JOIN USInteresting artists to look out for
Francis Limerat
Represented by: Baudolin Lebon (Booth C7)
Credentials
For nearly four decades, Francis Limérat (born 1946) has developed a range of works which is essentially focused on the ‘line’. Limérat's approach is rooted in the history of abstraction, manifesting in formal terms, such as colour, freedom from objective context, and a reduction of form to basic geometric designs.
His work is set against the wall, which acts as a canvas for the work in many ways. The structures are hung just a few centimeters away from the wall, allowing a delicate interaction between the structures themselves and the light, casting intricate shadows and bringing the work to life.
The structures are made from multicoloured, thin wood sticks, usually black and white, whose complex arrangement brings added depth to the lines and soft shadows. Limérat's process is that of a minimalist, and is nurtured by his appreciation for the Asian philosophy as well as artists such as Paul Klee.
Valay Shende
Represented by: Sakshi Gallery
Credentials
Born in Nagpur in 1980, Valay completed his BFA inSculpture from Sir J J School of Art in 2004, andparticipated in an artist residency programme at Point Ephemere in Paris. Among others, he has exhibited inHavana Biennale, ‘Bombay Maximum City’ at Lille 3000, and ‘Made by Indians’ at St Tropez Beach in France.
About his work
Valay’s sculptures stand out by their sheer weight both in physical and metaphoric sense. Valay’s dexterity and proficiency come through in other pieces as well. Through his skillfully rendered objects, profiles and symbols, Valay puts across his ideas and concerns about the present-day religion-ridden society.
Muhammad Zeeshan
Represented by: Aicon Gallery
Credentials
Born 1980 in Mirpurkhas, Zeeshan completed BFA in Miniature Painting from National College of Arts, Lahore (2000-2003). He lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan.
About his artMuhammad Zeeshan began his career as a signboard painter in Mirpurkhas, where one of his regular assignments was painting Lollywood billboards. Today, his transparent metaphors of hairs, horses with a bobbing pony tail etc., look like painted stories.
Zeeshan, who is known to work on seven or eight paintings at a time, has a rhythmic movement of going back and forth, adding, deleting, transforming etc., to get across the essence of his storytelling.
Veer Munshi
Represented by: Galerie ISA (Booth A5)
About the artist
Munshi was born and brought up in Kashmir, but was forced to move out due to the recent floods in that state. The ‘house’ can be entered from its base, and inside are a multitude of small portraits reflecting those affected by the flood.
These range from poets and artists to family and friends and ordinary citizens portrayed in the course of their daily lives. A video at the far end of the interior is a meditation on various kinds of loss connected with Kashmir.
About his art
A Kashmiri artist who studied painting at MS University, Baroda, Munshi presents images that are intriguing. They cross average notions of reality and pass into a surreal realm. He works in oils and sometimes sketches in charcoal. In 1999, he led the team of designers of the Jammu and Kashmir tableau that won the first prize in the annual Republic Day parade.
Remen Chopra
Represented by: Exhibit 320 (Booth B12)
Credentials
Born in 1980 in New Delhi, Remen Chopra received her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Painting from the College of Art, New Delhi. In 2001, she studied Art History and Language in Siena, through an Italian Cultural Exchange Program, and in 2003, she completed a Diploma course in photography from the School of Phototechnic in New Delhi.
About her art
Chopra’s multi-layered works,executed mostly in mixed media,appear to shift back and forth between the real and the make-believe. The artist’s imagery is drawn mostly from her own experiences, while theelement of drama present in these works is directly influenced by themedia and cinema. Making a point, Chopra directs our attention toward the irony of the dramatic, both in real moments and in scripted ones.
Aldo Alcota
Represented by: Perve Gallery (which represents a group of artists, from different generations, hailing from various Portuguese speaking countries).
Credentials
A multifaceted artist, Alcota is part of a Chilean collective in which poetry and the visual arts are both practiced; and surrealism’s renewed energy in the country is
promoted. He has exhibited both in Chile and Europe,
and illustrated books of poetry.
Artist’s statement
“The characters of my works are born of surreal
experience I have with the world and human relations.
