The Guild

Indian artists Dhrupadi Ghosh and Prajakta Potnis will be dispatched to Shanghai in September 2011, while Chinese artists Zheng Bo and Liu Wei, together with Taiwanese curator Amy Cheng will be dispatched to Delhi at the same period. Thoughts, discussions, and notes will gradually develop themselves into art works in the months to come.

West Heavens is a cross-disciplinary cultural exchange project, aiming to foster closer understanding of India through contemporary art and scholarship, and develop cross-cultural dialogue based on visual culture and notions of Asian modernity. Past and current programs cover a vast scope of social thoughts, contemporary arts, urban studies, film studies and music, and the form of events extend from lectures, discussions, exhibitions, screenings, workshops, performances and related translation and publications.

Prajakta Potnis (b.1980) received her BFA and MFA from the Sir J.J. School of Arts in Mumbai, India (1995/2002). Her multidisciplinary work spans painting, installation, sculpture and photography and investigates the porousness and interpenetrability of boundaries and binaries such as inside/outside, public/private, natural/engineered, etc, and has been shown to critical acclaim in India and internationally in venues including Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art, Paris, France (2011); Heart Herning Museum Of Contemporary Art, Denmark (2010); Lakeern Gallery, Mumbai (2010); Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art Oslo, Norway(2009); The Essl Museum of Contemporary Art, Austria (2010); Khoj International Artist Workshop, Delhi (2009); and others, as well as solo exhibitions, “Membranes and Margins”, Em Gallery, Seoul (2008); “Porous walls” The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai (2008); “Walls- In- Between,” Kitab Mahal, The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai (2006).

Her work has been featured in significant publications including ‘I’m Not There: New Art from Asia,’ Ed. Cecilia Alemani (The Gwangju Biennale Foundation, 2010); ‘Younger than Jesus: The Artist Directory’ (New Museum and Phaidon, 2009), as well as numerous catalogues and art magazines such as Art ETC, and others. Potnis is also the recipient of the major awards including the Sanskriti Award for ART (2010), the Inlaks Fine Arts award (2003-2004), and the Young Artist fellowship, from the Indian National Department of Culture (2001- 2003).

For more information visit http://westheavens.net/en more...

w Rakhi Peswani in Residence

at The Hague at the invitation of Kosmopolis Hague

September 16 – December 14

During her stay in the Netherlands Rakhi will study Dutch Art from Indian perspective. Rakhi will be participating in the Hague India Month. She also has some teaching assignments with art academies, a collaboration project with a Dutch theatre Director and an exhibition of her works at Denneweg Today.

Rakhi Peswani is a recipient of Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art’s Emerging Artist Award and obtained her Bachelor’s degree in painting and Master’s degree in sculpture from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M. S. U, Vadodara. Peswani’s solos include Matters Under the Skin with The Guild, Mumbai at Art HK - Asia One 2011; Intertwinings, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2009;Sonnet for Silent Machines, at Jehangir Nicholson Gallery & The Guild Art Gallery, Mumbai, 2007. Selected group shows include Generation in Transition New Art from India Exhibition Curated by Magda Kardasz,Warsaw, Bring Me A Lion: An Exhibition of Contemporary Indian Art, The Hunt Gallery, St.Louis, Missouri(2010).

For more information visit http://www.kosmopolisdenhaag.nl/ more...

w T. V. Santhosh at Fourth Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art 'Rewriting Worlds'

On September 22, the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art opens its fourth edition. Titled "Rewriting Worlds", it will run until October 30 and features 64 artists and 14 groups of artists from more than 33 countries. The Moscow Biennale is being curated by Peter Weibel, Director of the Center for Art and Media (ZKM) in Karlsruhe, Germany.

The Guild is proud to announce the participation of T. V. Santhosh, in the Fourth Moscow Biennale, who will exhibit 'Houndingdown' sculptural installation in the Biennale. The other Indian artist to be participating in this biennale is Shilpa Gupta.

The work titled, ‘Houndingdown’ is a key installation that broadly reflects Santhosh's conceptual and linguistic concerns of his ongoing engagements. It consists of thirty dogs and LED panels, is a combination of few historical references of ruthless and unforgivable deeds men committed in the past and relentless angst about the thoughts of future. One of the references is a testimony, a text that runs across on three LED panels placed on the floor, of a schoolgirl who witnessed the Hiroshima nuclear explosion. This re-edited first hand description of such a dreadful vision of terror and screams is almost like a hounding dream yet more real than real that sends a chill down through the spine. It is a story of burned and mutilated dead bodies, how a familiar neighborhood suddenly turns in to a ruined war zone and how the radiation turns a young girl into looking like old aged. The rednes of the LED text plays the role of the image by reflecting it on to the images of dogs thus playing a crucial role in building up the totality of the installation.

For more information visit http://www.4th.moscowbiennale.ru/en/program/main_project.html more...

w The Guild is pleased to announce participation of Prajakta Potnis, Prayas Abhinav, Rakhi Peswani, Ravi Agarwal
      and others in Generation in Transition New Art from India
      Exhibition Curated by Magda Kardasz

      At Zachęta National Gallery Of Art

      September 3 – November 6, 2011

      Following its presentation in Zachęta, the exhibition is be shown in the Contemporary Art Centre in Vilnius, Lithuania      more...

w New Indian Film and Animation

The Guild is delighted that the video and animation festival - VAF@The Guild has been invited by Institute
of Contemporary Arts, LASALLE College of Arts, Singapore to show at their institute.

The New Indian Film and Animation opens on the 17th August and artists’ talk by Dr. Vidya Kamat and
Gigi Scaria will take place on sthe 18th August at 4.00 pm at ICA, LASALLE, Singapore. more...

w Charwei Tsai in Yokohoma Triennale 2011

Our Magic Hour How Much Of The World Can We Know?
August 6 - November 6, 2011
Yokohama Museum of Art, 3-4-1, Minatomirai Nishi-Ku, Yokohama 220-0012, Japan

w Prajakta Potnis in Indian Highway IV
February 24 to July 31, 2011 more...

w Riyas Komu in Paris -Delhi -Bombay...at Centre Pompidou
May 25 – September 19, 2011

w T. V. Santhosh, K.P.Reji, Balaji Ponna, Ashutosh Bhardwaj in
Giant Elephant - Indian Contemporary Art Exhibition at Gong Art Space, Seoul, Korea, Seoul, Korea

w Prague Biennale
      CROSSROADS: INDIA ESCALATE Curated by Kanchi Mehta
      The Crossroads section curated by Kanchi Mehta is showing many Indian artists’ works including
      Riyas Komu, T. V. Santhosh, Gigi Scaria, Vivek Vilasini and others.
      Opens May 19, 2011 at Microna, Ceskoslovenskeho exilu 4, Praha 4 – Modrany, Czech Republic

w State awards of Lalit Kala Akademi, Kerala 2010

T. V. Santhosh has been awarded the Padmini award
R. Sivakumar has been awarded the Kesari Award
The Akademi fellowships for 2010, go to Riyas Komu and S. Ajayakumar

w Prajakta Potnis : Sanskriti Award for Arts 2010 more...

w Pooja Iranna : Celeste Prize 2010 more...