Moving images

No less exciting is Ambu Rathwa. This 26-year-old painter was one of the winners of the Bodhi Art Awards in 2007 and has also been feted with the Inlaks Fine Art Scholarship. From Kawat village in Gujarat, Rathwa is camera-shy and monosyllabic and allows his work to do the talking. “The microphone is my metaphor,” says the artist who uses the image repeatedly as a device “to make one’s own inner voice audible”. With group shows in Delhi, Baroda, where he studied at the Fine Arts Faculty, and an ongoing show in Mumbai’s The Strand Art Room, Rathwa is poised for his own solo show. 

Another Baroda alumnus who stands out is Sanjay Barot. A contemplative artist, his canvases are markedly different from Rathwa’s while he does display a similar taste for colours. Having shown in Vadodara, Mumbai, Kolkata, Lucknow and Delhi this 26-year-old is well-traveled and well-shown. His art has promise as many collectors will vouch for his strong sense of colour and poetry. Born in Kapadwanj, another small town in Gujarat, his works combine the rustic with the urban in a manner that is unpredictable. He surprises one with beautiful metaphors of the working class man and his dream-world.

Show stoppers
Among the shows to watch out is Mumbai-based artist Anju Dodiya’s solo in February in Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery. This follows her solo in Venice Biennale. “I will be showing paintings which I am still working on—a series called Mourners,” says Dodiya. Mourners deals with the darker side of life. It talks of loss and longing, where the mourners could be grieving for the victims of Mumbai’s terror attacks or at the graves of the innocent killed in Kashmir. Dodiya embraces the emotion and opens up her painting to universal interpretations.

In March, Chemould Art Gallery hosts a remarkable show by LN Tallur that will showcase the unusual work of this Bangalore-based artist. What is remarkable about Tallur is that he has lived most of his life in Kasargud, a small town in Kerala, but his art, after a bit of exposure to the art scene in New York, has developed an avante garde style that combines “traditions, absurdity and the personal.” Another big show to look out for is Photoink’s retrospective on Richard Bartholomew that opens in New Delhi on January 17. The multi-talented photographer, poet, painter and art critic from Myanmar died in 1985. In this show, photographer son Pablo celebrates his father who gave him his “first lessons in life and photography.”

Be there
ARCO Madrid (February 11-16, 2009), an international contemporary art fair, is going to be a hot spot since India is the “guest country” and the focus is on India’s modern and contemporary art scene; those with tickets to the big art fair are to be envied. Bose Krishnamachari is being a little secretive about his curatorial venture, but he promises that the exhibition will, “induce people to think about Indian art seriously and not in the exotic manner that we are usually seen.”