India Art Fair

MAG | Booth F7 | India Art Fair 2022 | Points of Departure

MAG presents Points of Departure, a curated selection of artworks by nine artists, spanning 50 years of practice. Presented as pairings of artists who came of age in the last century and young practitioners working today, these artworks approach issues of the contemporary from varied lenses. They offer insights into our fast-mutating ecologies, centering the tension between the artists' desire to capture reality while negotiating the impossibility of objective truth.

Tsering Negi’s intricate and ultra-composed portraits in woodcut signal the interlinked fates of man and nature, and the irony of ignoring extractive development for short term gain. K Pooja’s etchings of upside-down bazaars, with fine detailing offer an intimate insight into the artist’s observations of the city and its people. Both, in their unique ways offer archival possibilities for documenting migration, of lives that disappear too easily in the chaos of an urban milieu.

Much of the work of artists from the Bengal School, who witnessed our nation building years, depicts nature through the lens of a romantic idealism- utopic scenes of rural countryside in harmony with nature. These stand in stark contrast with the vast, muted and oft desolate landscapes by Rachna Badrakia, where nature seems to have bent its knee to the human will.

The grid-like texturizations of Krishna Reddy’s prints echo construction sites, where Cheering’s lithographs of Himachali countryside serve as sobering reminders of all that is at stake, as we accelerate rapidly into ecological armageddon. There is a dreamy escapist quality to the charcoal drawings of Goan artist Diptej Vernekar, whose works seem to be responding to Paramjit Singh’s meditations on nature and its myriad textures. Both artists follow a similar technique of erasing as a way of revealing, their works speak to the fluidity of memory, which is often in flux with our need to constantly find meaning.

While the works presented may be generations apart, their pre-occupations appear to collide, and in turn, offer us a space of quiet reflection- for futures to come, and pasts we inherit.

RACHANA BADRAKIA

For Rachana, mark making is a strategy to understand temporality, dot and spot as records of the ephermal nature of time- that which we cannot control and whose presence is only felt after its passing. The artist’s practice is largely abstract, and the process of mark making helps her tap into her subconscious, acting as guide for the viewer as they negotiate her art.

Her work helps her articulate her emotional and mental state, bring to front feelings that she doesn’t find easy to articulate. The Fragranced Rise, on first look appears as a somber brooding, with is dull gray sky and muddy waters, but as one lingers on the work longer, the floating translucent sheet, mimicking a flock of birds or the rising mist, instill hope.

In a surprising contrast, the diptych of The Yellow Field offers emotional release, and explosion of euphoria, the warm glow providing a welcome change of emotion.

In the Sky of Infinity Series, the eye is first drawn to the central object, a window (in Series I) and a tornado-shaped phenomena (Series IV), almost like time portals, to enter the artists inner world. Almost immediately, the rest of the work reveals itself and immerses the viewer into the depths and multitudes that the dots and spots contain.

Born in Ahmedabad, Badrakia completed her Painting from Sheth C. N. College of Fine Arts, Ahmedabad in 2004 and her Post Diploma in Printmaking from M.S. University of Baroda, Vadodara in 2010. She has participated in many groups shows including, 'The Beautiful Chaos' at Gallery 079, Ahmedabad, in 2020, 'Breathing through shifting Scapes', at Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai in 2020 and its virtual edition, both curated by Jesal Thacker in collaboration with Saffron Art India and Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, August, 2020. She has been awarded, ‘The Gujarat State Lalit Kala Award for Graphics’ in Artist Category in 2010. The artist lives and works in Vadodara, Gujarat.

DIPTEJ VERNEKER

Goa, where Diptej was born and continues to live, is the central preoccupation of his work as an artist - it informs his reading of the relationships between the human, non-human and more-than- human worlds. As a young state, Goa has seen radical change and degradation due to rapid and

unchecked extractive capitalism, this is in constant tension with its rich cultural histories, ecologies, myths, and traditions.

Whether Frozen Mountain, Brutal Takeover or his Untitled works, his charcoal drawings are able to masterfully capture this state of decay and slow violence, time feels frozen.
His drawings feel mystical, and offer a space of the poetic while exploring the human condition. The conscious ‘fogginess’ of the landscapes, along with the technique of wiping, which he has mastered, are able to successfully capture the slippage of memory and our failure to remember stories in their entirety but only as fragments that come together in altered forms.

Diptej Vernekar (b. 1991/Goa/ India) Post graduated with an MFA from S. N. school of arts and communication dept. of Fine Arts, University of Hyderabad- India. His works have been exhibited in group shows at the Collateral Project for Kochi Muziris Biennale (2016), Serendipity Arts Festival Goa (2017), India Art Fair (2019), LATITUDE 28, New Delhi, India. (2021), etc. Additionally, he has taught at S.N. School of Arts and Communication, Dept. Fine Art, University of Hyderabad, India. Khoj International Artist Workshop GOA (2017), Inlaks Fine Art Award, Inlaks Shivdasani Foundation, India. and Forbes 30Under30, Forbes India (2019). The artist lives and works in Goa, India.

