Wednesday, December 11, 2019

#SudhirPatwardhan Retrospective #NGMA #TheGuild A Walk through the Ages of Art


Yang Jiechang's Solo Exhibition at Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum


Artist News | Yang Jiechang's Solo Exhibition at Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum

Yang Jiechang: 3 Souls 7 Spirits Opening:November 6th, 2019(Wednesday)16:00 Duration:November 7th, 2019 - February 9th, 2020 Host:Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum Address:Building 3, No.210, Wenshui Road Jingan District, Shanghai Yang Jiechang's solo exhibition 3 Souls 7 Spirits is opening on November 6th, 2019. The exhibition presents 20 groups of major works created over the last thirty years and puts the emphasis on Yang's oeuvre as a painter. Yet, next to 14 sets of paintings and calligraphies it includes also 2 installations and 3 videos. The exhibition is curated by Martina Koeppel-Yang.

3 Souls 7 Spirits is the title of Yang Jiechang's large-scale solo exhibition at Shanghai Minsheng Art Museum, and it is the name of one of his masterful calligraphies present in the exhibition, too. The motto originally describes the daoist concept of the essence of the human soul. As title of Yang's solo exhibition and as calligraphy, it hints to two fundamental elements in his oeuvre: the use of the calligraphic brush and the emphasis on spiritual values, which he appreciates for their universality. It is a kind of pragmatic spirituality, anchored in the here and now, similar to the one evident in Chinese literati culture, where contemplation and self- cultivation are as much an act of participation in worldly affairs as governing.

Yang Jiechang's main tool to actively take part in our contemporary world is the Chinese brush. He has been using a variety of artistic media throughout his career, yet painting and calligraphy are at the centre of his creation. He however does not consider himself an ink painter or calligrapher but rather a contemporary literati and painting for him is an act of participation. After his emigration to Europe in 1988, Yang was quasi naturally attracted by romanticism, in particular German romanticism with its subjective quest for spirituality, its love for nature and the search for the obscure and unfinished. Both, Eastern spirituality and romanticism are present in his oeuvre on a conceptual and on an aesthetic level from very early on, for example in his Hundred Layers of Ink series (1989 - 1999).

About the Artist The artistic practice of Yang Jiechang (b. 1956 in Foshan) as a calligrapher-painter turned global social actor inverts the contemporary Chinese art world norm of using Western avant-garde forms to critique contemporary Chinese society. He accomplishes this by adopting the performative expressivity of the traditional brush and the paradoxical dialectics of pre-modern Daoist skeptics to expose the underlying social and cultural forces that shape our contemporary global reality. With his purely abstract One Hundred Layers of Ink works, which he inaugurated for the seminal 1989 trans-national show Magiciens de la Terre, Yang deals with the contrasting themes of material and spiritual transcendence, liberation of the individual, universal love and nature.

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

#SudhirPatwardhan retrospective at #NationalGalleryOfModernArt, Mumbai, #TheGuild


#SudhirPatwardhan retrospective at #NationalGalleryOfModernArt, Mumbai, #TheGuild Retrospective of eminent artist Sudhir Patwardhan ‘Walking Through Soul City, Sudhir Patwardhan: A Retrospective’ curated by Nancy Adajania being presented by The Guild Art Gallery at National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, previewing on 29th November 2019. The exhibition will continue until 12th February 2020. A number of conversation events are being organised during the exhibition period. The retrospective spans works from the 1970s to now. It would be a rare treat and occasion to be able to see a whole range of select and rare artworks from the 1970s onwards. They would include some rare and iconic works. A brief bio of the artist, his photograph and a couple of images of the artworks Sudhir Patwardhan was born in Pune in 1949. He graduated in medicine and worked as a Radiologist in the city of Thane, near Mumbai from 1975 to 2005. He took to art seriously while in medical college. Since 1979 his work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and has received wide critical as well as popular acclaim. He is an occasional writer and lecturer on art, and also a curator who has focused on introducing new audiences to contemporary art. In 2008 - 2009 he organized ‘Expanding Horizons’ an exhibition of thirty important contemporary artists’ and travelled with it to eight cities in Maharashtra, along with lectures, seminars and film shows on art. Apart from exhibition catalogues, five books on the artist’s work has been published. ‘The Complicit Observer’ The Art of Sudhir Patwardhan, by Ranjit Hoskote 2004 (Sakshi Gallery and Eminence Designs); ‘Chitrakar Sudhir Patwardhan’(in Marathi) by Padmakar Kulkarni 2005 (Lokvangmay Grih); ‘The Crafting of Reality, Sudhir Patwardhan: Drawings’, by Ranjit Hoskote 2007 (The Guild); ‘Rekhachitravichar’, Marathi translation of ‘The Crafting of Reality’ by Dilip Ranade, 2012 (Popular Prakashan); and ‘Hamsafar’ with an essay by R. Siva Kumar in English and by Vijay Kumar in Hindi, 2018 (Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal, and The Guild). The artist lives and works in Thane, near Mumbai. (Images, courtesy The Guild. Image copyright: Sudhir Patwardhan and The Guild) Current: Sculpsit: Between Thought and Action Curated by Sasha Altaf for Sunaparanta & The Guild Dipti & Dattaraj Salgaocar, Patrons Sunaparanta Akbar Padamsee, A. Ramachandran, Anupam Sud, Baiju Parthan, Gieve Patel, Gigi Scaria, Himmat Shah, Jyoti Bhatt, K. G. Subramanyan, N. N. Rimzon, Navjot Altaf, Rajkumar Korram, Shantibai, Sudhir Patwardhan and T. V. Santhosh Friday, 4 October - 22 December 2019 At Sunaparanta, Goa Centre For The Arts in collaboration with The Guild Forthcoming: Walking Through Soul City Sudhir Patwardhan: A Retrospective, Curated by Nancy Adajania with National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai and The Guild 29 November 2019 – 12 February 2020

#OnePlusMusicFestival #DYPatilStadium #Nerul #KatyPerry #DuaLipa


Photo caption: Image 1 – Aishwarya Rai Bachchan with Katy Perry at a party hosted by Karan Johar to welcome her to India for the OnePlus Music Festival Image 2 – Karan Johar with Katy Perry at a party hosted by him to welcome her to India for the OnePlus Music Festival Image 3 – Ananya Panday with Katy Perry at a party hosted by Karan Johar to welcome her to India for the OnePlus Music Festival Image 4 – Aditi Rao Hydari with Katy Perry at a party hosted by Karan Johar to welcome her to India for the OnePlus Music Festival Image 5 – Pete Lau, Founder and CEO, OnePlus, with Katy Perry at a party hosted by Karan Johar to welcome her to India for the OnePlus Music Festival