Exhibit320 is one of the leading contemporary art galleries in India, showcasing contemporary art from the sub - continent, creating a platform for new thoughts and ideas. The emphasis of the exhibition space is on art that engages in new means, both by thoughts and material. This organizational space is for creative endeavour, aesthetic explorations, and furthering visual dialogues. Our aim is to discover and encourage contemporary and evolving talent. Exhibit320, supports seminars,lectures, and discussions, talks that contextualise art within critical discourse. Exhibit320 is located in the heart of Lado Sarai, in capital city of New Delhi, India providing dynamic and creative hub for artists, the arts and its audience. Exhibition Dates – Friday, August 9TH – Friday, September 20th, 2013 Venue – F - 320, Lado Sarai, New Delhi – 110030 Contact – [email protected], 011 4613 0637, www.exhibit320.com Exhibition Details – THE POSSIBILITY OF BEING Curated By – Rahul Bhattacharya Participating Artists – Ashim Purkayasta, Jagannath Panda, Muktinath Mondal, Nataraj Sharma and Rekha Rodwittiya The Possibility of Being The Possibility of Being is a curatorial engagement with five artist immersed in image making with a constant dialogue with Painting and Drawing both in terms of medium and practice. The curation is dedicated to (re) exploring linkages between the image, the socio-political and painterly practices as we come to the end of an era which was (is being) called Contemporary. Among the many developments that marks the term contemporary has been the dominating focus on content that prioritize socially and politically charged subject matters over stylistic experimentation and investigations over Form and Language. It is also marked by its affiliations to the idea of digital progress. As the digital (r) evolution settles down, we are in a position to understand that Digital is not just a technological shift, it is also an aesthetic trend. In an age where we are surrounded by digital technology, this splitting of the Digital allows us to explore beyond the aesthetic measures of purity, pristine images, perfect copies and powerful (spectacular) illusions. Since the 1990’s postmodern culture and contemporary art was principally associated with photography, film, installation and text-based interventions. Painting lost its culturally privileged status and judged as an intrinsically conservative or reactionary aesthetic form. Post the onslaught of the digital (r)evolution, we reached a point where ‘Painting’ was declared dead as political and cultural agency; and it was only as a commodity that the relevancy of ‘Painting’ was acknowledged. This seeming fissure in history allows (forces) us to split Paintings in terms of medium and practice. At the height of the digital age (As the neo liberal was defined and celebrated as the era of new media and the ‘futuristic’), we witnessed artists producing paintings that looked like digital prints (hyper realistic, no trace of artistic labour, smooth finished cosmopolitan flat surfaces). However, as we peaked inside the contemporary trend, silently inside artist studios we see a reassertion of analogue aesthetics. This return to analogue in a digital age has led to both painting and drawing have changing in terms of medium, concept, viewership and practice. In a sense this curation becomes a project in cultural archaeology or ritual nostalgia. Slowly there is a growing recognition that painting practices continue to hold important contributing agency in shaping new cultural directions. These new directions in taste and cultural archaeological position disturb the meaning of ‘new media’ by opening doors for old media to stand as an vanguard act. That is why the Possibility of Being. For a post-1950s generation, such a ‘reconstruction’ of analogue aesthetics has lead recognition that painting practices today are contributing to new cultural directions. Through the heights of the dominance of digital aesthetics in global taste, there have been artists who have worked within zones that transgress labour, concept and skill. Thus Painting (not as a medium but as practice) has emerged as an important platform for post-digital, post-conceptual art. The 'durability' of post-conceptual art through the old media suggests that its practitioners have been re-fashioning and re-defining the medium with some of its earlier histories and aspirations in mind. Today, embedded in the practices of drawing and/or painting, we will find modernist understandings of medium, style, form and surface being re visited, but through the layers of post-modern theory and criticism. Two concerns that is integral to the curatorial thought. Contemporary art’s investment in labour, analogue and old media assumes various forms and it is symptomatic