A Journey Inspired by Nature

Ravi K’s artistic journey was deeply rooted in his upbringing in the serene town of Mudigonda in Khammam district, Andhra Pradesh, India. Born into an agricultural family, he was surrounded by lush green fields, rustic charm, and the simple yet vibrant life of the village. These early experiences left an indelible mark on his mind, filling it with the myriad colors and textures of nature, the laughter of village belles, and the daily routines of farmers.

While initially pursuing a degree in Science, the magnetic pull of art proved irresistible. Ravi K followed his passion and embarked on a creative journey that would lead him to become an artist. He completed his B.F.A at Andhra University and went on to earn his M.F.A in painting from Kala Bhavan, Viswa Bharati University, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India.

Capturing the Essence of Humanity and Nature

Ravi K’s art is a captivating fusion of mixed media elements, often drawing inspiration from the forms and shapes found in nature. These elements become recurring motifs in his works, providing a canvas for his personal thoughts and reflections. His themes delve deep into the well of human emotions, portraying the nuances of daily life and shifting moods.

In his creations, you’ll discover dreams captured in vibrant colors, simplicity that evokes complexity, and evocative depictions that bridge the gap between urban and rural India. Ravi K’s works encompass the grace of nature and the elegance of both city and village life. Each piece seems to capture a fleeting moment, a visage filled with surprise and coyness, inviting the viewer to step into a world of magic.

The colors Ravi K employs in his work are not mere pigments but silent storytellers. They beckon the viewer into an inner world of enchantment that soothes the spirit. His experimentation with materials adds layers of depth to his creations, enhancing the overall impact.

Exploring the Mystery of Nature’s Beauty

What sets Ravi K’s art apart is his deep connection with nature, which is clearly reflected in the shapes and forms that grace his canvases. His compositions give rise to enigmatic images, offering viewers a glimpse into the glorious mysteries of the natural world. There is a sense of wonder and awe that pervades his work, mirroring the beauty and grandeur of nature in all its glory.

Ravi K’s art is a captivating journey through the heart of humanity and the soul of nature. Each piece tells a story, captures a moment, and invites you to explore the mysteries of the world we live in. We can’t wait to share Ravi K’s awe-inspiring creations with you at VisionsArts.com. Stay tuned for the upcoming showcase of this remarkable artist’s work.

RaviKArt #VisionsArts #NatureAndHumanity #MixedMediaArt #ArtisticJourney #ComingSoon #ArtLovers #ArtistSpotlight

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‘Onanism’, 1969. Photo: Vadhera Art Gallery

Altogether, it was a very rich atmosphere.” This is how Nalini Malani described her experience at the Vision Exchange Workshop (VIEW), the multidisciplinary initiative run by veteran artist Akbar Padamsee from 1969-72 out of his Napean Sea Road apartment in Mumbai, with part funding from the Union government’s Jawaharlal Nehru Fellowship. “But, unfortunately, with very few women participants,” was the caveat during a 2014 interview with Shanay Jhaveri, assistant curator of South Asian art at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, for part 3 of his series Building On A Prehistory: Artists’ Film And New Media In India.

Was she the only female member of the workshop? asked Jhaveri. “Yes, I was,” she replied. The interview was republished in an eponymous tome featuring a collection of essays on her work, released after Malani’s three-part retrospective, You Can’t Keep Acid In A Paper Bag, in 2014 at Delhi’s Kiran Nadar Museum of Art (KNMA).

In October, the 71-year-old artist opened The Rebellion Of The Dead at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the first of a two-part retrospective spanning the years 1969-2018. Instead of basking in the limelight, however, she is already absorbed in the impending second installation of the retrospective at the Castello di Rivoli in Turin, slated from 27 March-22 July. “The relevance of the huge body of work produced by her over the years has grown multifold in the times we live in,” wrote KNMA director Roobina Karode in her curatorial essay in the 2014 publication. Karode sees her practice as so cutting edge and dynamic that it allows for exciting curatorial propositions that prompt new ways of seeing and interpreting works that have already been written about at great length. It’s no surprise then that each of the two venues will host unique selections, with no works repeating.

