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February, 2002 New York - Bose Pacia Modern presents a group exhibition entitled
"Casual Deities", March 7th, 2002 through April 5th, 2002. The gallery is located at 508 West 26th Street on the 11th Floor, in the Chelsea district of New York City. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 12-6pm and by appointment. There will be an opening reception on Thursday March 7th from 6 to 8pm. The public is invited.
Hindu deities, as product of the nature of polytheistic belief, have a tendency to be more "real" than their counterparts in other world religions. They are actively a part of life, dynamic and engaging figures as ready to tip the scales of chance as to find dalliance in this world. A relationship, as real as between two friends, develops and enables use. Allowing an art as avatar, art as continuation. A non-mystical medium working in the visual artists media, creating an art of connection, an art of passage. Building a bridge. Or more like adding reinforced steel to a bridge that has always been. Then building a thousand bridges, a hub, a network as intricate as it is expansive. Art as a dialogue, speaking in tongues between worlds and peoples.
The artists in "Casual Deities" all use this relationship to their artistic advantage. They let themselves engage beyond the stilted carvings on the stone wall and bring a character into modernity and then further still. They allow the relationship to grow to a dynamic state where reciprocation is the rule rather than the exception. By allowing the art surface to "talk back" the artists themselves become vessels to a new expression. For what are gods if they cannot grow and change, as people in their domain must. This ease of dialogue, an organic back and forth, results as much from the gods themselves as from the culture of which they sprung. What results is a seamless interplay of time and geography, borders are exploited and temporal concerns slashed, as life becomes fluid, statements pure, and ideas universal. It is with great pleasure that Bose Pacia Modern presents "Casual Deities".
Shelly Bahl is a Brooklyn based artist who has shown in and around New York for several years. Her images explore the exotic perception of Indian art and culture and question the historical makeup and relevance of such hyperbolic imports.
Manjit Bawa's painterly realm is peopled by enigmatic figure and marvelous animals that defy zoology; brooding sages and pensive virgin-goddesses in the mystery of unknown motives, undeclared intentions. Often, too, in Bawa's paintings, humans and animals engage in a wordless dialogue that throws its participants back onto an older, nearly forgotten language of instinct and intuition.
Texas resident
Amita Bhatt's explicit female forms, of note for their simplicity of line, engage in strange circumstances within the boundaries of a miniature painting. The artists uses her own face through the process of photo transfer to engage even further with her work creating an intimate and at times shocking landscape.
Sanjay Bhattacharyya currently lives and works in New Delhi, India. He is the product of the rigorous academic fine art training at the Government Art College in Calcutta. He has received numerous national and international awards. In 1994, he was commissioned to create a series of paintings commemorating the life of Rajiv Gandhi which was exhibited to wide acclaim at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi.
Arun Bose's art is non-narrative, non-linguistic and non-interpretive. It is delivered by a highly trained and gifted hand, guided by an emotive and sensitive eye and contemplated by a precise, immaculate mind. Though he lives and works in New York State, the principle inspiration for his works remains India's poet laureate, Rabinindranath Tagore.
Vinod Dave's art has at its core the imagery of the popular culture of India. Though the New York based artist allows his adopted home to infiltrate the dialogue. Media, commercialism and consumerism seep into the pure, "home-spun" fabric of Indian life providing the imagery for Dave's paintings. In 1993, he was the first Indian artist to be awarded the Pollock-Krasner Fellowship.
Madhvi Parekh is one of the most successful painters working at the difficult question of integration. In her dialogue, Parekh engages in a bit of subterfuge, by so clearly showing her folk roots, she becomes both urban and urbane at the same time. She destroys the boundaries of culture by highlighting them so clearly, choosing to trick the viewer into an artificial sense of security by expressing such complexity within such simplicity.
Manu Parekhwas born in 1939 in Ahmedabad, India and studied painting at the prestigious J.J. School of Art in Bombay. He has exhibited extensively throughout India, Singapore, and Europe. In 1991, he was awarded the Padmashree, the highest honor in art bestowed by the Indian government.
Lacking formal training,
Shakila engages her artmaking in fresh and exciting ways. Her use of mixed media collage creating mosaics of color and meaning within a representational framework. Her lack of a trained "experience" of art grounds her firmly within the roots of her culture. This truth is evident in her work.