"Media Flourishes" a preview exhibition of the United Art Fair 2013 at Lalit Kala Akademi, Rabindra Bhavan, Copernicus Marg > 10am-7pm on 28th April-4th May 2013

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Time : 10:00 am - 7:00 pm

Entry : Free

Place : Lalit Kala Akademi, Rabindra Bhavan, Copernicus Marg, Mandi House, New Delhi-110001
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Area : Mandi House Area Events

Event Description : "Media Flourishes" As a preview of the United Art Fair 2013, Peter Nagy and his curatorial team of Dr. Alka Pande, Ram Rahman, Meera Menezes, Heidi Fichtner, Mayank Kaul have assembled a diverse group of art works by some of the most promising up-and-coming talents of the Indian contemporary art scene. A mix of mediums and styles will give just the slimmest of hints of the diversity of art works that will be on display at the UAF 2013.

Participating artists: Anita Ghei Malhotra , Anand Jaiswal , Akash Gaur ,  Arundev, Basist Kumar , Devengana Kumar , Julie Skarland , Manil Rohit , Manisha Jha ,Nidhi Aggarwal , Nilanjan Banerjee, Parul Gupta , Suresh Nair , Shive Verma , Tauseef Khan, Shobha Deepak Singh

The exhibition has got eclectic mix of works by sixteen contemporary artists from different parts of the country. New Delhi-based Nidhi Agarwal paints aggressive, muscular abstractions that harbour figurative passages and landscape tendencies. Violently expressionistic, her colour palette is both complex and acrid and her subject matter often perverse.
Anand Jaiswal, Kurukshetra based artist has magnificently used different objects and images from historic time symbolizing them in contemporaneity in his works. These works are reflection of his thought process in tandem with the surrounding environment.
Santiniketan based artist Basist Kumar’s paintings are interestingly simple yet full of woven thoughts. Isolated figures, anonymous and without civilization, hover in containers of weather and light. There is something epic going on, as if from ancient myth, yet it can’t really be articulated, even though the painterly technique hits a level of verisimilitude that is buoyant, crystalline and bracing. He fuses singular portraits with iconic landscapes, resulting in paintings that are indebted to both Science Fiction and Symbolism. He pairs individuals in confrontational poses with boulders, trees, sea-scapes, or architecture to create diptych paintings that are both balanced and dynamic.

Tauseef Khan’s new series of paintings renders history as reflected through prisms of glass and memory as a distortion of perception. While he weaves together both representation and abstraction, he also melds architectural landscapes with still life, creating paintings steeped in prodigious antecedents. The characteristics of transparency and opacity are juxtaposed; creating puzzles that meld liquidity with solidity. Portraits of some of India’s best known monuments like the tombs of Humayun and Lodhi Gardens, the Jantar Mantar, the Taj Mahal are glimpsed through scrims of decorative glassware which turn their stoic masonry into a melting array of pigments.  

Devangana Kumar, is a Delhi based artist and designer. Her work reflects her experiment with different techniques, crafts and materials which have evolved into her own distinctive style. She layers her work with painting, printing and decoupage, juxtaposing images from popular culture, colourful Indian kitsch and even old photographs, transforming mundane objects into edgy collectibles.
Anita Ghei Malhotra’s works are culmination of several years of studio-practice and doctoral research at Teachers College, Columbia University New York City and her spiritual experiences while she lived in Manhattan and then back again in New Delhi.
As Anita says – my work is art education-research based, bridging contemporary, modernist and esoteric indigenous trajectories. It makes inter connection with Advaita, Kashmir Shaivism, Tantra, Kaulism, Celtic, Naga cultures and philosophy, quantum physics theory, analytical psychology, ritual / temple art, pointing towards an isomorphic aesthetics.

Shiv Kumar Verma, alumni of the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.University, Baroda, was born and brought up in a small village in the Bastar district, a region famous for its traditional arts. He uses natural materials like bronze and local mud to create sculptural works that represent human emotions and reveal shades of everyday living. His works contain the folk elements and the interference of various external forces like science, technology etc. The materials used in these works lend the emotive value of ‘nature’.
Suresh K. Nair an artist based in Banaras is better known as a contemporary muralist, though it’s not on walls of temples and palaces that he paints, but on canvas. The natural colours of an old-world muralist, elaborately prepared with organic matter, have been replaced with acrylic. That’s not surprising because this artist from Kerala has been inspired by both the region’s mural tradition and its temple architecture. He has the vision and confidence to handle large surfaces together with an eye for delicate details, as one sees in the work on view.

Manil-Rohit artist duo from Lucknow based in Noida do some quirky works. They use various iconographies which are sourced from the surroundings and popular media: graffiti, comics, packaging and animation. Yet art historical references are also there while they successfully conquer the age-old battles between figure and ground, abstraction and figuration. The painterly manoeuvres they employ to do so are both skilful and self-conscious: line, colour and shape coalesce into highly charged fields of energy; the soft-focus blur of aerosol paint is juxtaposed with an impasto heaped on like cake frosting; fluorescents mingle with metallic, anchored by pastels and neutrals.

About 2nd edition of United Art Fair : The United Art Fair is pleased to announce its second edition, happening from September 14th to 17th, 2013 in Halls 8,9,10,and 11 of Pragati Maidan. 
While continuing with our radically new model of an artist-driven fair (as opposed to a gallery-driven fair, as most in the world are), in its second edition the United Art Fair will continue to expand on the parameters of contemporary art by looking at a wider variety of disciplines, practitioners, media and materials. Paintings, sculpture and photography will continue to be the majority of works on display, but the fair will also include examples from all fields of design (including graphic art, fashion, textiles, furniture, ceramics, and architecture) to expand on how we define "art" today. By also accommodating works from the genres of folk and tribal art, crafts and ritual arts, the fair will expand on how we define "contemporary" in India today. Boundaries between these various genres and disciplines will be breached, with exciting combinations of materials on display to challenge our preconceived categories of artistic production.
The fair will be organized into a variety of spaces to accommodate both group shows and solo shows of works by particular artists. While the emphasis will be on younger, undiscovered talent new to the marketplace and operating outside of the existing gallery system, senior artists whose works have been overlooked will also be exhibited. Through exhibition and installation strategies, dialogues between disciplines and generations will be created, visual excitement will take precedence over academic categorizations.

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