TSERING NEGI

Tsering is a master printmaker and lithographer, and his strong connect with his mountain roots is evident throughout his practice. Playing the notions of scale and points of view, his two bodies of work that are part of this exhibition offer alternating vantage points to reflect on issues of ecology and climate change. The birds eye view of landscapes- whether the city lights or the river basin, sit in contrast with the detailed decorative portraits of women in the Rear Window Series, both reflecting on that which is at stake of being lost.

As one meditates on each of the Rear window portraits, crucial details begin to emerge, the floral patterns of the dress blend into skyscraper like cacti, with a cloud of hovering smoke. Cats hid in plain sight and roses bloom everywhere, defying science and its logic. He speaks to the absurdity of his life in Delhi, where he recently moved, with its alarming air pollution levels which have forced him to bring the outside into the controlled environment of the indoors.

Tsering Negi completed his M. F. A. in Graphics Kala Bhavana, Visva Bharati University, Santi Niketan in 2012 and B. F. A. in Graphics Govt. College of Art Chandigarh, Panjab University in 2010. He was awarded at the Bombay Art Society, Color of Independence, Mumbai in 2021 and the 59th National Academy Exhibition, Lalit Kala, New Delhi

He has participated in various national and international exhibitions, his most recent one being the Intaglio 2nd International Mini Print Triennial, Kyiv, Ukraine 2021
Negi lives and works in Delhi.

KEERTI POOJA / K POOJA

Pooja’s etchings refuse to be bordered by gravity and a single perspective; she creates a world of fantasy that allows for deep self-introspection. Building on her sketches of people, faces and their public lives, she taxidermies their memories in etchings, bringing to life an upside-down world, where people are often defined by their belongings. She engages with the perplexities of city life, and the chaos that surrounds us, her repetitive strokes reinforcing the internal conflicts of her subjects.

Locating and In Search of, both are extensions of her fascination by the “bazaar”, with hawkers, vendors, wanderers, she painstakingly attempts to capture their routines and practices. With keen interest in the rhythm of the daily cycle, Pooja’s aims to foreground the centrality of these workers in the functioning of city life.

Pooja completed her BFA from Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh in 2018 and MFA from MS University, Vadodara, Gujarat in Printmaking in 2020. She was the Runner-up at “Indian Printmaker House “in 2021. She has participated in various workshops and residencies, including Space Studio Baroda Residency in 2021 and the Student Biennale in association with Kochi–Muziris Biennale, Visakhapatnam.

PARAMJIT SINGH

Born in Amritsar, Punjab, Paramjit Singh formally trained in the arts at the School of Art, New Delhi in the Fifties. His days growing up in the idyllic setting of pastoral countryside, with green and yellow fields, wilderness and trees, left an indelible mark on him, and become the main preoccupation of his practice. It is no surprise, that he quite quickly become well known as a landscape painter, although it is his charcoal that has drawn much intrigue in recent years.

Seen in this exhibition is a single charcoal drawing of his, where the play of light and intensity of the charcoal strokes create vivid imagery of foliage and entice the viewer in. The drawing is at once realistic and abstract- revealing and withholding all at once. He prefers to paint series, with one work flowing into the other, and allow the viewer to look at his work as a longer meditation on life beyond the urban.

Currently, he lives in New Delhi, India. Singh is married to fellow painter Arpita Singh, with whom he had a daughter, the artist Anjum Singh. He earned his Bachelor's and Ph.D. in Fine Arts from Delhi Polytechnic in 1958 and 1962, respectively. For nearly three decades Singh was a Professor in the Department of Fine Arts at Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi. The Seventh Walk (2013), an experimental documentary film by Indian filmmaker Amit Dutta explores the charcoal drawings of Singh.

KRISHNA REDDY

Krishna Reddy was a master intaglio printer known for viscosity printing. Obsessed with the possibility of a ‘line’ and its ability to show movement, Reddy’s prints, for most of his career comprised of compositions made almost exclusively of lines, often combining textures and tones. In the prints that are shown in this exhibition, he explores these techniques but they create distinctly different end results. Apu’s Space and Rhyme Busker situate the human figure onto geometrical grids, signaling the hustle of modern city life, like New York, which was his home till his end years. Water Form and Untitled are more organic explorations, combining sophisticated use of textures, material, and color to mimic the movement of water and its many kinds of fluidity. His prints have strong energy and carry a dynamic quality that is unique to his practice and one that he is famous for.

Krishna Reddy was born on 15 July 1925, in a small village called Nandanoor, near Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh, India. Reddy studied at Visva-Bharati University's Kala Bhavana (Institute of Fine Arts) with Nandalal Bose, from 1941 to 1946, and graduated with a degree in fine arts. After a spell at the Slade in London, he moved to Paris and joined Atelier 17, a printmaking workshop founded by Stanley William Hayter, a British Surrealist artist. He was initially a sculptor and it is only after joining the atelier that he started exploring printmaking. Reddy was a guest professor and lecturer at many universities in the United States including Maryland Institute College of Art, Pratt Institute, Ruskin College School of Fine Art and Drawing, University of Texas, and many more.

Gallery Directors- Ritu Chagti and Sugandha Chagti Mahatta Consultants – FAQ Art- Poonji Nath and Keshav Mahendru Text Courtesy – Radha Mahendru