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With the Third and more ambitiously enlarged edition of the annual GenNext exhibition, from 1 October 2008, Aakriti Art Gallery of Kolkata, is celebrating the third anniversary of its establishment. When Aakriti held its first GenNext exhibition, it was a new gallery with a tradition and a vision for the future. With a tradition of art collection, to start with, it was only very natural that Aakriti would try to remember, recapitulate and re-present the worthwhile of forgotten art traditions. Much more challenging, however, has been its perusal of mission as a new entity in art circuit. As a new entity, it took as its mission the task of presenting the worthwhile of the new in current art, to the discerning spectators and collectors. With some amount of trepidation, due to uncertainties involved, Aakriti took the responsibility of scouting for hitherto undiscovered talents and presenting the worthwhile of the currently practiced art. In this search. Aakriti has been less guided by fashions and trends and more by intrinsic worth of works. Feeling amply rewarded, in its endeavours, by the two previous expositions, Aakriti not only is confidently holding the Third GenNext, but also vowing to hold ever newly and more grandly planned GenNexts, as the prime annual festival of new art in (and, not, of) Calcutta. The intention is to make this Calcutta art festival, the most important art event of the East, for the new in art.
GenNext was conceived when for the first time Aakriti decided to have it in the very first year of the gallery's existence, as a curated show of path-seeking works preferably by first time exhibitors. Strictly speaking it was not possible. But works mostly by newcomers, who had still had not exhibited much, were projected. The more or less satisfactory policy was continued in presenting the GenNext II. As it was found that not many first time exhibitors with path-seeking works were being found, the organizers decided to change the selection process of exhibits. By public notice artists were asked to submit reproductions of their current work, with CV. There has been a tremendous response. Eight hundred artists, and many from other countries abroad, submitted their reproductions. After an initial in-house short listing of around three hundred names, the reproductions, without the names of the artists, were submitted to a panel of senior experts who finally asked some forty to exhibit their selected works in this Third GenNext. Aakriti and the selectors are happy that about seventy percent of the young artists (below forty) in the show are first time exhibitors. The participants from abroad too are new exhibitors, not only in India but also in from where they have come. Aakriti vows to continue this policy of welcoming foreign participation, especially from Afro-Asian countries, in future. This, we feel, India as an aspiring leader of the postcolonial developing world should have done much earlier.
Another motive of organizing the GenNext was expanding the quantitative base of appreciative art collectors. As, from 2004-05 the prices of art by established artists were skyrocketing and such works were going out of reach of even of the reasonably rich collectors, the quantum of super-rich collectors showed signs of shrinking. Responding to those signs, Aakriti planned to organize GenNext as an exhibition of affordable art, with the assurance that the works the collectors would be collecting from the show were of quality and with potential velocity of circulation, and that they were by artists of the future. Standing on the threshold of the Third GenNext, with which Aakriti is celebrating its third anniversary, the gallery happily notes that: Aakriti has not only been able to convince the seasoned old collectors not to stop buying but to shift interest towards worthwhile works of new artists. Secondly, what is much more significant is that Aakriti has been able to create many first time collectors who are developing the habit of regular art collection.
And lastly, and more significantly, Aakriti takes tremendous pleasure in saying, that through GenNext, it has helped quite a few young artists to gain footholds in the art scenario of the country. Enthused by all these, Aakriti is celebrating the third anniversary with GenNext III, planned more as a festival.
--Pranabranjan Ray
Kolkata 1 September, 2008
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