The Rebellion Of The Dead cements Malani’s reputation as one of India’s foremost feminist artists. “My own art was from the start female-oriented,” she told Sophie Duplaix, chief curator at Centre Pompidou, in an interview. From the outset, Malani was drawn to the interiority of feminine narratives, beginning with the subjectivity of diary-based explorations, and moving into the multiple dimensions of the world of Indian and Greek mythology, extracting her female protagonists from the patriarchal set-up of the societies that had conjured them. It was not a popular practice to adopt, and the unprecedented, theatrical nature of Malani’s video, installation and performance art triggered an unfair share of criticism. For instance, in 1999, when she exhibited Remembering Toba Tek Singh (1998) at the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai, Indian art critics accused her of being an “installator”, a pun on gladiator, for creating a spectacle for the public.

Similarly, one of the highlights of The Rebellion Of The Dead is the rarely exhibited Onanism, a 3:51-minute, 16mm film made at VIEW in 1969, exploring female angst through the quasi-cathartic movements of a dear friend suffering from mental issues. “You must try to understand that period; it was as if women had swallowed the concept that we are incapable,” Malani had told Jhaveri. “It was almost as if doors were shut. It was a very, very strange situation because there was no openness on the part of the men. None.” Was the attitude patronizing or did they view her with some sort of suspicion? Jhaveri asked. “Neither. They simply ignored me.”

One senior modernist who helped further Malani’s career was S.H. Raza, whose recommendation letter helped her get a French government scholarship that took her to France from 1970-72, soon after her diploma from Mumbai’s Sir JJ School of Art. In Paris, she was given the freedom to design her own education since the École des Beaux-Arts was still to reconfigure its new syllabus. This would be a foundational period for Malani, who practised printmaking at Atelier Friedlander and immersed herself in Marxist politics while attending lectures by Noam Chomsky, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, as well as film screenings at the Cinémathèque Française, where she met directors like Alain Resnais, Jean-Luc Godard and Chris Marker.

‘In Search of Vanished Blood’, site-specific medium, single channel, video play, sound. Photo: Rafeeq Elliasi/Centre Pompidou

Like her predecessor Amrita Sher-Gil, Malani decided to return to India in 1973. She soon began to document a Muslim slum in Bandra, Mumbai, striking a deal with Pundole Art Gallery, which offered her Rs300 a month for a year’s output of oil paintings. She was devastated when, one day, the municipality razed the slum. The footage languished for decades till her archivist Johan Pijnappel rediscovered and digitized it, a few years ago.

This slum project is a part of Malani’s corpus of work that is yet to be exhibited. However, on display at the Pompidou are other early works such as Tabloo (1973) and Utopia, a film diptych (1969-76), as well as two other significant later pieces. One, Alleyway, Lohar Chawl (1991), an installation of five reverse-painted transparent Mylar sheets with stones—the result of her long-term residential engagement with Lohar Chawl in Lower Parel, Mumbai. And the second, Remembering Mad Meg (2007-17), a four-channel video with 16 light projections and eight reverse-painted rotating Lexan cylinders with sound that was first shown as part of the landmark Paris-Delhi-Mumbai show at Centre Pompidou in 2011 and was eventually acquired by the Musée National d’Art Moderne at Centre Pompidou. In Search Of Vanished Blood, a six-channel video/shadow play, is an immersive feminist interrogation steeped in literary references to mythical characters from Greek and Indian mythology, created for documenta(13)—it will be exhibited at Castello di Rivoli.

Nalini Malani.

“Is the female voice in the 21st century gaining momentum, and how important is this?” Pijnappel asked Malani in an interview published in the Irish Museum of Modern Art exhibition catalogue in 2007. “It is now a voice to contend with,” she replied.

