BV Suresh

B.V. Suresh first moved away from a predominantly painterly language in the late nineties, shifting to mixed media assemblages held together within a framework resembling domestic furniture. Preetha Nair, who worked on the text for one of his exhibition catalogues, describes her excitement: "Getting used to some of that indefinable darkness that pervades them, eyes shifting, searching and resting only briefly, moving from one form to the next mark, from a bunch of cherries to a golden egg, the saffron bait, a hand grenade, miles of rope, embroidered forms, holes, crevices, a virginal sewing-machine...". 


The personal and the confessional had always characterized his work, even as a student in Baroda, when the overtones of the kind of language used by the British painter R.B. Kitaj, widely discussed at the time, was very much in evidence. A subtle shift had occurred within this larger concern while studying in London. The immediacy of the day to day which had earlier served as a focal point of reference seemed "too foreign and too superficial" to actually move him deeply and. the only meaningful source seemed to be the universality which binds the experience of suffering, transcending as it did geographical and cultural constraints. Whether it was the slaughter of contaminated reindeer in Norway or the rise of fundamentalism in India, it affected the innocent and culpable alike. Working with dense overlapping layers of paint, he created vast ambiguous areas which could accommodate the personal within the more definable configuration of the event in question, the latter conveyed through the use of recognizable symbols. 

Free-standing or hung, his work bears the familiar premonition of oppression and guilt: the viewer becomes one more component, frozen in passivity and an unwilling partner to crime; "not allowed the release or the glory of martyrdom, but only the eternal pain of the weight." 

In his more recent works, whether digital prints, video, or painting, Suresh offers a nuanced exploration of some of the key issues that confront us today, most prominently, the growing culture of communalism and violence we are faced with. Through these works, the artist questions history and its modes of narration, and also, the circulation of images engendered by mass media. 

As Baroda based critic, Deeptha Achar, explains in one of the artist's recent exhibition catalogues, "One can see how Suresh’s artwork is demonstrably located within the arena of public debate. Its interventional status allows the material composition of his artworks to be located in a complex field of arguments that sets up and deploys its ideologically loaded significance in a manner that modulates and inflects competing meanings. In such a situation, the work cannot be construed as the mere expression of an artist’s meanings, nor can the intentions of the artist be the final arbiter of its meaning. Insofar as the artist professes or claims the work, he gets positioned as a public intellectual intervening through and across the unstable meanings proposed by the artwork. The artist who offers commentary from within a given context, however, must be distinguished from the modernist conception of the vanguard where the artist is positioned before and ahead of a society mired in convention."

(Profile by Saffronart)

Arunanshu Chowdhury

Born in 1969 in Hoogli, West Bengal, Arunanshu Chowdhury studied art at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, acquiring both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Fine Art there. Later moving from his native Bengal to Gujarat, much of Chowdhury’s body of work bears testimony to the changing role of the city. 


Having spent most of his life in Baroda, Chowdhury’s art confronts urban violence in a manner which does not shock, but rather leaves a lingering feeling of vulnerability, almost haunting the viewer. Playing with the idea of historical memory, Chowdhury’s work can be called a reaction to acts of extreme violence. While the Gujarat riots were a nodal point in his art practice, the controlled nuclear tests at Pokhran in Gujarat only heightened the possibility of further violence leading to increased anguish for the artist. While the current political situation does influence him and his art practice, Chowdhury also comments strongly on the frivolous nature of contemporary society, the unnatural need to belong and the societal pressures are all mocked on his canvasses. 


Highlighting the spectator-like role of the civilian, Chowdhury introduces the motif of the rickshaw – the most common mode of transport in Baroda, as a silent witness to urban atrocity. Other everyday objects, like the barber’s chair or a rocking chair play protagonists in his paintings, which teem with narratives but are unable to speak. Elaborating on his art he says “By juxtaposing several images, creating movement and a haze of memories, I have tried to animate the jumble of life, the fast pace and imposition of material things in my recent work.” 

Arunanshu Chowdhury has had several solo shows, the most recent of which include 'Wind in the Willows' at Anant Art Gallery, New Delhi, in 2008; ‘Probabilities of Occurring’ presented by the Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai, at Gallery Sumukha, Bangalore, in 2007-08; ‘Palimpsest – A Journey Through Time’ at Anant Art Gallery, New Delhi, in 2005; ‘Falling Up’ at the Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai, in 2001; and ‘Veneered Images’ at Prithvi Gallery, Mumbai, in 2000. His work has also been a part of numerous group shows including 'Vicissitudes of the Constructed Image' at Tangerine Art Space, Bangalore; 'Life is A Stage' at the Institute of Contemporary Indian Art (ICIA), Mumbai; 'With the Best Intentions' presented by Anant Art at Shridharni Gallery, New Delhi, all in 2009; 'Hot Shots' at the Viewing Room, Mumbai; 'Freshly Squeezed: The Young Indian Contemporaries' at Suchitrra Arts, Mumbai, both in 2008; and ‘High on Art’ at Visual Art Gallery, New Delhi, in 2007. 

Chowdhury was honoured with the Ravi Jain Foundation Award, New Delhi, as well as the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, Canada, in 1995.


