DUBAI’S 1X1 ART GALLERY BREAKS NEW GROUND WITH A MIXED-MEDIA PROJECT BY CHITTROVANU MAZUMDAR

1x1 Art Gallery Stall no. B07, Hall no. 7, India Art summit, Pragati Maidan, New Delhi. From - August 19, 2009 to August 22, 2009 Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Normal 0 false false false MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 st1:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) } /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:#0400; mso-fareast-language:#0400; mso-bidi-language:#0400;} Asthe capital gets ready for the second edition of India Art Summit with everyart gallery choosing the customary option of presenting a group of artists,there is one exception that comes as a breath of fresh air, and art! Dubai-based1x1 Art Gallery is the only gallery to present a solo artist and will be showcasing a brand newseries of works by Calcutta ’srenowned and equally reclusive artist Chittrovanu Mazumdar at thesummit, scheduled to take place at Pragati Maidan from August 19, 2009 toAugust 22, 2009. Says Malini Gulrajani , Director, 1x1 Art Gallery : “Most people would shy from showing a single artistat such an international platform. I, however, believe that commerce should bethe last concern of a gallery and to do justice to Chittro’s work that I admireso much, a solo exhibit was the only way.” Reciprocating theloyalty in equal measure, artist Chittrovanu Mazumdar has created for thisproject a brand-new series ranging from three-four large mixed media works inmediums as difficult and diverse as tar, wax, metal, light and photography that will be wall mounted; a series of smallphotographic as well as wax works and a sculpture-installation. There are works made oflights on mild steel panel with dimmer, speakers and soundtrack; acrylic paint,wax and tar on plywood and mild steel; wax on plywood with gold leaf as well astinted silver leaf and few digital works of human and landscape imagery withwax and tar on mild steel. Accordingto Chittrovanu Mazumdar - “The blueprint for my new works is the cohabitationof opposites.” He explains that by using light-hungry, night-dark tar and thetrays of light that feed those depths while simultaneously reflecting off them;he has juxtaposed mythical reverberations of black and white. The human weightof history - of making, of handcrafting - bespoken by age-old materials such asbeeswax, metal, tar has been combined with sheer virtuality to produce digitalprints, screen images and electronic soundscape. The promise of touchforegrounded through the textured tactility of poured colour or the exposedskin are evident in the prints on display. The curved arc of the containingwomb-pod with its eternal potential of bursting, birthing and the unsettlingpresence of the unknown and the known are present amidst all the neatly framedgeometric assertion on the walls. Anotherhighlight at the summit will be Chittrovanu’s video titled ‘ Sleep ’ whichwill be shown at the Video Lounge. The fifteen-minute video showcases theinterrogation of the surface where the depths erupt unpredictably throughcracks in a seemingly seamless skin; the metaphor of sleep and escaping dreamsthat inevitably rupture the face of an ostensibly calm and tranquil order asaural signs of disruption, chaos, always imminent and never predictable, hauntthe mind. SaysChittrovanu Mazumdar : “I considermyself as an expressionist painter and believe thatart is a private activity for the artist, a search within the individual. Tome, work is the space of freedom where everything can move, turn around,transform and become something else. There are structures and systems that onefollows up to a point but then gets out of them.” While this wouldbe 1x1 Art Gallery ’s first foray into the Indianmarket, the artist himself is no newcomer. While his last solo show in Delhi was at Bodhi Art Gallery in 2005, Chittrovanu has shown extensively across the globe since his first art outing in 1985. He has established himself as oneof India 'sleading contemporary artists. F using the intellectual with the sensualin a unique way, t he artist has exhibited across theworld like at Jehangir Art Gallery (Mumbai); Bose Pacia Modern (New York);Seagull Foundation (Kolkata); Latit Kala (Chennai); Aicon Gallery (London). Hehad also been invited to display at the Victoria Memorial Durbar Hall, Calcutta (1991) andjoined the ranks of the previous two invitees M F Husain and Bikash Bhattacharjee. Born in 1956,Paris, Chittrovanu Mazumdar studied painting and printmaking at the Ecole DesBeaux Arts, Paris in 1983 after graduating