A solo show of recent sculptures & drawings by Ahmedabad-based artist Amit Ambalal at Gallery Espace, 16 Community Centre, New Friends Colony > 11am-7pm on 14th March to 5th April 2014

Time : 11:00 am - 7:00 pm (Sundays Closed)

Entry : Free

Place : Gallery Espace, 16 Community Centre, New Friends Colony, New Delhi - 110025
Venue Info : galleryespace.com | Map | Nearest Metro Station - 'Lajpat Nagar(Violet Line)'

Event Description : Renu Modi, Director, Gallery Espace presents a solo show of recent sculptures and drawings by Ahmedabad-based artist Amit Ambalal.
Talking about his sculptures, the artist says: “At an art material shop, by chance, I saw some clay kind of material. Its colours were most suited to my palette - pure and basic. When I tried to work with it, I felt that the material was most friendly and could collaborate well with my thought process. I felt as if I was applying colours not on the canvas but in space. The process was closer to painting rather than sculpture.”

He says: “The starting point for my work is mostly from the things around me. The parrots in my mother’s courtyard that fly away as soon as they see me coming, monkeys that break tiles of my studio roof, painting and pichhvais of Nathdwara, daily newspapers or even pages from my several sketchbooks.

While working with this colourful material I was reminded of the polychrome wooden toys and sculptures in the Vaishnava Havelis. They looked as if they came out from the beautifully painted pichhvais that are displayed behind the image of Krishna - cows, peacocks, monkeys, trees, clouds and gopis. Mind has a rather complex way of entertaining us! As the work proceeds it picks and chooses things from the memory, experience (past as well as present) or perhaps even from the past lives! It does so in a way of its own, often serendipitously. The chances of this happening are increased when one finds a suitable medium. All such expressions of mind have a meaning that may be difficult to decipher. But these are the surprises that make me work.”

Amit Ambalal, born in Ahmedabad in 1943, had no formal training in an art school, but was under the guidance of artist and teacher Chhaganlal Jadhav. Qualified in Arts, Commerce and Law, he was a businessman prior to taking up painting full-time since 1979. His interests in the arts extend to historical research, documentation and collection. His book on the subject, Krishna as Shrinathji - Rajasthani Paintings from Nathdwara was published by Mapin in 1987. His paintings make an interesting interface with his passion for the art history of devotional pictures from Nathdwara. While on the one hand there is the historian’s aesthetic interest, there is equally the critical comment of the humorist in his work. He portrays the eccentricities of human behaviour with great imagination imparting a cheerful feeling to his paintings. He is interested in teasing out the manifestation of the irrational in the seemingly mundane through representation of the everyday and the divine. Form and meaning are often the same, welded together in a language that has been designed to convey his satirical examination. 

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