The Rebellion Of The Dead is on view till 8 January at Centre Pompidou, Paris. For details, visit Centrepompidou.fr/en.

The post Nalini Malani: A female voice in art first appeared on Indian Art News.

New Delhi, Dec 15 (IANS) Art has always been an enduring bet. The Rs.2,000-crore (Rs.20-billion) Indian art market managed to hold its own despite a 30 percent drop in prices in the first and second quarter of 2009.

Purging mediocre art and small-time investors, the market corrected artificially inflated prices, found new ways to reach out to buyers and distilled itself to cater to serious collectors and dealers with quality works by modern masters and established contemporary artists.

The handful of new artists who managed to survive the churning were the ones whose works showed promise.

Even the nature of art exhibitions in Indian metros changed by showcasing the works of leading artists in groups instead of solo shows.

Asian art experts at Christie’s and Sotheby’s said the market started picking up post-Diwali in November and hopes to be on a stable track again by March 2010.

But at the end of the volatile swings and transformation of the market, investors are cautious, buyers more discerning and the internet has made deeper inroads in educating buyers about art.

Art magazines and publications, a spate of which has flooded the market – like Artetc, Art India, Art & Deal and India Art Summit Newsletter India ArtConnect – are also playing an important role in informing buyers about “good and unusual art”.

“Till early this year, no big ticket art was selling. It was a shock after a three- year boom that began in 2005 and lasted till the middle of 2008, till the markets woke up to a downslide,” Vikram Bachhawat, director of leading Kolkata-based auction house Emami Chisel Art, told IANS.

Works by younger artists with start-up prices of Rs.2 lakh shot up to Rs.1 crore in six months “because of inflated bids by some galleries in auction houses,” the auctioneer said.

The meltdown ripped the lid off.

Mahesh Chandra, a leading Delhi-based collector, said: “The prices of contemporary art fell by at least 50-60 percent while those by modern masters fell by 30 percent”. He quoted estimates by ArtPrice, an art market chronicler.

“Money was flowing freely and the same artists – 15 to 20 of them – kept appearing in every auction commanding high prices,” he said.

The price and the hype bubble have burst, said entrepreneur-author and art connoisseur Pavan Malhotra.

“But for Indian art to carve a niche for itself globally, the top 10 collectors will have to seriously start collecting Indian art. Most of them collect Chinese art,” Malhotra said.

Ashok Vajpeyi, chairman of the Lalit Kala Akademi, feels the financial meltdown has made art affordable for buyers. But several galleries also shut down, he said.

The Mumbai-based Bodhi Art Gallery, for example, closed down its Delhi, London, Berlin and New York branches.

Maithili Parekh, the country head of Sotheby’s which partnered the India Art Summit 2009 in New Delhi, said the market had seen a period of exponential growth over the decade.

“Indian artists were represented by top galleries and renowned museums across the world curated exhibitions of Indian art. Every new auction set price records till the recession brakes were applied and the market was forced to re-adjust its values,” Parekh said.

“However, it allowed us to step back, recalibrate, separate good art from the less than good art and regroup,” she said.

The art market, Parekh said, has “moved on at the close of 2009″.

There was a steady flow of quality and cheaper art like video art, digital works, mixed media art, sculptures, installations, serigraphs and digital prints of works by masters which were authenticated and signed.

“Artists, especially the younger ones, devoted more time to their work to improve quality during the lean money patch,” artist Anjolie Ela Menon said.

The exhibitions became interactive – inviting community participation in public domains to engage people in art rather than sell it upfront to consolidate a long-haul market base and opening up Indian mindsets to “latest trends in Western contemporary art”.

The high point of the year was perhaps the India Art Summit that traded art works worth Rs.26 crore (nearly 50 percent) with a display hamper of 400 art works from across the globe by 57 galleries.

Neha Kirpal, associate director of the India Art Summit, said “The Indian art market has redefined itself –

post-meltdown – with a “new lot of young and first time buyers, revival in art by high-end collectors, realistic prices and the entry of Korean and Chinese buyers and investors into the market.”

