Indian Artist Upadhyay Chintan

Upadhyay Chintan was born in Partapur, Rajasthan, India in 1972 and is currently living and working in Mumbai, India. He received a B.F.A. in Painting from Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S.U Baroda in Gujarat, India in 1995. In 1997, he received his M.F.A. in Painting from the same university. In 2000-01, he received Gadi schloarship, NLKA, New Delhi, India, and in 2004 was awarded Charles Wallace Foundation Award for a residency in Bristol, UK. His work has been shown in numerous group and solo exhibitions throughout India, as well as over the world:

Solo Exhibitions

2008

Metastasis Of Signs, Gallery Espace, New Delhi, India

2007

Tentuaa Dabaa Do (Kill Her), Jawahar Kala Kendra, Jaipur, India

2006

I Want to Be an International Artist, Seoul Art Center, Korea

Mutants, Sarjan Art Gallery, Gujarat, India

Baar Baar, Har Baar, Kitni Baar?, Sarjan Art Gallery, Gujarat, India

Clone Vithalla, Ashish Balram Nagpal Gallery, Mumbai, India

2005

Maya, Ashish Balram Nagpal Gallery, Mumbai, India

2004

Conker’s Installation Project, Spike Island, Bristol, UK

Designer Babies, Ashish Balram Nagpal Gallery, Mumbai, India

Group Exhibitions

2007

Have You Eaten Yet?, Asian Art Biennial, Taiwan, Japan

Beijing Art Fair, Art Fair, Beijing, China

Here & Now: Contemporary voices from India, Grosvenor Gallery, London, UK

2006

Satyagraha A group exhinbition by South African and Indian Artists, Travanore Art Gallery, New Delhi, India and Kizo Art Gallery, Durban, South Africa

“Pink Shop” Part of Hybrid Trends, Seoul Art Center, Seoul, Korea

Bombay Maximum City, Lille 3000, Lille, Frace

‘I am a slut’ a collaborative Video and performance with Amit Kekre, Gallery Beyond, Mumbai, India

KAAM, Arts India Gallery, New York, USA

KAAM, ArtsIndia West, St. Palo Alto, California

Annual show, Sakshi Art Gallery, Mumbai, India

2005

India/Australia cultural and regional exchange, KikArts Gallery, COCA. Perth, Australia

Sanjeev Khandekar has this to say about Chintan:

Our new world of transgenic realities and virtual possibilities has made it possible to have a new order for the world. This new order is precisely the contestation that Chintan wants to put forward through his works. Hyper-reality is the new order of the real, or ‘ireal’ is the new real, is the polemic that he offers through his more recent works.

For Chintan, the sculptures and his paintings serve as units of cultural information, symbols of political memes, kind of cyber game objects, substance-less, disinvested of material, inertia opening up the possibilities of new realms of reality.

All of his works strike a strange angle, as a built in architecture, or as if default system, what hits your eyes every time is the infantile visage, with the globus fat head and the conspicuous genitals of the body, making a weird and wonderful relationship between head and genitals apparent. Once we understand the limits of viewer’s gaze, the ideolological and fantasmatic coordinates of his works in the matrix of the late capitalist, consumerist contemporary society get denoted, and find their location.

Smart Alec is his new real, a copy of the copy, without an original, It stands for a symbol of New Man. Smart Alec is predicament and a dilemma, his desire and death. Smart Alec is new myth that Chintan is building, predicative of outmoded utopia of renewal of perception.

(This is an extract of an essay written by Sanjeev Khandekar, on Chintan Upadhyay’s recent works for private circulation. Sanjeev Khandekar is a visual artist, poet and writer. He lives and works in Mumbai.)

Metastasis Of Signs

Writer and independent curator, Johny ML, weighed in on Chintan’s works as well:

Once detached from the zones of production, signs gain independence from the ideology of their producers and start accumulating values that operate between the logics of the intentional and the experiential. Any society that consumes the signs while replicating the intentional ideology of the producers, also replicates the values created out of the consuming experience and these values proliferate in the social body as the cancerous cells ‘spill over’ from the zone of origin to other parts, conveniently passed through the unsuspecting mediums. This metastasis, a term Chintan Upadhyay adopts from the discourse of human pathology, effectively transcends from the realm of pathology to the realm of culture. Signs could be as polemical as the cancerous cells, not to mention the process of metastasis which could be even worse…

Please enjoy some images of his works!

“Chintu”, Oil & Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 in, 2010

 

“Memory”, oil & acrylic on canvas, 36 x 36 in

 

“Moon Child”, Oil & Acrylic on canvas, 24 x 24 in, 2010

 

“Take Me Home”, oil & acrylic on canvas, 36 x 36 in

Chinese Artist ‘Liu Guangguang’

Liu Guangguang was born in Northwest Gansu Province, China and his ancestral home is Hebei. He graduated from Lu Xun Academy of Fine Arts in 2009 and currently living and working in Shenyang and Beijing.

He is part of the “Post 80s” generation of Chinese Artists that are beginning to enter the market. Their ideals, insights and thoughts are vastly different than their earlier predecessors because they have grown up in different China.

His oil paintings are a window into the world of the “Post 80s” generation. This is the first generation in China that is more concerned about individualism than being part of the collective. There are so many choices on who or what to embody and idolize. They are on a journey of self-discovery where they try on many costumes before they find the perfect fit.

In his paintings, a lone figure stares blankly out at the audience. Although the figure is obviously human; he/she constantly changes his/her mask. The “Post-80s” generation has infinitely more possibilities and choices than their parents but they have little real-life experiences because many have been shielded from the world as “only children” therefore each subject displays a genuine innocence and awkwardness.

Although it can be said that these works reveal the artist, anyone who has just exited adolescence to enter into adulthood feels abandoned and alone. In this way, Liu Guangguang’s work is an unadulterated reflection of our own fears and uncertainties (Melanie Ouyang Lum).

Enjoy his work images!!

‘One inch painting’, oil on canvas, 50 x 55 cm, 2008

‘Can you bring me with you’, oil on canvas, 140 x 170cm, 2008

‘I walk in the evening breeze’, oil on canvas, 140 x 170cm, 2008

‘Birdman  under the Curtain of the Night’, oil on canvas, 140 x 170cm, 2008

Korean Artist ‘Jihyun Kim’

Today I would like to introduce a Korean female Artist Jihyun Kim. She was born in 1975 in Jun-ju, Korea and she is currently living and working in Seoul, Korea. She completed a M.F.A at the Hong-Ik Unversity and a B.F.A at same school. She is specialised in oil painting and drawing. She says

“The main topic of my work is about relationships and their mutual understanding. Unbalanced relationships between people, or between a society and its people remind me about all the relationships around me. What is shocking is that there are a number of conflicts and silence even if that seems to be peaceful and calm. There was an incident when was thinking as if there was no problem with some people or relationships. How ironic it is! However, still dream of coming to a mutual understanding with the people around me, the society where am entwined. Misunderstandings, bad memories, unexpected events, and a moment of an instant would be a passage that enables us to communicate with each other and understand each other. My works are ongoing records which are about flowing relationships”.

Enjoy her work images below and visit her blog to appreciate more works!

‘On way back’, oil on canvas,  92x122cm, 2008

‘Flows’,  oil on paper,  53×72.7cm,  2008

‘Dead sleep’, oil on canvas,  60.6×72.7cm, 2007

‘L’île’, oil on canvas,  130x162cm, 2009

‘Trans-for-cactus-8′, pen on paper,  75×100.5cm,  2009

‘Trans-for-catus-5′, pen on paper,  38x140cm,  2009