I draw mutilated beings, cannibals, puppets, strippers, monarchs, robots, and creatures that form a “theatrical nightmare and…that spout the traumas and fears today.” A circus of horror is not far from everyday reality because of what you see in the news, on television, in politics, in war... We live surrounded by the grotesque. Also, we cannot say we are a rational species. Quite the contrary. My drawings are based on a metaphysical game, where there is humour and poetry; where a laboratory where new bodies are invented, with the fusion of human and animal… And in relation to the creative act, I trust more perspiration than inspiration.”
Francesco Clemente
Francesco Clemente (born in Naples on March 23, 1952) is an Italian contemporary artist. His work is influenced by thinkers as diverse as Gregory Bateson, William Blake, Allen Ginsberg, and J Krishnamurti. Dividing his time between New York and India, Clemente has adopted a vast variety of supports and mediums, exploring, discarding, and returning to oil paint, watercolor, pastel and printmaking. His work develops in a non-linear mode, expanding and contracting in a fragmentary way, not defined by a style, but rather by his recording of the fluctuations of the self.
Clemente's art has been presented in solo and group shows internationally. Major
retrospectives have been held in the 1990s at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, at The Royal Academy in London, at the Centre Pompidou, Paris and at the Sezon Museum of Art, Tokyo. Clemente's art was also featured in 1999-2000 at the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum, New York, and at the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao. In the 2000s, retrospectives were held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, at the Museo MADRE, Naples and at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt. An exhibition of self-portraits and of Clemente's own version of the Tarot Cards was held at the Uffizi Gallery, Florence in 2011.
Michael Kunze
Represented by: Galerie ISA (Booth A5)
Credentials
Born in 1961 in Munich, Kunze studied Philosophy at the Ludwig-Maximilian- University, and Painting at the Academy of Arts in Munich. He has shown internationally since 1989, and currently lives and works in Berlin.
About his art
The work of Michael Kunze has been referred to as a transposition of classical education into painting. He practices hermetics and devotes himself to possibly fruitless and incomprehensible scholarship. He travels between worlds and through history. His paintings are filled with reflections on literature and philosophy, and on the history of art and architecture. He translates these reflections into enigmatic, seemingly irrational sceneries, architectural constructions and utopian landscapes.
Alec Cumming
Represented by: Art 18/21 (which specialises in South-Asian and Modern and Contemporary British Art.)
Credentials
Born in the UK in 1986, Alec Cumming was raised in the gently undulating countryside. He started sketching and painting landscape from the age of 10, taking lessons from a local artist who taught him how to work with oil and canvas. Cumming studied at Norwich City College where he took a Diploma in Fine Art followed by a BA (hons) in Fine Art from Norwich School of Art and Design (2004 - 2007). Cumming was a founding member of STEW artist studios in Norwich. Cumming now works in Norwich. Since 2011, he has based his practice between Delhi and Norwich.
About his work
Cumming’s paintings are often described as abstract. His fiery and vivacious paintings are known to convey a fiery joie de vivre, and youthful irreverence through shimmering fields of colour and gleaming expanses of light. Full of life and character. The artist sees himself not as a painter working in the tradition of British abstraction, nor as a painter dislocated from his roots, from Norfolk in the East of England, but simply as a contemporary artist who is part of the vibrant and living Delhi art scene.
G R Iranna
Represented by: Aicon Gallery, New York, USA (Booth C3)
Credentials
1970: Born in Sindgi, Bijapur, Karnataka (India).
1994: MFA in Painting from the College of Art, New Delhi, 1992: BFA in Painting from the College of Visual Art, Gulbarga.
1999: Artist-in-residence at the Wimbledon School of Art, London.
Iranna has received several awards and honours including ABPF Foundation, Signature Art Prize- Singapore Art Museum Jury Award (2008); Residency, George Keyt Foundation, Dambola, Sri Lanka (2003); and International Scholarship from the Charles Wallace India Trust, British Council (1999).
About his art
Iranna is an artist whose work transcends the boundaries of time and space. He makes paintings and sculptures that often point a seemingly existential viewpoint. Art historian Donald Kuspit says: “In what is clearly a tour de force of protest art, a masterpiece of social commentary, Iranna shows us the human truth of our times, shows us how far man has fallen…”