"Five Stories" A Group Show
Five Stores
A Group show of five artists, Pritam Bhatty,
Preetha Kannan, Dev, Neeraj Patel & Abhijitkumar Pathak.
Neeraj Patel mines just the fact of just
being. His work is an extension of his effort to makeover his experience. It
leaves no doubt concerning its reality as an action and its relation to
transforming him. The layering of colours and the translucency of his surface
treatment makes his work meditative. His canvas talks back to him to provoke a
dramatic dialogue. Each stroke has to be a decision and answered by a new
question. He lives and works in Baroda, India
The basic concept of Dev's work is life
around him. He has been a urbanite all his life and reacts to everything that
has happened %u2013 either political or cultural. But obviously, his painting and
collages are his thoughts and he thinks through them. Painting to Dev, has
become a kind of language.
In Preetha's work, the static image moves. It
moves you with its internal movement, when it comes from the brush of an
artist. Preetha's canvases acquire this quality to move, arising from the
moment frozen by her, and becomes contemporary since it is the moment, which
has evolved into the signpost for evaluation.
Her palette is notable %u2013 has wedded
pointillism to pixels, thus creating vast depths. The surface of her canvas is
covered with dots, each surface dot with 8 to 10 sub colours behind it to
achieve the perspective. Her landscapes are different; instead of looking out
at a vista, she draws you in to her work, more a participant than a viewer. She
lives and works in Mumbai.
Pritam Bhatty's works are from her Icon
series created on the premise that most beautiful woman can get what they want.
It is multimedia work, overlays of print, water colour, thread and sequins. The
predominant prints are from the biblical stories of Judith and general
Holofernes and the story of Samson and Delilah. Judith's Town Bethulia, a
corridor to Jerusalem, was laid siege for 34 days by the Assyrian general
Holofernes who gave them five more days to surrender. Judith who was a very
beautiful widow, managed to get into the gullible generals tent, and walked out
with his head in a sack on the fourth day. These prints are the pictures of
women icons, in this case Waheeda Rehman and others, overlaid by textures
painted / printed by Pritam. Over the final print she has painted the Pitcher
plant, beautiful but a canibal plant, further embelishing it with sequins.
Objectivity, the ambition to treat the
totality of existing things and the necessity of structure is the one word that
one can use to sum up Abhijitkumar Pathak's works.