With one of the world’s fastest growing economies and HNWI (high net-worth individual) populations, and an expanding collector base, India is increasingly becoming an important centre for the global art market. The 4th edition promises to see a greater number of collectors, artists, galleries and audiences from India and across the globe.

http://www.indiaartfair.in/default.aspx#

La Murrina, Birgerjarlsgatan 2, 114 34 Stockholm, Sweden

Murano is a part of Venice and is situated in the lagoon outside the city. The tradition of glassmaking has been alive there  since 13th century. Murano, La Marrina was founded in Sweden in 1968 when they opened biggest & beautiful store in the centre of Stockholm. Here you will come across a wide assortment of beautiful glass-art from sophisticated classic chandeliers to modern richly coloured Karim Rashid designed lamps, vases and decorative objects. The magical tour to the shop includes: Introduction of the Murano history, Prosecco and Italian delicatessen, Presentation of catalogues, Glass samples, questions and mingling.

A worth place for shopping glass art, must try once.

Bharat Sikka, "Space In-Between", 2003–2007

Indian culture in the form of music, dance, film, art and literature will be very much in focus in Stockholm during the period 1 October 2010 – 9 January 2011. In a joint effort by Kulturhuset Stockholm, Södra Teatern, Dansens Hus, Bollywoodbio/Bio Rio, Söderbokhandeln and others, a large number of cultural events will take place. The entire project is entitled ”Indien/Indien”, and offers meetings with several well-renowned Indian artists, writers and poets, film makers, fashion designers, etc. The initiative comes from Erik Sjöström, Head of Kulturhuset, who has invited other organisers in Stockholm to join.

Sheba Chhachhi, "Ganga's Daughters I (Initiation Chronicle)" 2001–2007

Kulturhuset at Sergels Torg launches an exhibition of 15 contemporary artists with their roots in India and Pakistan. The exhibition, entitled ”Samtidigt”, will be shown during the entire period, and features works by Anita Khemka, Archana Hande, Bharat Sikka, Gigi Scaria, Hema Upadhyay, Nalini Malani, Pushpamala, Reena Saini Kallat, Rashmi Kaleka, Sheba Chhachhi, Shilpa Gupta, Thugral & Tagra, Vivan Sundaram, and Chitra Ganesh. They represent different strains within modern Indian art.

The exhibition targets the question “What it means to be a human being in India today; how the image of India is changing, the conditions for women, how western consumer patterns are spreading to Indian everyday life, how the boundary between city and countryside is shifting, and how the conflict between India and Pakistan continues to affect life. And meanwhile, how life goes on as usual”.

“With a remarkable power of observation, the Swedish artist Bertil Hansson focuses his sight onto the most insignificant detail and lifts it out of its place in the entire context. He charges it with magic and space whether the technique is painting, graphic arts or, as is his latest passion, photography. With great intensity he also absorbs the surrounding and transforms reality into abstraction in a way that makes his pictures stand out as familiar for us. This is intensified by the associations they give to different directions in art history. His artistic career has developed rapidly ever since the new millennium when he moved to the south of France and settled in the village of Goult. Since then his artistic desire has felt no constraints and his productivity has grown impressively. He is now in great demand from Scandinavian art galleries and is making several exhibitions every year, especially in Norway and Sweden. After having worked mainly with watercolours and tempera Bertil Hansson a decennium ago started adding a new technique to his repertoire, engravings. In Helsingborg in the South of Sweden he found a partner in Ateljé Larsen. Since 1996 he has developed a fertile collaboration with the master himself, Ole Larsen. All of that production has recently been published in an attractive book, Hansson hos (chez) Larsen. The lastest passion though for Hansson, is photography and he brings his pictures together under a variation of themes. There is indeed a great relationship between his photographs, his graphics and his paintings. The search for light and the way he makes his motives float, create the idea of space as well as a faint yet warm feeling of uncertainty.” (Text – Britt Nordberg Journalist of Culture Reviewer of visual art and theatre)

Available works (All  work images/text are published with the consent of the artist. All rights reserved, protected by international copy right laws.)

