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The following is a show review from Austin’s leading art magazine Cantanker(Thank you very much, Cantanker!)
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New Talent from the Sub-Continent at Gallery Lombardi
Written by Claire Sudolsky
Saturday, 24 June 2006
The editors of Cantanker magazine apologize for the late publication of this review.
Contemporary Indian Art in Austin
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Something exciting is happening in the art world right now. It’s been a slow process, and it’s only beginning, but it’s happening nonetheless. Critics, curators and historians are finally starting to realize that the history of art, the accepted conception of modernism, postmodernism, and all other isms, has been narrowly defined around Western history and culture. The international elephant in the room is finally being recognized, giving artists of color and “Third World” art histories a voice. There are progressive curators, scholars, and a few art history departments scattered around the world trying to re-conceptualize art theory and history so to consider the diverse experiences and practices of artists around the globe. With this emergence of multicultural or cross-cultural methodologies, however, come many new problems. Reinforcing traditional borders between center and periphery, the problems of cultural translation, the role of the academic as “specialist,” and the fetishism of marginal artists and art practices are only some of the challenges this new discourse must tackle.
Frequently I hear lamentations about how the Austin visual art community is disconnected or lagging behind more sophisticated art cities. However, New Talent from the Sub-Continent, a recent show at Gallery Lombardi, proved this sentiment untrue. Curated by Justin Marx, director of Kala Fine art, New Talent from the Sub-Continent displayed diverse paintings by eight contemporary Indian artists. This show was a great example of serious contemporary art from a non-Western culture that did not fall into the exotic, ancient, folk, or “ethnic” stereotypes Westerners often associate with this part of the world. This is contemporary art first and foremost, and by exposing Austin to these international artists Gallery Lombardi has helped depict what is really happening in the contemporary art.
The exhibition was diverse and organized neither chronologically nor thematically, which I appreciated because there was not an attempt to make any grand narrations about the history of modern/contemporary Indian art. Instead, we were given a small taste of some interesting artists working with a number of different styles.Some artists worked with the connections between contemporary and traditional Indian culture. In Tribute to an Unknown Painter Snehashish Maity painted his faceless male subject in the style of a typical billboard image. However, the composition’s focus is the man’s belt buckle, on which is painted a delicate traditional folk art image. The thread that connected the impersonal contemporary visual culture and ephemeral, timeless and personal culture (as seen on the belt buckle) was the fact that both kinds of painters, billboard and traditional, are generally anonymous. This piece also explored the themes of gender and identity; the composition included a small dreamlike image of a paintbrush near subject’s body, which is a well known symbol for the phallus in modern Western art discourse. While Maity’s piece dealt explicitly with contemporary and traditional Indian culture in a pop art inspired style, other artists in the exhibition explored different social and psychological themes. Sandip Daptari’s It’s Just a Part of Life is an ambiguous work of social realism showing children in identical uniforms fighting a kind of tug-o-war sans rope. B. Devaraj’s untitled expressionist image of a young child surrounded by what appears to be his own umbilical cord has a kind of Freudian portentousness.
When I was considering how to describe my favorite pieces in the exhibit I realized that it was difficult for me to escape my own traditional art historical training. It was almost impossible for me to refrain from comparing these artists with the Western cannon. For instance, while I felt that the exhibition included artists influenced by pop, social realism, Hans Hoffman and Paul Klee, that comparison risked implying that these artists were merely derivative of Western culture, and not important to consider in terms of originality. At the same time, it would be incorrect to think of these artists as isolated or unaware of what has and is happening in other art circles around the world. The slope is indeed slippery, and I found myself surrounded by theoretical pitfalls ranging from touchy-feely political correctness to subdued racism. New Talent from the Sub-Continent definitely made me consider the flawed viewpoint of traditional art historical thinking, and while the exhibition was short lived (it lasted less than two weeks,) it was an important step in educating the public about the changing perception of international art.