Con Tempus | With Time - a group show of 8 contemporary artists

Date and Time: 7 December 2019 - 15 January 2020, 11am to 6pm (Sundays Closed)Add to Calendar 07/12/2019 11:00 15/01/2020 18:00 Asia/Kolkata Con Tempus | With Time - a group show of 8 contemporary artists Must check for Details and on Event day before visiting -
https://www.delhievents.com/2019/12/art-con-tempus-time-group-show-8-contemporary-artists-centrix-space-vasant-kunj.html The Art Centrix Space, Jain Farm, Behind Sector D2, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi 110070DD/MM/YYYY - Exhibition on View

Entry: Free

Venue: The Art Centrix Space, Jain Farm, Behind Sector D2, Vasant Kunj, New Delhi 110070
Venue Info : art-centrix.com | Map | Nearest Metro Station - 'Chattarpur(Yellow Line)'

Event Description: Monica Jain - Curatorial Director of Art Centrix Space presents Con Tempus | With Time - a group show of 8 contemporary artists. 

A show that perceives the been, being and becoming as one; to be with time.

Monica Jain launched Art Centrix Space five years ago with a vision to curate meaningful exhibitions of Indian contemporary art. Housed in the prime location of Vasant Kunj, New Delhi, the gallery has given a consistently fruitful platform to both national and international artists practising art in different genres. Ms. Jain has herself trained under the renowned sculptor KS Radhakrishnan. Her curatorial endeavours have been a testimony of her firm belief in the concept of time, memory, and space. True to this concept, she is now presenting - Con Tempus | WITH TIME,  a show that perceives the been, being and becoming as one; to be with time.

The group show includes evocative artworks by seven young and mid-career Indian and international artists. Tehmeena Firdos from Delhi (Watercolour and mixed media on paper), Balaji Ponna from Baroda (Oil on Canvas), KP Pradeepkumar (mixed midday on paper) Sharad Sonkusale (Rice paper on canvas), Chandrashekhar Koteshwar (Terracotta miniature sculptures), Pankaj Guru, Priyanka Gupta, and Greek artist Eleni Tsiapara Stoelinga based in The Prague (Sculptures) – all have created contemporary art that flows seamlessly from the past to the present, while also taking it forward into the future of a larger global art movement.

While looking back into the past and planning for the future, the curator and director of the gallery, Monica Jain brings into focus the idea of being, living and working in current times. It is a time like never before - everyone is desperately trying to ‘stay tuned in’, when if you don’t know what occurred a nanosecond ago you’re out of sync, zoned out or outdated; when knowing what is going is not an option but a matter of survival. 

With that in mind, this exhibition brings together very powerful works of these artists that speak of the right here right now. The show evaluates art as it is now created, disseminated and consumed. Perhaps the most difficult thing is to see yourself in the present, when memories and dreams are always a part of our thoughtful state. It is so much easier to do a retrospective or let the annals of history be the guiding force in analysing and viewing art. these artists have not only summed up what it means to be a ‘contemporary’ artist but also evaluated their presence in the larger global movement of art as co-contemporaries of other working artists.  A process that is by default must be arduous and long, where a million instantaneous thoughts must be accumulated, distilled over a long time, then crystallised into a thought and translated into a work of art, it is also an utter paradox to be able to work as a contemporary artists and perceive your role as a gallery as an artist in contemporary time. 

Take the works of Balaji Ponna, for instance. In his highly detailed canvases and smaller works, the artist employs clever images and snippets of text to subtly address sociopolitical issues, including those of class and corruption prevalent across all levels of Indian society in the present day even after over 70 years of independence. Contemporary concerns are the basis if his oeuvre. Grids, smoke soot, colour bands to create forms instead of layers and lines are just some of the visual strategies he employs to metaphorically to encourage multiple readings in his work. Through a new body of work based on time, transience, global/ geographical versus personal identity he aims to take his work to a more complex arena of engagement and interpretation and to make one think about the visuals and the ideas in circulation in the contemporary world.

Similarly, Vadodara-based Chandrasekhar Koteshwar is on to a sophisticated and challenging search about object-hood itself. Humour and satire have also been an undeniable undercurrent in his work. The objects that he makes most of the time are set to be deliberately incongruent. The idea is to question the structure of building up a form and visual, thereby questioning the very process of meaning-making itself as to how meanings are never complete when they are fragmented, his works are created in a way to never achieve that completeness in the meaning. While viewing such works probably we can understand the various mediations and politics of representation. The scale of the works also creates a tremendous impact on the viewer. Sometimes mountains are scaled to minuscule level maquettes but still maintain the monumentality of the original imagination. Through his new series of works he seeks to explore the intricacies and possibilities of the sculptural language through the medium of terracotta in a self -reflexive way, exploring the relationship of people across geographies and beyond limitations of time and space thereby questioning the politics of meaning-making and language itself.

What an interesting situation to be able to work as a contemporary artist and perceive your role as an artist in contemporary times!

In her own words - Through this exhibition, we perceive the been, being and becoming as one. The modus vivendi today is to be - con tempus, that is, to be with time. Art and life unfolding as is. The past is here as is the future. The contemporaneity of time and space, of the right-here-right-now lies in this utter paradox of profound integration. Time is embraced and transcended, expressed and experienced affectively. We are objects in time and space of others and aware of this otherness. In that sense, we are contemporaries who want permanence in the momentary but in our own distinctive ways. A testimony to the contemporaneity of art and artists is this awareness of one another in space. Through this directness of instantaneous exchange, a universal stock of art and imagery is constantly added to create diversity. Existential space thus becomes a relational space which is manifest or vyakta through this contemporaneity. It is this connectivity that dislodges the idea of space and yet, as we discover through the works on view; this connectivity is intangible in its most wireless moments. This then is the utter paradox of a wirelessness within connectedness.

Curated by Monica Jain

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