Paintings

The Whole World, Tempera on Canvas,47.2 x 35.4 in, 2004, SOLD

Wind IV, Tempera on Canvas, 29.5 x 23.6 in, 2005, SOLD

Line of Light VIII, Tempera on Canvas, 9.4 x 7.5 in, 2004, SOLD

Wind II, Tempera on Canvas,11.8 X 9.4 in, 2005, SOLD

Touch I, Tempera on Canvas,9.4 x 7.5 in, 2005, SOLD

Going on, Tempera on Canvas, 35.4 x 35.4 in, 2004, SOLD

Photography

Red Light II, Photography mounted on aluminium and laminated, 15.7 x 11 in, Ed 1/6, 2007

Through a window, Photography mounted on aluminium and laminated - Light-Jet- C-print, 11.8 x 8.8 in, Ed 1/6 2007

River,Photography mounted on aluminium and laminated, 39.4 x 26 in, Ed 1/6, 2007

Bleu Profond,Photography mounted on aluminium and laminated - lightjet, 39.4 x 27.2 in, Ed 1/6, 2008

“I try to work with the thought “Think Different” in all I do. Don’t just follow the stream, try to do something different, something that strikes a chord in people’s feelings and thoughts…”

Gordon has concentrated on painting faces and people, and today he is primarily painting on untreated plywood with oil colors. The grain of the plywood provides an interesting texture and emotional feel in the work.

In 2006 he aquired a studio in a unique house, designed in 1958 by the well known Swedish architect Per Friberg. After renovating the building, it now enables him to use the entire house as a gallery and showcase for his own art, as well as the works of other artists. Since 2007 Gordon has hosted exhibitions of his own art, but has also participated in several individual and joint exhibitions. His works are collected by Uppsala University, which has the second largest art collection in Sweden. Occasionally he is also commissioned to do unconventional portraits, while retaining his artistic freedom.

He paints with oil on plywood and canvas. When he paints he never quite knows what the colors, the material, and the picture will communicate and as a consequence he uses various styles. Gordon is often surprised by the process and the result, and he likes to surprise the viewer as well. Imperfection is often found in his pictures – a crack in the plywood, trickles, scratches, roughness…

Available works (All  work images/text are published with the consent of the artist. All rights reserved, protected by international copy right laws.)

Family Business (Set of 11), Oil on Plywood, 23.6 x 7.9 in (each), 2009

NewYear, Gaza, Oil on Plywood, 39.4 x 47.2 in, 2009

Aliquippa, Oil on Plywood, 47.2 x 94.5 in, 2009

Transformation 1, Oil and spray Paint on Plywood, 15.7 x 31.5 in, 2009, Sold

Transformation 2, Oil and Spray Paint on Plywood, 15.7 x 31.5 in, 2009

Transformation 3, Oil and Spray paint on Plywood, 15.7 x 31.5in, 2009

Is It Gona Rain Soon, Oil on Plywood, 86.6 x 47.2 in, Sold

With Rokia, Oil on Plywood, 23.6 x 9.8 in

Binu Bhaskar is a photographer based in space and time. Born in Kerala, after his formal school education and graduation, he has been traveling all over the world in search of that alchemy which would help him to convert what he sees (visuals) into visions. Bitten by travel bug, Binu backpacked to several art centers in India, acquainting himself with artists and their respective art forms. Then he found himself in Australia, studying photography in one of the illustrious art institutions. Ten long years he spent there, found his wife and begot a son. Circumstances took him to Dubai where he became the leading photographer for the international advertising agency Saatchi and Saatchi. He drew phenomenal amounts as his remuneration. Suddenly, one day he decided to say good bye to the world of advertising for pursuing his own call, creating visions out of mere visuals.

Back in India, Binu found a thriving art scene but still reluctant to take serious photography into its fold. Artists like Valsan Koorma Kolleri, Bose Krishnamachari and so on recognized his talent and extended their support by providing him with shelters in Kerala, Mumbai and Delhi. He had his first major solo show in Bodhi Art Gallery, New Delhi in February 2008. He title his solo show ‘Sap Consciousness’. Playing with the words ‘Sub’ and ‘Sap’ Binu would like to get into the core of what is seen through naked eyes and through the practiced eye of the camera. Sap is the essence of nature, the life blood of the plant kingdom that yield fruits for all who have the tenderness to pluck away with the fruits with a prayer. Sap fills the fruits with essence and when it is time sap itself forces the fruit to fall for the common good. Sap consciousness then is the supreme consciousness for Binu and it excels the automatism of sub-consciousness.

