer, images that challenge our notions of aesthetics.

The exhibition features drawings and gouches by the artist.

Someone Else: Shilpa Gupta
Chemould Prescott  Road, Mumbai
January 21 to February 16, 2012

Shilpa Gupta creates artwork using interactive video, websites, objects, photographs, sound and public performances to probe and examine subversively such themes as desire, religion, notions of security on the street and on the imagined border.

Someone Else (2011) is built up of a 100 books, each fabricated out of stainless steel. The show also exhibits diasec photographic prints Untitled (2011) which appear to be exhausting and never-ending. Speaking Wall, an interactive sensor based sound installation (2009-2010), Singing Cloud installation (2008-2009) where 4000 microphones are whispering, singing, speaking “I want to fly away high above in the sky”, Untitled (Heat Book) which is an installation, Untitled (Flapboard), 2008-2009, and other works.

Reba Hore: An Exhibition of Watercolour, Oil on Canvas, Bronze and Terracotta
The Seagull Foundation for the Arts, Kolkata
January 24 to February 22, 2012

Late Indian contemporary artist Reba Hore had participated in national and international art exhibitions with solo shows in Kolkata, Mumbai, Santiniketan and New Delhi. This exhibition also includes her bronze sculptures.

Educated at Calcutta University and Calcutta College of Art. She lived and worked in Calcutta, New Delhi, and in Santiniketan. Over the years she had been dabbling very effectively in oils, watercolours, emulsions, wax and terracotta.

Narratives of the Self
Gallery Espace, New Delhi
January 27 to February 27, 2012

Gallery Espace presented the Autobiographical picture books, a group show by distinguished artists titled, Narratives of the Self. This event showcased the art works in the format of a drawing book, scroll or an accordion.

An artist's drawings are significant tools in understanding an art practice. Drawing styles are as personal, descriptive and expressive as handwriting and lend themselves to equally intense analysis. Therefore, this exhibition endeavours leads to invaluable visual narrative and also facilitate the flexibility to select instances, events or concepts of an artist's personality and life that the artist would wish to make public.

Participating artists include Anju Dodiya, Bhupen Khakhar, Bhupen Khakhar, Chintan Upadhyay, Jitish Kallat, Jyoti Bhatt, J. Swaminathan, Madhvi Parekh, Manjunath Kamath, Rekha Rodwittiya, Somnath Hore, Mithu Sen, Paula Sengupta and others.

Recent works by Shekhar Roy
Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata
February 16 to February 29, 2012

In Roy's vision, each work in the present series is a distillation of a specific moment; an energetic figuration notable for its fluid brushwork. The body of work subtly suggests their lines advancing into a grand scale full of faintest of incidents. In layers of gestural brushstrokes that suggest movement in space, the artist captures the rich drama of the soul. The abstraction and figuration takes place in quiet harmony. But presented to a public gaze, other rare variables open up. The results vary from large in form from the largely vertical stroke to the long diagonal sweep to the small broken marks on the paper. Where colour has been deployed as a vehicle for expressivity; each canvas serves as a metaphor for meaning and mood.

Roy's works address some of the present concerns of a meaningful practice today. Though the metaphor of illusion is basic to these paintings here the compulsiveness of the little gesture out of which they are made lends them a private, even sublime character, and the push of this compulsion against the narrow range of overall effect is what gives Roy's work their power and mediate upon the final disjuncture between consciousness and the physical world, upon the irreducible commensurability between thought and experience. He pursues a development that is at once instinctive, sensuous and fluid.

There is another element in Roy's watercolours-the large fields of colour on which the figure detaches itself, fields without depth or with only the kind of shallow depth and taunting acrobatics. The paintings consist of a visual hold, an immediacy and enigmatic gripping presence. While viewing his work one may think there are many levels of receptivity one goes through as a human being; between Roy and the image, the image itself and its own connotation, and the way he structures the painting, there is so much mutation that when it reaches the viewer, it has another power totally.

Sudhanshu Sutar: Recent Works
Art Heritage, New Delhi
February 17 to March 14, 2012

In this particular suite of paintings Sudhanshu Sutar has been inspired by a theatre performance of Sab That Pada Reh Jayega, which he chanced to see last April at the NSD.  The result is a series of stunning and thought- provoking acrylic works that appear like staged events from recent global history.

Featuring an entire galaxy of miniature-sized public icons of politians, film stars and sports heroes such as Barrack Obama being prodded by Gandhiji, Mike Tyson, Lady Mountbatten and Nehru, Nargis and Raj Kapoor as portrayed in Barsaat, Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson, Hitler etc., Sutar in Sab That Pada Reh Jaega 2 formally composes his chief protagonists along an extended curved sea shore, that sits on a massive stretch of industrial waste.  Behind them stretches a ferocious and tumultuous sea, untamed and violent. It is evident that the implications of this dense work will lead to a variety of readings as will the others in this series, that reference popular characters from a pantheon of recent contemporary events.