Atul Dodiya

As an artist committed to the revitalisation of the two-dimensional painted surface, Dodiya engages with the ambient expressive culture: his references range from the comic strip and the popular religious oleograph, through the advertising billboard and the movie poster, to his favourite paintings from the Indian, European and American traditions. Dodiya has now moved on to embrace a variety of street furniture and its implied public-space. This choice of forms and materials allows him to challenge the implicit division that prevails in a conventional exhibition space, between inside and outside, between gallery and street. The boundaries between 'fine art' and popular culture are deliberately dissolved in these richly hybrid art-works. He thereby acknowledges the crucial subaltern presence in the metropolis, bringing the realities of artisanal labour and mechanical industry into the exhibition space. This enables him to link his reflections on the economy and the culture together in a politically sophisticated manner. (Ranjit Hoskote)

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