'If you will stay close to nature…' an art exhibition by Jayashree Chakravarty at Vadehra Art Gallery, D-53 Defence Colony > 28th February to 5th April 2014

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Time : 
 28th February : 6:00 pm onwards - Opening
1st March to 5th April : 11:00 am - 7:00 pm (Sundays Closed) - Exhibition on View

Entry : Free

Place : Vadehra Art Gallery, D-53 Defence Colony, New Delhi 110024
Venue Info : www.vadehraart.com | Map | Nearest Metro Station - 'Lajpat Nagar(Violet Line)'

Event Description : Vadehra Art Gallery is pleased to announce Jayashree Chakravarty’s solo exhibition If you will stay close to nature… . The exhibition marks Chakravarty’s comeback to Delhi; the Kolkata-based artist’s previous solo exhibition in Delhi was held in 2003.

Chakravarty’s recent body of works has been inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s collection of ten letters, named Letters to a Young Poet. The title of the exhibition is borrowed from one of the letters, in which Rilke writes, “If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable.” 

Nature as a subject for artistic expression and philosophical quests has been Chakravarty’s major preoccupation. Her body of 16 works, mostly generated in oil and acrylic , named as ‘Weeds’, ‘Aquatic plants’, ‘Shallow water’, ‘Local Habitat’, ‘Siddhasna’, ‘Moods of water’ etc, voice her concern about shifting environmental balance  and mutating relationship between human and nature, provoked by soulless and aggressive urbanization.

Words and images share a symbiotic equation in Chakravarty’s process of formulation, therefore listening to the artist is as important as viewing her works. Chakravarty’s artworks have always played mediator for conversation between the artist and nature, where the latter is an all-inclusive recognition, bearing everything the artist perceives around her. She has always been very mindful while observing and noting down tiny changes in the ‘world’ around her through her images. Her technique of building up layers through oil and acrylic paints on a thoroughly prepared ground is tried and true; one that has helped her to retain proliferated meanings through both individual and constellated images and create complete harmony with her layered thoughts, memories and inferences.

If you will stay close to nature… is a very personalized yet ecumenical documentation that needs to be excavated and explored through layers of colors and contours. 

About the artist:

Jayashree Chakravarty was born in 1956 in Khoai, Tripura. She did her BFA in Painting from Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, and did a Post Graduate Diploma from the Faculty of Fine Arts of MS University of Baroda.  She was an artist in residence at Aix en Provence between 1994 and 1995. 

Her important solo exhibitions include: The Wind Whispers, Aicon, London (2009); Where the Sand Meets The Sky, Bodhi Art, New York (2007); In The Very Face Of The Time, Galerie 88, Kolkata (2006); Route Map of Experience, IHC Visuals Art Gallery, New Delhi (2003); Thoughts Ricochet, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi (2000); Solo exhibition at Edole d’ Art, Aix-en-Provence (1995); Solo exhibition at Gallery Espace, New Delhi, and Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai (1992).

Her important international participations and group exhibitions include: Palimpsest, Aicon Gallery, New York (2011); Narrations, Quotations & Commentaries, Grosvenor Gallery, London (2011); Indian Highway, Herning Museum of Contemporary Art (HEART), Herning (2010); New Narratives: Contemporary Art from India, Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Jersey and Salina Art Center, Kansas, USA (2008); On The Edge of Vision: New Idioms In Indian and Italian Contemporary Art, organized by the Italian Cultural Institute in New Delhi in collaboration with the National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi at Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata and National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), Mumbai and New Delhi (2007); Colors of Independence, National Gallery of Modern Art (NGMA), New Delhi (1997); Tryst with Destiny-Art from Modern India (1997), Singapore Art Museum, Singapore; Asian Art Biennial, Dhaka, Bangladesh (1997); Ninth Triennial-India, Lalit Kala Akademi, Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi (1997).

The artist lives and works in Kolkata, India.

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