EXPORT ITEMS

RIYAS KOMU
Art Affair Dubai,2008, Watching other-world spirits from the garden of Babylon
Wood and mixed media
Komu has always made protest art, from his canvases that began in a photo-realistic mode to his ambitious sculptures made in wood and mixed media. The artist has always held a strong view against violence and poverty fostered by the arms race that still prevails globally. Now, however, he has vaulted himself within a mode of protest akin to an ambush. He talks of the unparalleled greed and madness of our times, the war machines that man has created which will in fact annihilate the species if it is allowed the unchecked rampage that it currently enjoys. The skulls, with their open mouths, are a leitmotif for greed and have precedence in his installation Oils well lets play that showed at Mumbai’s Bodhi Art Gallery.

PRANEET SOI
Showed at the Hong Kong International Art Fair, 2008
Pieta
Fibre glass 40x32x43 inches
Soi moved from painting to sculpture after his stint in Amsterdam at the Rijks Academy. This series of works are inspired by the war-like situation in Iraq and Palestine, the prisoners of war in Abu Ghraib and the bombings in London and New York. The Pieta is a self-portrait rendered in fibre glass and coloured in grey and takes its reference from the Biblical rendition of the dying Christ in the lap of the Virgin Mary. In this work, though, the dying Christ (or the common man) is implied and Soi takes the position of an empathetic witness to the horrors of violence. Soi’s political ideology leads him to look at the issues surrounding globalisation, democracy and terrorism, which is largely what his works are usually about.

JUSTIN PONMANY
Art Basel, 2008
Edition of 5
Hologram-print 48 x 120 inches
Justin Ponmany’s hologram-based paintings stem from his inquiry into security holograms found on most things money can buy, including money itself.
By exploring the hologram, Ponmany is interested in exploring how people engage with images and currency in industrialised society. The paintings with changing colours and appearance account for the correlation between the position the viewer takes vis-a -vis the simulated truths on display and the plastic memory—or as he puts it, the plasticization of our entire lives through commodities and surroundings, a kind of eroding of nature through man-made objects.