Binu Bhaskar exhibited his new series of work called ‘The Human Race’ at Mojo Gallery Dubai in Jan 2010. His works explores the perpetual motion of humans living in cities around the world. The never-ending universal race to get somewhere or achieve something is captured in a series of highly evocative studies that illustrate the restless human psyche.

Available works (All  work images/text are published with the consent of the artist. All rights reserved, protected by international copy right laws.)

PORTRAITS

Portrait, Digital prints on Archival quality acidfree paper, 44 x 32 in, Ed 1/3, 2008

Family, Digital prints on Archival quality acidfree paper, 44 x 32 in, Ed 1/3, 2008

Portraits, Digital prints on Archival quality acidfree paper, 44 x 32in, Ed 1/3, 2008

HUMANRACE

Humanrace Paris, Digital prints on Archival quality acidfree paper, 21.3 x 60.2 in, 2010

Humanrace Kolkatta, Digital prints on Archival quality acidfree paper, 21.3 x 66.5 in, 2010

Humanrace New Delhi 1, Digital prints on Archival quality acidfree paper, 32.3 x 70.9 in, 2010

Humanrace Barcelona2, Digital prints on Archival quality acidfree paper, 21.3 x 64.2 in, 2010

SAP  CONSCIOUSNESS

Sap Consciousness 1,Digital prints on Archival quality acidfree paper, 72 x 32in, 2007

Sap Consciousness 2, Digital prints on Archival quality acidfree paper, 72 x 32in, 2007

Sap Consciousness 3, Digital prints on Archival quality acidfree paper, 72 x 32in, 2007

Solo Shows

2010: The Human Race, The Mojo Gallery, Dubai.

2008: ‘Di stance’, Bodhi Art, Travancore Palace, Delhi. India.

2001: ‘Prints and Posters’ at Zyara-Sheikh Zayed Road, Dubai

2000: ‘Diksha’ at Smith Street Gallery, Melbourne. Australia.

1999: ‘Diksha’ at Toora Art Gallery, Victoria. Australia.

1998: ‘We Believe So We Are’, Walker Street Gallery, Melbourne.

1997: ‘Sculpting Science’, M.S.University, Baroda. India.

1997: ‘Untitled’ Kashi Art Café, Keralam, India.

1997: ‘Sculpting Silence’, Draavidia Arts and Performance Gallery, Keralam. India.

Selected Group Shows

2008: ‘Synonyms ’, The Guild, Mumbai. India.

2008: ‘White Lies ’, Bombay Art Gallery, Mumbai. India.

2008: ‘Christies auction’, New York. U.S.A.

2008: ‘Textures: Distance and Proximity ’, Bodhi Art, Delhi

2008: ‘Landscapes ’, Bodhi Art, Mumbai. India.

2008: ‘Inner Vision ’, The Guild, New York. U.S.A.

2008: ‘Harmony art show’, Mumbai. India.

2008: ‘Millennium Turks’, Trident Hilton art exhibition, Gurgaon. India.

2008: ‘Click -contemprory photography in India’,Grosvenor Vadhera gallery,New Delhi & London.

2007: ‘Artequalated’, first Shilpapaddiam Biennale, India Habitat Centre, Delhi. India.

2005: ‘Artist Collective’, Gallery Mirboo North, Victoria, Australia

2004: ‘10 by 8’, Gallery Foundry, Melbourne. Australia.

1998: ‘Bodies’Island Gallery, Philip Island, Melbourne. Australia.

1996: ‘Witness’, Centre for Contemporary Photography, Melbourne. Australia.

1995 : ‘Out of Blue’, St. Martins Gallery, Melbourne. Australia.

Lectures / Workshops / Curations

Guest Lecturer, Photography Studies College, Melbourne

Conducted travelling workshops at various venues in South Gippsland, Victoria, Australia for the project ‘Diksha’ 1999

Portrait Workshop M.S.University, Baroda 1998

Curated ‘Cry’- group show by students from engineering and medical colleges, Manipal 1997

Education

1993-1996: Diploma in Illustrative Photography ( Fine Arts), Photography Studies College, Melbourne. Australia.

