International News and Views.com
Published on January 27, 2017 by INVC NEWS
INVC NEWS
Chandigarh,
Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi is celebrating the birth anniversary of iconic artist of Punjabi origin, Amrita Sher-Gil on 30th January 2017 by organizing an audio visual presentation and screening of a short film by one of India’s most significant artists Sudarshan Shetty.
Sudarshan would share some of his earlier series of works in the slide show along with the screening of a short film A Song A Story. He would engage in a question-answer session with the audience/viewers after the presentation.
The event would be held on 30 January 2017 at 5.30 pm at Randhawa Auditorium, Punjab Kala Bhawan, Rose Garden, Sector 16 B, Chandigarh.
Sudarshan Shetty is the curator of the ongoing Kochi Muziris Biennale and is best known for his enigmatic sculptural installations. He has long been recognized as one of his generation’s most innovative artists in India.
Having managed to bring him to Chandigarh at this time, is a real privilege for the art lovers of the region and for Punjab Lalit Kala Akademi.
Moving from painting exclusively to installation early on in his career, Shetty explores the fundamental ontological challenges presented by our immersion in a world of objects. His installations are developed around a rigorous grammar of materials, mechanical exposure and unlikely juxtapositions of things that may belong to culturally distinct spheres. Moreover, Shetty’s object language eschews narrative as well as established symbolism. He has exhibited widely in India and around the world.
He is one of the first exponents of New Media artists in the country and has inspired many other well known New Media artists.
The story of ” A Song A Story” is about a woman who has a great story and a song, but hasn’t shared them with anyone. The story and song seek revenge and turn themselves into an umbrella and pair of shoes.
“The moral of the story thus is that if you have a story, tell it, and if you have a song, sing it,” Shetty says.
The layered work draws on a folk tale from Karnataka, and relates particularly to dying folk traditions of oral history, drama and storytelling.
The process of creating this work has its own story. Each element of the installations was sourced from Chor Bazaar, a second-hand goods market, because Shetty wanted every piece to come from another place with histories of its own.
His installation was created for the Rolls Royce Art Programme, making Shetty the first Indian artist selected by the global initiative to promote art. Art editors and critics have already declared 2016 the year of Sudarshan Shetty.
The story of Indian contemporary art is also a story of how artists have responded to, and articulated, the India of the past few decades. In Shetty’s case, this involved a search for a world view that was grounded in his own milieu, cultural expressions and history, rather than the Western history of art taught in most art schools. His interest in nirgun poetry reflects this.