from the Government College of Artsand Crafts, Calcutta with a gold medal. Starting his career as a painter withhuge canvases, mammoth solo shows and exploring a broad spectrum of media andtechnology in his work, his range of references is vast, incorporating inputsfrom his own culturally rich upbringing in Kolkata and Paris and an astonishingrange of eclectic reading in three languages - French, English and Bengali. His work pulls from various influences, be it visual, musicalor lyrical. His paintings - using bold brushstrokes, layered imagery,abstract images and elements of collage - express the conflicting experiencesand beliefs that exist within modern society and man. His canvases exudeintensity and vigor and are representational of his feelings of angst andsuppression in a fast paced city.   Distinctiveby their blaze of colour and a free-flowing application of paint, his workshave the ability to seamlessly shift from abstraction to figuration andnaturalism. He treats the conventions ofmodernism not as constrictive theories but as stylistic options, employingabstraction, figuration, the macabre and the jovial all in a single work. One ofhis most unsurpassed exhibitions in the past titled ‘Undated – Night Skin’ had amorphous sounds floating in plangent music. Embedded in the ominousmilitary machines were fragments of human experiences - images of livingspaces, dreamlike landscapes, panels of intense red impasto like coagulatedblood, flowing water, cries, the lights of a city at night, the wail of aninfant, a woman alone, sirens and traffic sounds, stained walls and doors andwindows, a female voice pleading, a placid pig wallowing in the filth etc. Equallyevocative is the artist’s photography work that he has showcased in the past.His photographs tells a story of a place where violence, vandalism and deathhave just taken place, producing a comment on the present socio-politicalsituation of India .One of the digital prints shows a calf’s carcass that lies abandoned to itsfate, the potential symbols for death and decay, connoting the cyclical natureof life – what comes from the earth goes back to the earth. Says Chittrovanu:“I had a strong interest in photography and began to incorporate my ownphotographs in my works with painterly intervention or with a third presence,the intrusion of an exterior world. However, in due course of time, I startedusing photoshop on it. For the photographic series, I had travelled toJharkhand where I chose a one square kilometer of desolated marshy land as thelocation and reworked on my clicked images. It was the textual and visualpossibilities of a fictionalized documentary that inspired me to do theseseries.   Continuouslyreinventing himself for the past three decades, Chittrovanu has always beenahead of his times and moved in a new direction with every show, simultaneouslyreturning to the most primeval of human emotions – fear, hunger, ecstasy,desire. His art boldly blends elements of pop art with abstract swathes ofcolour, dealing with human paradox and ambiguity, of the seeping grey of dailylife that escapes the purity of black and white. What appears to link the veryvisually and formally different phases of his work is the intensity of sensualimmersion demanded by the artist of both himself and the viewer. The viewerfeels compelled to unravel the meaning behind the artist's often fragmentedcompositions. Through the layers of translucent and opaque paint over collagesof images and text, one suddenly notices the vehement gaze of belligerent eyesor a desperately outstretched hand. Mazumdar states, “I enjoy the fact that itisn’t a definite, complete form. The half-formed figure is always in theprocess of becoming. It remains a promise, full of possibilities.” ABOUT 1X1ART GALLERY A major force inpromoting Contemporary Indian Art in Dubai, 1x1 has organized and presented‘Af-fair’ in Dubai in March 2008 curated by Bose Krishnamachari bringing tofore works of artist like Anant Joshi, Hema Upadhyaya, Jyothi Basu, JustinPonmany, Riyas Komu, TV Santosh, Parvathy Nayar, Minal Damani, Vivek Vilsaniand Aji VN soon to be launched as a documented book. Few other shows 1x1 haspresented lately are ‘The New Place’, ‘Route-en-Route’, ‘Urban/Image’, ‘ArtParis’. Solo exhibits include Chittrovanu Mazumdar, Jogen Choudhary, Jatin Das,Jaideep Mehrotra, Senaka Senanayake, M.F Husain besides group shows presenting‘Pratul Dash and Rajesh Ram’ and ‘Farhad Husain, Kazi Nazir and BinoyVarghese’.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

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