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8/6/2005

iCon

Complesso SS. Cosma e Damiano, Venezia

India Contemporary

Curators: Julie Evans, Gordon Knox and Peter Nagy

iCon: India Contemporary features the work of five artists and one collective who
represent the vital and engaging art practices to be found in India today. Three new
installation projects by Ranbir Kaleka, Nalini Malani, and Raqs Media Collective
have been commissioned for this presentation in Venice. In addition, three artists,
Atul Dodiya, Anita Dube and Nataraj Sharma, working in painting and sculpture are
represented with major new works.

As the nation of India continues to become more prominent on the international
stage, its culture becomes increasingly relevant to the rest of the world. An
amalgam of ethnicities, cultures, languages, religions, political ideologies and
economic strata, how the people of India negotiate these complexities to form a
unified and democratic nation can become a model for how other nations may resolve
the anxieties presented by globalization and post-modernism.

The diversity of imagery, subjects and techniques employed by these artists reflects
the concerns of both themselves as individuals and the larger society in which they
live and work. Independent curators Peter Nagy, Julie Evans, and Gordon Knox, in
association with the Sally and Don Lucas Artists Programs and with support from
Nuova Icona, have organized a substantial exhibition focusing on contemporary art
from India.

iCon: India Contemporary has been made possible through the generous support of:
Rajan and Radhika Anandan, Anilesh and Tania Ahuja, Arani and Shumita Bose, Srini
and Smita Conjeevaram, Steven V. Pacia and Julie Walsh

iCon Artists:
ATUL DODIYA (b. 1959)
Atul Dodiya, a native of Mumbai, is one of India’s most accomplished, prolific and
astute artists. His practice has, over time, become increasingly complex, his
references more specific, and the subjects of his address broader. He employs
imagery from a wide strata of sources, from the historical Fine Arts of both East
and West to the most banal kitsch found in the markets and homes of India. Atul
Dodiya posits a socially and politically responsible form of art practice by
employing the devices of collage, assemblage, and juxtaposition to speak to the
immediate, the personal, and the heart-felt.

ANITA DUBE (b 1958)
Trained as an art historian and critic, New Delhi-based Anita Dube’s work is
determinedly individualized yet provocatively informed by its cultural context. She
has developed an aesthetic language that is partial to sculptural fragment as a
cultural bearer of personal and social histories. Usually employing a variety of
found objects, Dube explores a divergent range of subjects that address a profound
concern for loss and regeneration- both autobiographical and societal. For iCon, the
artist will create a site-specific installation using the enameled eyes found on
idols in Hindu temples. A signature material in her practice, the eyes enable the
artist to elaborate on divisions between the sacred and secular spaces, organic
processes inherent in culture, and the attributes of voyeurism and desire.

RANBIR KALEKA (b. 1953)
http://www.ranbirkaleka.com
Born and raised in the city of Patiala in northern India, Ranbir Kaleka studied
painting for a number of years in London before returning to live in New Delhi in
the late 1990s. Densely figurative and cryptically narrative, Kaleka’s paintings
exploit tropes of Orientalist imagery and clichés of India. Since the
mid-1990s he has been experimenting with video art and often combining the projected
image with paintings on canvas, inverting the traditional Indian form of the painted
photograph. At iCon he presents a large-scale version of this synthesis of video and
painting, tapping into memories, staging and juxtaposing metaphorical events. For
the production of this piece he collaborated with the actor Jasbir Kaleka and with
Madan Gopal Singh, a semiotician and scholar of English literature, screenwriter,
Sufi singer and composer.

NALINI MALANI (b. 1946)
http://www.nalinimalani.com
Originally associated with the group of painters that have come to be known as The
Baroda School who pioneered a use of historical reference, allegory, figuration, and
narrative to address socio-political concerns, Malani’s works of the past ten years
have focused on large-scale video installations using multiple projections. Her
project for iCon utilizes a text by sociologist Veena Das and will entail projecting
video imagery onto 600 kilos of salt in reference to Gandhi’s salt march. Employing
compelling imagery from the Gujarat genocide of 2002 along with images relating to
the Partition of India in 1947, Malani constructs a theatrical visual narrative with
potent political content.

RAQS MEDIA COLLECTIVE
http://www.raqsmediacollective.net
Founded in 1991 by Jeebesh Bagchi (b. 1965), Monica Narula (b. 1969) and
Shuddhabrata Sengupta (b. 1968).

A group of three theorist from New Delhi who collaborate on projects which
synthesize video, literature, performance, photography, and the graphic arts, Raqs
Media Collective’s work is an attempt to be present and attentive to the world as
they find it and to the histories that preface and prepare their encounters with the
world. For iCon they have created “A Measure of Anacoustic Reason.” This work is
conceived as an installation dedicated to the task of being attentive to utterances
that are generally just out of earshot or that are difficult to listen to.

NATARAJ SHARMA (b. 1958)
Based in the city of Baroda in the western state of Gujarat, artist Nataraj Sharma
will present new large-scale paintings and sculpture at iCon. Sharma's images are
incisive commentaries on perception and experience, his employed styles range from
photo-realism to computer graphics. Both man and machinery, depicted in still,
speculative portraits, are reduced to their vulnerable cores suggesting a caustic
critique on “progress”. Barren, broody, yet visually dramatic, Sharma’s landscapes
allude to the unpredictable confluence of nature, civilization, and
industrialization, a confluence he experiences directly and records with perceptive
insight.

SALLY & DON LUCAS ARTISTS PROGRAMS AT MONTALVO ARTS CENTER
A non-profit artists’ residency facility in Northern California, Lucas Artists
Programs at Montalvo Arts Center invites international mid-career artists to
residencies where they may access state-of-the-art technical equipment and
facilities to produce new works of all kinds, including video and film. In addition,
Lucas Artists Programs' initiatives include the development and production of
opportunities for artists to share their ideas in various parts of the world. It is
through these external initiatives that Lucas Artists Programs came to spearhead
iCon: India Contemporary for presentation at the 51st Venice Biennale. For more
information, please visit: http://www.montalvoarts.org

Press Contact: Kara Wasson, 408.294.2712
kwasson@jdsgrouppr.com
Katy Rees, 408.961.5814
krees@villamontalvo.org

Image:
Ranbir Kaleka
Crossings: Two Stories
Four channel video projection onto acrylic on canvas
2005

Cocktail reception: June 9th, 7-9pm. Open to all.

Refectory of the former Convent SS.Cosma & Damiano
Campo San Cosmo
30133 Giudecca, Venezia
Courtesy of Museo della Gondola

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