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January 2006 New York - Bose Pacia presents paintings by Gieve Patel and Sudhir Patwardhan from January 19th through March 4th, 2006. 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 to 6 pm and by appointment. There will be an opening reception with the artists on Thursday, January 19th from 6 to 8pm. The public is invited.
Art can provoke, and thereby inspire recognition and change. Gieve Patel and Sudhir Patwardhan are artists who engage in a dialogue through their work addressing issues of fragmentation, materiality and isolation. There's a fundamental similarity in the visual language employed by Patel and Patwardhan. Though both engage with the urban landscape and scenes from the street, they approach their works in different ways. ''Sudhir was deeply influenced by Marxist philosophy, with an urge to speak for the marginalized. I never wanted to speak on behalf of others. If Sudhir is the spokesperson, I'm the witness,'' explains Patel. Works such as Paying the Bill are representative of Patwardhan's oeuvre with its heroic rendering of the commonplace. A woman fumbles with her possessions in a display of impatient resignation, yet the solidity of her form conveys a kind of stoic dignity. In his Studio series, the figures loom less large and an aura of introspection takes precedence, a reversal that attests to the complexities of artistic self-realization.
Whether it be painting a landscape or stripping the human body to its bare essentials, the treatment of both subjects has a sense of asceticism about them. One is conscious of being a silent witness, of observing and being observed. In Patel's Battered Man, a pale and delicate landscape wraps around a brutally wounded body embracing it in its entirety. The visceral depiction of bruised flesh contrasts sharply with the surrounding serenity creating an in-between space replete with suggestion and disquiet. His Looking Into A Well series present well interiors and reflected surfaces which hover between realism and pure abstraction. Drawn partly from memory, such images poignantly capture the sensation of losing oneself in the act of looking. For Patel, "...looking into a well is almost consonant with looking into oneself." By urging us not to overlook the everyday, the commonplace and the mundane, Patel and Patwardhan remind us of the importance to keep searching in the art of looking
Gieve Patel is a practicing physician, an artist, a poet and a playwright. Selected exhibitions include the Menton Biennale, France 1976; India, Myth and Reality, Museum of Modern Art, Oxford 1982; Contemporary Indian Art, Royal Academy of Art, London 1982; Contemporary Indian Art, Grey Art Gallery, New York, 1985, and 'Coups de Coeur', Halle Sud,Geneva, 1987. Patel lives and works in Mumbai.
Sudhir Patwardhan is a self taught artist and a practicing radiologist. Apart from several solo show he has participated in international exhibitions like 'Aspects of Modem Indian Art' Oxford, U.K. 1982; Contemporary Indian Art, festival of India, London, 1982; Seven Indian Artists, Hamburg, West Germany, 1982; Contemporary Indian Art, Festival of India, New York, 1985; Festival of India, Center George Pompidou, Paris 1986 and 'Coupe de Coeur' Geneva, 1987. Patwardhan lives and works in Thane.