Kabir Mohanty
(1959 – )
Mohanty’s videos classically explore people, objects, space light and how these co-exist in stasis and movement. The quick shots and the still frames both suggest a sort of intimate mystery, where the visible is as equally “unknown” as the visible. In his video installation for this exhibition, Mohanty’s display of it is critical to the artwork – almost a part of the whole. It conjures a wide - open space – akin to a natural landscape. The artist blends tones of natural light with the illumination of the digital, thereby creating an installation which is both beautiful and brilliant. Kabir Mohanty is a filmmaker and a video artist. His films and videos have been shown at the Oberhausen, Rotterdam, Torino, Hawaii, Bilbao, Bombay and World Wide Video Festivals. From September 2002 till June 2004 he was a Visiting Artist in the Art Department, UCLA.

Rm. Palaniappan
(1957 – )
Palaniappan works in mixed media prints, embellishing his works with such things as rubber stamps, wax seals, collage materials and embossing. Bright and young, Palaniappan is interested in aeronautics and systems of notation which signify the specifics of time, place and sequence. The imagery usually appears to have textural and landscape elements. “Man has always wanted to fly as flight was a kind of release from space and time,” Palaniappan has said in an interview. “Numbers interest me because they are both finite and infinite,” he added. The juxtaposition of the static and the mobile, words and images, freedom and limitations are not new to Indian art. But the unique manner of Palaniappan’s presentation is indeed novel. His works can be interpreted to be Western connotations from an Indian perspective.

Kingshuk Sarkar
(1972 – )
Kingshuk Sarkar could have bid goodbye to his student days along with the old century and old millennium when he finished his courses at Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, in 1999. Instead, Kingshuk went on to the Kyoto University of Art and Design to train in the Japanese style of painting. He also mastered techniques of Japanese calligraphy and Sumi painting. This art practice and philosophy have profoundly influenced Kingshuk’s visual expression which is deeply rooted in Asian sensibilities. His art has an overall Asian significance and connotation. Kingshuk aspires to unify, within the constraints of a fragmented and fractured society, the indigenous with the global context. His spontaneous visual rendering bears direct reflection of this recurring concern.

Avishek Sen
(1975– )
In seeking to “understand” himself and his country’s disjunctive reality, Abhishek Sen paints. The artist from Visva Bharati is young (b.1975), having lived in a village (in Midnapore) as well as in a large city, he’s tasted both the petty tyrannies at the micro level and the impersonal ruthlessness at the macro. Not surprising, then, that his art reflects neither the reverence to tradition, nor the pastoral idyll of lore. The pick for this show comes from a series called, innocently enough, My Family In India but, as the viewer discovers, it seeks to make sense of what’s senseless. It rather seems that the artist tries to come to terms with the baroque contraries of Indian reality by exploring a bewildering gallery of images. Images that have been plucked at random from the swirl of stimuli around but trace a kind of binary logic in their choice. And so Sen squints at tradition, critiques society. Ultimately reflecting life as he sees it: a digest of disquieting dissonance. (an excerpt from Rita Dutta, Concepts & Ideas 2008)

My Family in India Series - 1
mixed media on paper | 2008
151.5cm x 175cm | 60" x 69"
Con No. 4876

My Family in India Series - 2
mixed media on paper | 2008
151.5cm x 150.5cm | 69.75" x 59.25"
Con No. 4877

My Family in India Series - 3
mixed media on paper | 2008
161.5cm x 152cm | 63.5" x 60"
Con No. 4878

Sanjeev Sonpimpare
(1969– )
This body of work poses questions about the prevalent notions of who is the ‘Native’ and the ‘Citizen’ while trying to understand whom the ‘Migrant/Outsider’ is. Displacement and migration are the human and social fallout of political disputes over territory, ethnicity, economics and employment. Words such as majority and minority have become more common and laden in our usage of these terms. The paintings and the sculptural installation work ‘Back to Where I Belong….’ is about the departure from ‘Home’ an established base, to what one calls ‘Home’ where one arrives in to earn a livelihood. This series shows, the home is ‘the Self’, which has to keep negotiating the space between the firm ground and the sky as roof over the head. The juxtaposition of positive and negative spaces suggests the tug-and-pull of energy between a burgeoning city on one side and a somnabulist citizenry, on the reverse. Sonpimpare says this is incidental, that he wants to share the sense of alienation, which is both, a private and a universal experience, more common now than before. Sonpimpare’s work is an attempt to bring all these aspects “home” to himself and the viewer.

CST2Banaras
acrylic and oil on canvas | 2008
183cm x 122cm each | 72" x 48"
Con No. 4869

Backhome Migrant
acrylic and oil on canvas | 2008
183cm x 122cm each | 72" x 48"
Con No. 4870

Bare Foot Back2Bihar
acrylic and oil on canvas | 2008
183cm x 122cm each | 72" x 48"
Con No. 4871