1989-1992: Bachelors Degree in English literature, Calicut University, Keralam. India.

]]> http://rashminorberg.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/binu-bhaskar-born-1972-kerala-india/feed/ 1 rashmitalwarnorberg BinuBhaskar Portrait Family Portraits Humanrace Paris Humanrace,Kolkatta Humanrace,New Delhi 1 Humanrace Barcelona 2 Sap Consciousness 1 Sap Consciousness 2 Sap Consciousness 3 http://rashminorberg.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/binu-bhaskar-looking-for-true-north/ http://rashminorberg.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/binu-bhaskar-looking-for-true-north/#comments Sat, 21 Aug 2010 18:29:53 +0000 Rashmi Talwar Norberg http://rashminorberg.wordpress.com/?p=350 ]]> I’m pleased to present Binu Bhaskar as a first artist from our collection. This essay was first published as an Introduction to Binu Bhaskar exhibition called Di stance at Bodhi Art. If you are interested in his work please feel free to contact us.

Author : Ranjit Hoskote

“Certainly art no longer looks to nature in order to produce it anew. Nature no longer provides the exemplary model for art to follow. And yet even though it follows its own path, the work of art does come to resemble nature: there is something regular and binding about the self-contained picture that grows out from within. We might think of the crystal here. The pure regularity of its geometrical structure is entirely natural, and yet surrounded by a wealth of shapeless chaos, we encounter it as something rare, adamantine, brilliant. … It requires no empathy with the psychological state of the artist. … It is a pledge of order.”

– Hans-Georg Gadamer: ‘The speechless image’ (1965) [1]

Sap Consciousness 5, Digital prints on Archival quality acidfree paper, 72 x 32 in, 2007

The contemporary artist has none of the certitudes of his predecessors of the 19^th century, yet inherits all their problems and has acquired some of his own. How do images resolve themselves from the raw material of the perceived world, when that world is fabricated from a mix of palpable and virtual stimuli? How can we renew our sight, when the act of seeing has already been framed within the formats of visual conditioning? By what gestures can a reality be domiciled as an image within the realm of art, to take its place in a wash of readymade images? Afflicted by knowingness and a surfeit of poses drawn from advertising iconography, how do we translate an individual into a portrait? How, in the era of fibre-optics and digital transfer, does vulnerable terrain become unassailable landscape, or an object assume the poise of a still life? When language is no longer reliable and structure is transient, how do collocations of material become infused with the provocative cogency of an installation? Such questions haunt the contemporary artist, who is many generations away from the assurances of inherited technique and a classical aesthetic; and yet, he must continue to shape what is recognisably art from the flow of experience.

In his photographic practice, Binu Bhaskar does not identify, isolate and capture an object with his lens. Rather, he cultivates a field of meditation by shuttling between attentiveness and relaxation, intimacy and distance, familiarity and strangeness, pattern and chance. Bhaskar applies himself to gauging the precise balance between these opposites, until the image manifests itself from the field of meditation as that ‘pledge of order’, radiant against the rich and bewildering profusion of natural effects, which Gadamer discusses in the epigraph set at the head of this essay.

In many of his frames, the artist plays with the architecture of viewing that we have absorbed in the course of our growing-up and education. Having set up the expectation of vanishing-point perspective in his vistas of Indian paddy fields, he refuses us the comfort of a classical horizon; instead, we stumble, flounder and come up against intricate barriers and partitions in his sharply patterned maps. Looking for bearings, our eyes retrace the orientating movement that has been coded into the image. Seeking orientation towards a fixed point that remains elusive, Bhaskar is a compass needle that is always looking for true north.

*

Bhaskar’s images are ‘speechless’ only in Gadamer’s precise sense: they address us in languages from beyond the familiar usage of the spoken and the sayable. His photographs convey us into a world of fugitive sensations and half-grasped impressions, intimations of belonging and dreams of the future that are implied rather than declared. Bhaskar’s lens has provided testimony to a range of spaces, places and occasions of encounter. His interiors and their appointments are held in the aura of a poetic intensity; these, as well as many of his exterior images, are informed by a luminous sensitivity to the inexplicable and the mysterious.