of changes in the economy and taste rather than expressive of a broader left consciousness in the arts. In other words, the rise of labour as a sign-reference in recent art does not (necessarily)amount to a political project, even if it indicates a departure from the staples of postmodernism and, in some quarters, the desire to provide an alternative to capitalist economic relations. Within the conventional Contemporary Indian Art production, the emphasis on manual/physical labour comes up as a kind of noise, a disturbance which takes away from the digital/conceptual art itself. This type of art which has come to dictate the art market for a long time emerged simultaneously with the global capitalism which swept the world two decades ago. Labour was sought to be omitted from the art and a clean, sterile, sophisticated, digitised practice which only projected the concept was developed. It is to the extent that the old media art practices refer to and embody forms of temporality, knowledge and subjectivity, which do not easily enter the concept of abstract labour of new media. The curatorial strands will be manifest in a show The Possibility of Being, bringing together Ashim Purkayasta, Jagannath Panda, Muktinath Mondal, Nataraj Sharma and Rekha Rodwittiya Please refer to the link for more details: http://theposssibilityofbeing.blogspot.in/ ASHIM PURKAYASTHA, NO TITLE, GRAPH PAPER, PERMANENT MARKER, 28.5” X 19”, 2013 ASHIM PURKAYASTHA BORN IN DIGBOI, ASSAM. EDUCATION 1992-94 MASTER OF FINE ARTS, KALA BHAVAN, VISVA-BHARATI, SANTINIKETAN 1987-92 BACHELOR OF FINE ARTS, KALA BHAVAN,VISVA BHARATI, SANTINIKETAN. AWARDS & SCHOLARSHIPS 2004 THE POLLOCK-KRASNER FOUNDATION AWARD, NEW YORK, USA. 2001 THE ELIZABETH GREENSHIELDS FOUNDATION AWARD, CANADA. 1997 JUNIOR FELLOWSHIP, HRD, GOVERNMENT OF INDIA. 1993 THE ELIZABETH GREENSHIELDS FOUDATION AWARD, CANADA. 1988-92 ASSAM STATE CULTURAL SCHOLARSHIP. SOLO SHOWS 2009-FAMILY/FAMILIES, VADHERA ART GALLERY, OKHLA, NEW DELHI, 2006-BORDERLINE, RABINDRA BHAVAN, LKA, NEW DELHI AND ANANT ART GALLERY, KOLKATA, 2006 - DILLI DILWALON KI', VISUAL ART GALLERY, HABITAT CENTRE, ANANT ART GALLERY, NEW DELHI. 2004-05 - ATTACHED WINGS', SAKSHI GALLERY, MUMBAI; SRIDHARANI ART GALLERY, NEW DELHI, 2004-GANDHI/MAN WITHOUT SPECS', KHOJ, NEW DELHI,2001-INSURED HOME', CIMA GALLERY, KOLKATA,1999-GALLERY ESPACE, NEW DELHI. GROUP SHOWS 2013 PEAK SHIFT EFFECT', CURATED BY GAYATRI SINHA, VADEHRA ART GALLERY, NEW DELHI ,2011- 2012FRAGILITY', CURATED BY RAKHEE BALARAM, ART ALIVE GALLERY, GURGAON, 2011 OF GODS AND GODDESSES, CINEMA, CRICKET, THE NEW CULTURAL ICONS OF INDIA', PRESENTED BY RPG, CURATED BY ARSHIYA LOKHANDWALA, JEHANGIR ART GALLERY, MUMBAI.2011 TIME UNFOLDED, AN EXHIBITION OF MODERN & CONTEMPORARY ART' PROJECT CONCEPT ROOBINA KARODE, KIRAN NADAR MUSEUM OF ART, NEW DELHI. 2008 INDIA CROSSING', STUDIO LA CITTA, VERONA, ITALY. 2008 WHERE IN THE WORLD', CURATORIAL COLLABORATION BETWEEN SCHOOL OF ARTS AND AESTHETICS, JNU AND DEVI ART FOUNDATION, GURGAON. 2008 CHALO! INDIA: A NEW ERA OF INDIAN ART', CURATED BY AKIKO MIKI, MORI ART MUSEUM, TOKYO, JAPAN; NATIONAL MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, KOREA; ESSL MUSEUM, VIENNA. 2008 SANTHAL FAMILY, POSITIONS AROUND AN INDIAN SCULPTURE', CURATED BY GRANT WATSON, MUSEUM VAN HEDENDAAGSE KUNST ANTWERPEN, MUHKA, BELGIUM. 2008 MUTANT BEAUTY' CURATED BY GAYATRI SINHA, ANANT ART CENTRE, NOIDA. 2007 - POLYPHONIES', CURATED BY ALKA PANDE, KALA GALLERY, AUSTRIA AND BERLIN 2006 SUBCONTINGENT, THE INDIAN SUBCONTINENT IN CONTEMPORARY ART, CURATED BY ILARIA BONACOSSA & FRANCESCO MANACORDA, FONDAZIONE SANDRETTO RE REBAUDENGO, TORINO, ITALY. 2006- LILA/PLAY: CONTEMPORARY MINIATURES AND NEW ART FROM SOUTH ASIA CURATED BY HAEMA SIVANESAN, SPAN GALLERY, MELBORN. 2006 SHADOW LINE, A GROUP SHOW OF DRAWING, VADEHRA, NEW DELHI. 2005 SELF X SOCIAL: SELF, STRANGER, PARENT, RECOURSE, WORKER', CONCEIVED BY GEETA KAPUR, SCHOOL OF ARTS AND AESTHETICS, JNU, NEW DELHI. 2005-‘NEGOTIATING MATTER/S’ CURATED BY ROOBINA KARODE, ANANT ART GALLERY, NEW DELHI.2004-HINDU MOON IN MUGHAL GARDEN', NATURE MORTE, NEW DELHI. 2004 THE MAKING OF INDIA PROJECT’, SAHAMAT, LALIT KALA AKADEMI,NEWDELHI. 2003PROJECT: ‘PARCEL COVER’, NATIONAL EXHIBITION, KALAKENDRA, GUWAHATI, ASSAM 1998 ‘NEW PERCEPTIONS, IMAGES AND MEDIA’, ORGANISED CIMA, KOLKATA,ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS AND LITERATURE, NEW DELHI. 1997‘PALASH’, RABINDRA BHAVAN, LALIT KALA AKADEMI, NEW DELHI.1996VI BHARAT BHAVAN BIENNALE OF CONTEMPORARY INDIAN ART, BHOPAL.1993ART EXHIBITION, STATE ART GALLERY, GUWAHATI. LIVES AND WORKS IN NEW DELHI. JAGANNATH PANDA, ACRYLIC ON CANVAS, FABRIC GLUE, 91.2” X 72”, 2013 JAGANNATH PANDA 1970 BORN IN BHUBANESWER, INDIA 1990 ORISSA STATE LALIT KALA AKADEMI AWARD , SILVER MEDAL FROM A.I.U.A, BANARAS