Anant Art
Nehru House (3rd floor)
4, Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg
New Delhi 110002
Ph.011 30179515
[email protected]
(RE)VISITING THE URBAN
Preview: 9th October 2018, Bikaner House, Pandara Road, India Gate, New Delhi-110003, Timings: 6.00 pm – 8:30 pm.
On till 18th October 2018, Bikaner House, Timings: 10:30am – 6:30 pm (all days)
Anant Art presents “(Re) Visiting the Urban”, a group show featuring artworks by artists Digbijayee Khatua, Birender Yadav, Ravi Kumar Chunchula and Sajeev Visweswaran.
Concept Note:
An artist has forever been understood as a chronicler, an observer, and a connoisseur of life and times. The artist is deftly able to arrest the subtleties of our everyday existence, matters unseen, veiled by the bustling flow of our mundane life. In many ways the idea of an artist can be compared to the concept of Flâneur- A concept that Charles Baudelaire phrased which later became pivotal in understanding the phenomenon of modernity and urbanism. The flâneur - a passionate wanderer characteristic of nineteenth-century French literary culture - comes across not only as an emblem of the modern artist-poet, an enlightened bystander and investigator of the city but also a signifier of the alienation associated with capitalism and urban living.
The artists participating in this exhibition engage in a similar fashion with the rhetorics of the city. Their artworks come across as excerpts from their diaries, brimming with intimate observations and investigation of the cities they have dwelled in or visited. All four artists share the histories of migration to urban capitals where they end up questioning the temporality of their own identities. While some works postulate socio-political interpretations, others are candid narratives of their personal struggles adjusting to the everyday absurdities and anxieties which characterize contemporary societies. By bridging the seen with the unseen aspects of our cities, their works help us reunderstand, refamiliarize and, in a way, revisit our urban habitation.
About Anant Art:
Anant Art is a relaunch of Anant Art Gallery which played a significant role in promoting contemporary Asian art and progressive ideals of art representation from 2004-2009. Anant Art Gallery has not only hosted significant South Asian contemporary artists such as Himmat Shah, Valsan Kolleri, Sheila Makhijani, Imran Qureshi, Aisha Khalid, Latika Katt, Atul Bhalla, Sumedh Rajendran, Pratul Dash, Muhammad Zeeshan, Indrapramit Roy, Subba Ghosh and Gigi Scaria; it also played a crucial role in defining new standards in display, artist residencies and catalogue writing.
We have had many successful shows in Delhi and NCR region across multiple spaces. HASHIYA - THE MARGIN, which took place in early 2018, received tremendous critical appreciation. It explored for the first time the tradition of illustrated margins in miniature paintings through contemporary art. Other notable exhibitions include IMAGINED FUTURES RECONSTRUCTED PASTS (2016), Mutant Beauty (2008-09), Living Off the Grid (2009) and ‘Middle Age Spread’, a major Photography show presented at National Museum (2004). Anant Art Gallery also presented a group show ‘Ritu: A Gathering of Seasons’, which was a landmark exhibition in January 2005 and ‘Between Heaven and Earth, Himalayas and the Art of Bireshwar Sen’, both of which were curated by Prof. B N Goswamy.
The enduring values of Anant Art Gallery are integrity, quality and service and with our re-launch we strive to maintain these ideals and groom a new generation of talented artists. We are a team of trained art professionals and art enthusiasts committed to making the art-collecting experience enjoyable, accessible, and enriching.
www.anantart.com