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Manifestoes in the Open Air

Start Date : 27 October 2024

End Date : 17 November 2024

Location : Lalit Kala Akademi, Chennai



Manifestoes in the Open Air

With works by Nidhi Agarwal, Bassist Kumar, Parul Gupta, Neeraj Patel, and K Benitha Perciyal.

Presented by Ashivta’s and Nature Morte at the Lalit Kala Akademi, Chennai.


“Manifestoes in the Open Air” presents propositions by five young Indian artists who are working in a variety of styles. What they have in common is a dedication to a particular language they have chosen for their art, sticking closely to a set of parameters, and exploring the possibilities within them. The exhibition illustrates the diversity of contemporary art being made in India today, with no particular style or school of thought taking predominance over others. 


Nidhi Agarwal’s paintings, works on paper, and collages of found fabrics walk a tightrope between Abstraction and Figuration. She uses strong colors and aggressive brushstrokes to carve out spaces from which faces emerge and bodies morph together. What may at first appear to be purely chaos quickly becomes legible and the artist’s choices and control are evident. Agarwal’s canvases are large, imparting a physical, almost performative, sense to the works and as the artist is small in stature, it seems she must wrestle with the images they contain. Faces and figures appear and then fade away, in a ballet in which no single element commands the center of attention. Her paint is thick and viscous, her colors often discordant, her linework a dangerous trap to become ensnared. 


Basist Kumar exhibits an extraordinary technical facility in handling paint, achieving results which mimic yet defy the limits of photography. In the process, he seems to combine multiple histories of painting into a single canvas, drawing from his studies in both India and China, creating axioms that synthesize cultural paradigms. Kumar’s landscapes are both and neither - real views or poetic constructions, pastoral ideals or exotic trances. In his figurative works he abstracts the human form so that it appears surreal, only hinting at a hidden narrative.


Parul Gupta’s visual language is born from Minimalism and all of her works appear deceptively simple at first, but with time their complex programs and internal intensities become apparent. Drawings composed from overlapping parallel lines, in two and three colors, seem to defy perception, oscillating in front of the viewer and possessing a vibratory charge. While highly delicate, her works also seen animated, as if the images refuse to remain at rest.


Neeraj Patel is a painter who explores multiple mediums in order to bring a diversity of approaches to his language. In his paintings Patel develops a particular style of abstraction that he has culled from a digital reality. The artist states that he is interested in the faults, glitches, and errors in the systems we interact with on a daily basis, and his paintings resemble computer coding or the sequencing of genetic material. Patel also makes what he calls “Industrial Landscapes,” inspired by the artist’s repeated investigations of the ruined and repurposed industrial architecture around Baroda. These are low-relief works constructed from cut and layered paper, their colors and textures adding depth to the imagery. 



Benitha Perciyal has developed a distinctive approach to sculpture. Primarily figurative, Perciyal’s art locates its foundations in her strong Christian faith, in both its iconography and its materials. Her preferred medium is the herbs and oils that are made into incense: myrrh, cinnamon, cloves, Frankincense, lemongrass, bark powder, and cedar. She casts found and modeled forms solely in these organic compounds, requiring months or years of curing, slowing down the process of making and refusing any synthetic materials. Her figures are rarely whole and often fragmented, communicating both suffering and transcendence. The pedestals on which they are presented are fabricated from seasoned and scarred wood, adding to a sense of timeless antiquity, very much at odds with the contemporary world.

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