(Profile by Saffronart)

Arpita Singh

"Arpita Singh has pushed the visual lexicon of the middle-aged woman further than almost any other woman artist. The anomaly between the aging body and the residue of desire, between the ordinary and the divine and the threat of the violent fluxes of the impinging external world gives her work its piquancy and edge. At the same time she critiques the miasma of urban Indian life with suggestive symbols of violence that impinge on the sphere of the private, creating an edgy uncertainty." - Gayatri Sinha 

Born in 1937 in what is now Bangladesh, Arpita Singh received her diploma in Fine Arts at the Delhi Polytechnic before taking up the job of a designer at the Weaver's Service Centres in Kolkata and New Delhi. Each of Arpita Singh’s drawings, watercolours on paper, and oils on canvas has a story to tell. To simply say that this renowned artist’s work is narrative would be a gross understatement. Afflicted by the problems that are faced each and every day by women in her country and the world in general, Singh paints the range of emotions that she exchanges with these subjects – from sorrow to joy and from suffering to hope – providing a view of the ongoing communication she maintains with them. 

The artist’s colours are vibrant, her palette usually dominated by pinks and blues, and her paintings burst at the seams with teeming life forms and objects or motifs like guns, cars, planes, animals, trees and flowers. Described as a figurative artist and a modernist, Arpita Singh still makes it a point to stay tuned in to traditional Indian art forms and aesthetics, like miniaturist painting and different forms of folk art, employing them in her work regularly. The way in which she uses perspective and the narrative in her work is steeped in the miniaturist traditions and a direct reflection of her background. 

Since her first solo exhibition in 1972 at Kunika Chemould Gallery, New Delhi, Singh’s work has been featured regularly in shows of Indian art held in the country and internationally. These include exhibitions at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, in 1982; the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, in 1986; in Geneva in 1987; and at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, in 1993. She has also participated in the 3rd and 4th Triennials in New Delhi; the 1987 Havana Biennale; and the Indo-Greek Cultural Exhibition in Greece in 1984. More recently, her works have been exhibited at 'Progressive to Altermodern: 62 Years of Indian Modern Art' at Grosvenor Gallery, London, in 2009; 'Kalpana: Figurative Art in India' presented by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) at Aicon Gallery, London, in 2009; 'The Root of Everything' at Gallery Mementos, Bangalore, in 2009; and ‘Modern and Contemporary Indian Art’ at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, in 2006. 

Singh has won several awards throughout her career, including at the 1981-1982 All-India Drawing Exhibition in Chandigarh, the 1987 Algeria Biennale, and the 1991 Parishad Samman from the Sahitya Kala Parishad, New Delhi. The artist has also showed her works in more than twenty solo exhibitions including several in Chandigarh, Bhopal, Mumbai and New Delhi. Her prominent solo shows are ‘Picture Postcard 2003 – 2006’ at Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, in 2006; ‘Memory Jars’ at Bose Pacia Modern, New York, in 2003; and ‘Drawing 94’at Gallery Espace, New Delhi, in 1994. 

The artist lives and works in New Delhi.

Amit Ambalal

"Painting for me is a process of discovering oneself...it becomes a metaphor of a larger thing,"


Born in 1943, Ahmedabad, Amit Ambalal was a businessman, until he became a full-time painter in 1979. So taken in was he by his passion of becoming a renowned painter - his childhood dream - that he sold off his family owned business in 1977 to pursue this passion. Amit was a 57 at the time. 


Says he, "My inspiration was my mother who learned art from Chhaganlal Jadav, the renowned painter of Gujarat. I remember spending my time working on paintings even in my school. In fact my aptitude for art was so appreciated that even when I drew during my math class, my math teacher appreciated the good work and told my parents of the work of art I had created." Ambalal was educated at a school founded and run by Leela Sarabhai. 


But coming from a business family, art wasn't quite appreciated by all the members of his family and he was forced to pursue a formal education. Ambalal eventually graduated from the Ahmedabad University with a BA, B.Com. and LL.B. He soon joined his father's business and took over as the Managing Director. Even as the MD of a company, Ambalal saved his Sundays for the paint and easel and worked with his guru, Chhaganlal Jadav. 


His work can basically be divided into two categories. One has a contemporary approach to tradition via the popular religious traditions. And the other is the historical Rajasthani Nathdwara devotional paintings he has been creating for the last 14 years now. Part of his work also revolves around human drama.


A prosperous society embedded in a destitute society is thus oft the focus of his work. His portraits of India are simple and a direct means of him coming to terms with the horror he sees around him. He has a unique ability of perceiving quirks and flaws in human behavior and making them part of his great pictorial scheme on canvas. Its often been noticed in his canvases that where his faces, body and gestures are devices of his irony, it's the color, design and texture that gives his paintings the light and easy mood. 

Hypocrisy doesn't bother him, he prefers to splash it on canvas and mock the world thus. Says he, "I don't decide what to paint before hand, the initial idea may be from a newspaper photograph I have seen in the morning or an antique sculpture. Then as I am painting something starts to grow inside that canvas, and that takes on the final form on the canvas." 

Be it historical or contemporary, his work is paired with the critical, irreverent humorist creating a satirical representation of the everyday and the divine, filled with eccentric human and animal protagonists. 

A large part of Amit's work is in watercolors and this he explains by his fondness for the medium, says he, "Watercolors have a knack of telling you when the painting is complete, apart from its luminosity and transparency which is not seen in other mediums." Amit is known to work with pure colors and let them mingle on the paper rather than his color palette. 

Ambalal's first solo exhibition was in Ahmedabad in 1980. Since then he has had several shows around India, and in several group exhibitions abroad. Even after a track record of over 40 solo and group shows, he still considers himself to be a student. "After a show is over, I feel I have something more to learn," he says.
(Profile by Saffronart)