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Exhibition Details

Exhibition Name:	Looking Glass
Venue:	Religare Art Limited, 7, Atmaram Mansion, Level 1, Scindia House, K G Marg, New Delhi - 110001
Time:	10 AM to 11 PM
Date:	Oct 01, 2010-Oct 31, 2010

*Looking Glass: the Existence of Difference* At Religare Arts, Max Mullar Bhavan , British Council and American Centre on October 1.Curated by Gayatri Sinha, the Exhibition compliments the volume Voices of change: 20 Contemporary Artists, a Marg Publication supported by Religare Arts and Narotam Sekhsaria Foundation. The Exhibition held to coincide with the Commonwealth Games acknowledges the present generation of Contemporary Indian artist. These include Baiju Parthan,N. Pushpamala,Jayashree Chakravarty ,Bharti Kher, Subodh Gupta, Shibu Natesan, Anju Dodiya, Atul Dodiya, Surendran Nair, NN Rimzon, Anita Dube, Nataraj Sharma, Sudershan Shetty, Bose Krishnamachari, NS Harsha, Jagannath Panda, Jitish Kallat, Shilpa Gupta, TV Santhosh, Riyas komu. Working in diverse media such as sculptural installation, photography, painting and large scale sculpture, we can see some outstanding examples of the work of this generation. The range of issues that they address includes the expanding city, revisitation of mythology in the context of modern India, mass construction and its effects, violence in South and Central Asia. With humour and insight, through multiple devices they address some of the complexity of our social polity. The exhibition is supported by the British Council which will be the site of a large sculpture by Nataraj Sharma. It is also co-partnered by the Max Mueller Bhavan where photo based works by Jitish Kallat and Baiju Parthan and Shilpa Gupta’s sculptural installation made entirely of take away soaps will be on view. The exhibition on October 1 will also mark the release of the book *Voices of Change: 20 Contemporary Artists*. The writers involved represent a newer generation of writers and critics based in India and abroad. Each essay is accompanied by an artist interview, thus documenting their concerns in a mid career practice.

Curator Gayatri Sinha

Looking Glass- The Existence of Difference invites self reflexivity in the artist’s practices, art environment and circuits of exchange. It seeks to reflect on the role of the artist as mediator/interpreter/witness. As world art practices adjust to a new order, the artist is...

Looking Glass- The Existence of Difference invites self reflexivity in the artist’s practices, art environment and circuits of exchange. It seeks to reflect on the role of the artist as mediator/interpreter/witness. As world art practices adjust to a new order, the artist is compelled to revisit methods, materials and his/her own location. In the absence of radical positions, this generation of artists is no longer innocent of markets, and the ‘making’ of artists through promotional systems and mercantile structures of art. At the same time, global networks of exchange have brought the artist closer to globalized wars, the multiple corridors of religion and politics, critical and academic systems. There is also a heightened sense of the vernacular, and the dynamic pull of local expressivity. In such extreme flux, the quest for value and meaning, for a location within a rapidly shifting social polity and personal idealism continues.

For a mid career artist, at the cusp of a new decade, how do these multiple challenges play out?

The concept of Looking Glass is inspired by the Lacanian notion of self reflexivity and transparency. The mirror in Lacan emphasizes the dual relationship between the self and the Ego, between the specular or ‘seen self’ and the ego or ‘social self’, one that is perceived by the world. The artist in creating a work in the isolation of his studio uses many of the conventions of the mirror – of projection, distortion and inversion, as well as of subjectivity contained within objecthood—in this case the art work. In this dyad of the selves lies the viewer’s interpretation of the role of the artist—and the entry of the existence of difference. The singular identity working in the studio in a hermetic state, and then the stepping out into social networks presents a poetic and a social self, or what Lacan calls the ego-ideal and the ideal-ego. The ideal ego is the identity that you take on and the ego-ideal is the point from which you self examine.

With art at the intersection of the mirror and the self, Looking Glass: The existence of difference invites the artist to reflect on his own practice, within existing, frequently unstable contexts. Even as one looks forward, the mirror carries the reflection of the past. Do changing times and the compulsions of history cause a change in practice – frequently in refuge or in mockery of our past, or do they signal the epiphanies of an unseen future?

This exhibition will be accompanied by the publication Voices of Change’-20 contemporary artists a book on this definitive segment of contemporary artists in the last two decades.

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