He is fascinated by the emergence of forms through the leakages between light and matter; he tests the conditions of limpidity and opacity, probes the effects of shrouding and glare. In ‘Absence’, he confronts us with twin windows, their white drapes washed with light and their skeletal frames standing out like crosses. Elsewhere, trees emerge from mist and the hint of a mountain range: spectral presences. ‘Skin’ has a disquieting elegance: the white shirt on a hanger, somewhat askew, is haunting in its evocation of an absence that possesses weight and gravity and can exert a hold on our imagination.

In ‘Black Rain’, we receive a fine and shattering vision of planetary apocalypse, suggestive of Tarkovsky’s cinema: the lyricism of water and darkness veiling one another is held in counterpoint by the dominant sense of an ending. In other frames, the photographer invites us to explore neatly staked-out fields set against the backdrop of mountains mantled in blue light. And in the series titled ‘Unwanted Spaces’, Bhaskar dwells on the afterlife of habitation and abandonment, by contemplating the details of buildings slipping into desuetude and ruin. Consider the surfaces of brickwork left to the mercies of nature; the ladder propped up and left to itself in a clearing of light; the windows that no one will ever look out of again. The photographer transmutes these moments into elegies for the victims of time’s relentless passage, the churning histories of towns that have become cities and cities that have become unmanageable encyclopaedias of exodus and resettlement.

*

I am intrigued by the M. Night Shyamalan-meets-Andy Goldsworthy feel that attends many of Bhaskar’s images. This is especially the case in ‘Sap-consciousness’, a suite of images celebrating an immersion in the agrarian landscapes crafted by human labour from the resources of coastal earth, rain, rivers and skies in western India. Nearly all of these photographs were taken in Kerala, except for a few that record encounters with natural fecundity in the Konkan, the coast immediately to the south of Bombay. This is monsoon India, with its dripping greens, soft browns and clayey yellows; its mottled skies and glassy water bodies. Here, the crop circles of Signs seem to merge and meld with the walls going for a walk through thickets in the Grizedale Forest or at the Storm King Art Center. [2]

The lens presents us with the effects of purposeful activity – embankments, demarcated fields, water courses, roads and bridges – but we are never shown any of the makers of these features. It is almost as if they were invisible, or as though they had completed their mission and left the planet. Pattern is the only trace of the human presence that we are provided, apart from the rare glimpse of a house in the fields. That pattern becomes a precious clue: it presents us with the possibility of mapping and deciphering this terrain by following the logic of the cultivator’s responses to the vagaries of the climate, the economy, and a menaced ecosystem.

Bhaskar’s preoccupation with pattern as a means of ordering the unpredictability of experience, as well as his desire to tease out the symbolic potentialities of landscape, stem from the passionate formal and conceptual interests that drive his photography. A careless viewer may be prompted to apply the label of ‘nature photography’ to these images, but this would be a complete mistake. Look closely at his images of human intervention in natural terrain, and you will find more than the marvels of engineering and agriculture; his pictorial intent is to hold that aspect of a field which proposes a figurative shape, whether womb or vagina, mouth or pitcher. Fields ripening with the promise of harvest are arranged rather like the wings of a blot in a Rorschach test; by tweaking the ratio of symmetry to surprise, Bhaskar orchestrates a resonant detonation at the heart of a seemingly taut composition.

The edge of water has fascinated Bhaskar: he has rendered it as a joyous antiphony between farmland and cloud-roof, but also as a drama of hesitant objects overwhelmed by quivering reflections. Observe, in this context, his scrutiny of the margins where earth and water meet, field holds parley with sky, and object discovers reflection. A cosmic symbolism may grow from these nodes, at first as a private world-view but linked to the sustaining water cosmologies of South Asia’s riparian and littoral cultures. The crafted landscape is farmed again by the eye of the photographer as archaeologist, to yield symbolisms of fertility, quest, confluence and renewal.