The post Indian art mart churned – and moved on first appeared on Indian Art News.

Contemporary art prices have crashed steeply, so why aren’t more works in the market?

* Values of contemporary art are down by as much as 60-70 per cent
* Enough contemporary artists have stood the test of time and their prices should turn robust soon enough
* There is very little contemporary art available in the market

Read those key points again and you will be hard put to reconcile them. If the contemporary Indian art market has crashed out, investors or collectors should be able to lay their hands on contemporary art at prices much cheaper than they were a few years, or even a year, ago. With less art selling, there should be more art available in the market. And those looking for a bargain should be spoilt for choice.

Or at least, that’s the theory. In a more practical world, however, this isn’t proving so.

Try looking for Jagannath Panda: Hmm, still tough to get. Ashim Purkayashta? Not right now. Atul Dodiya? Not at those discounted rates. At least a Riyas Komu? Sorry, there aren’t any in storage just now.

Actually, there are: And that’s exactly the problem. Many of these artists have a body of work that is in the market, yet isn’t being shown, or sold, because it was commissioned, or acquired, when prices were high (many collectors/investors will say that in the case of contemporary artists, they were extortionately high). Because the art market was buzzing, galleries couldn’t lay their hands on enough work, so they often agreed to pay even higher prices to acquire works by artists who began to produce virtual replicas for a fast-moving idea. Having paid a steep price for them, they can now hardly liquidate their worth for far less, so they’re sitting on large stocks hoping the art market will rise sooner rather than later.

It isn’t just gallerists who have created a sense of scarcity of contemporary works in the market, it is the artists too. When artists know there is ample stock that is sitting in galleries, they cannot afford to under-price newer works, as it will become the new benchmark and create a negative environment for the artist’s earlier works that will then likely never find a higher price. As a result, artists are determined to hold on to if not their previous highs, at least high enough prices in the hope that the market will improve some time soon. Any such movement would benefit their current body of work, but more importantly, earlier works now caught in the squeeze between low interest, low prices and low sellability, are in danger of becoming white elephants.

It could be the reason there aren’t too many shows by contemporary artists currently —both spring and summer have been periods of drought for new works by young artists, and the few shows have tended to be group exhibitions rather than solos. Clearly, artists are waiting out the cooling period — though it might be more appropriate to say they’re waiting for a heating in prices — which is why they’re not showing new work. (The good thing, most collectors expect, is that the extended waiting period might result in new directions and more challenging works of art.)

It hasn’t helped that even the faint revival in the auction market has tended to benefit mostly the moderns. Collectors say that with their proven longevity, their prices were never in doubt, but that the market had over-heated in the case of the contemporaries, a price they’re paying at great cost to themselves as well as to the entire art fraternity now. While moderns are being spoken of in terms of price increases, in the case of contemporary artists, the most-often used term is price rationalisation.

Does this mean there is no contemporary art available in the market? Well, yes and no. For now, it appears that only collectors are selling the odd works, and while prices are extremely attractive, collectors are either apprehensive and not snatching them up at auctions, or gallerists are adding them to their inventories without spending too much (and without word getting out into the market of the low value, which could then impact the entire market for these gallerists and artists).

For a serious collector, it is best to look around for not individual works but an entire collection of works, which could then be available for excellent value. Gallerists (and artists) will be willing to negotiate for a large number of canvases if the profits are negligible, non-existent and sometimes in the negative (for reasons of liquidity). These are usually hush-hush affairs, and you will have to deal delicately with galleries that have been associated with the artist you are keen on investing in.

But be extremely cautious: You don’t want to end up paying much more for an artist than he is currently worth (and these days no one seems willing to wager on what the right price is any more). You need to do enough due diligence to ensure that the artist has the credentials to survive not just the current downturn but also in the future decades. After all, an artist is worth only as much as his market longevity.

The post Down – but not available first appeared on Indian Art News.