*

In what may be called his colour pursuits, Bhaskar demonstrates a rather classical Modernist concern with repeatedly addressing and exhausting a theme through the conceptual space afforded by a series. He has worked with white, blue and green, examining the dynamics of depth and density, saturation and variation; he has, in each case, opened himself to the gamut of diverse effects that an apparent singularity holds. For instance, his engagement with green allows him to express a philosophical need to meditate on growth and decay, shape and form, the magic of the human hand and the logic of the seasons; on time, death and the hope of renewal and redemption. At the same time, it permits him to make a subtle political statement about environmental degradation, vanishing habitats, and endangered livelihoods. We are, after all, viewing this exhibition in an epoch marred by the crises of global warming and water-table depletion; and, in India, at a time when small-scale farmers have been placed at a disadvantage by the advent of genetically modified seeds, crop failures have resulted in an alarming number of farmer suicides, and villagers have suffered brutal repression in West Bengal as an unlikely coalition of Left-wing politicians and powerful corporations takes control of traditional agrarian land.

Indeed, Bhaskar’s photographic images mark a specific convergence between an ecological politics and a poetics of the Sublime. With their emphasis on the unasked surplus of vision – the enigmatic within the everyday, the inexhaustible within the finite – Bhaskar’s photographs occupy the threshold between beauty and the Sublime. Bhaskar’s poetics is based on the intuitive disclosure of underlying patterns, and on an attention to the rhythmic play of order and dissolution in natural and human processes; it navigates us in the direction of the sacred, by which I mean, here, that dimension of being which exceeds the ability of our faculties to contain and explain it. And when I employ the adjective ‘ecological’ to designate Bhaskar’s politics, I do so in full awareness of its etymology: the word is derived from the Greek oikos, meaning ‘home’. This definition ripples beyond green politics to embrace such questions as: Where does the contemporary self belong? What part of this over-networked, over-worked planet can it claim as it appropriate sphere of being? Such are the questions that Binu Bhaskar sets out to tackle, as he echo-locates the contours of his lifeworld, measuring the changing distance between the self and its surroundings with his register of images.

(Bombay: November 2007)

*

Notes

1. Hans-Georg Gadamer, ‘The speechless image’ (1965), in his The Relevance of the Beautiful and Other Essays (trans. Nicholas Walker, ed. with an Introduction by Robert Bernasconi; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 90-91.

2. For Andy Goldsworthy’s ‘Wall’ projects in the Grizedale Forest, Cumbria (UK), and at the Storm King Art Center (USA), see Wall at Storm King: Andy Goldsworthy (with an Introduction by Kenneth Baker, photographs by Andy Goldsworthy and Jerry L. Thompson; London: Thames & Hudson, 2000).

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]]> http://rashminorberg.wordpress.com/2010/08/21/binu-bhaskar-looking-for-true-north/feed/ 0 rashmitalwarnorberg Sap Consciousness http://rashminorberg.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/stockholm-cultural-festival-2010/ http://rashminorberg.wordpress.com/2010/08/11/stockholm-cultural-festival-2010/#comments Wed, 11 Aug 2010 11:05:36 +0000 Rashmi Talwar Norberg http://rashminorberg.wordpress.com/?p=199 ]]>

Stockholm’s Culture Festival 2010 had started yesterday,Tuesday 10th of August and end on Sunday 15th. The cultural life in Stockholm will explode during this late summer week. More than 500 shows performed by 250 artists from all over the globe will be crammed into six days. There will be free admission to 99% of the program.

Lisa Nilsson 20-year anniversary Swedish solo artist celebrated with a large band and songs from her career, @Stockholm Cultural Festival yesterday.

In August every year the heart of Stockholm pulsates with a vibrant combination of culture and festivities. It’s time for the Cultural Festival of Stockholm! Since its launch in 2006 the festival has quickly become a regular event and a great success among both Stockholm residents and visitors.With their high quality, easy accessibility, innovation, breadth and variety, the 500 items on the programme attract about 300,000 visits annually.

The city’s streets and squares host a dynamic blend of music and entertainment: world music, jazz, opera, classical music, pop, rock, soul, standup comedy, children & family events, authors, street art, drama, the world’s biggest book table, city walks, film, art, dance…..and many more to explore.