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Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata is once again ready to celebrate its anniversary on October 1, 2009 with 'GenNext IV. This is going to be the fourth 'GenNext' show, and definitely a benchmark in bringing together works of thirty-four generation next artists from across the globe, to a common platform.
GenNext has evolved as signifier of new generation art with versatility in approach and practice. From being regional to a national event, it has already taken a global profile since last year. GenNext IV is further getting wider in marking out the cultural curve through newer forms of visual art. This exhibition will showcase paintings, sculptures, fine prints along with photography, interactive sculptures, digital prints, installations and video installations, expanding the boundary of the conventional practices of the visual arts. The geographical boundary of GenNext IV has emerged from the City of Joy, Kolkata covering far ends of the country and neighbouring ones like Pakistan and South Korea, extending far west till Hungary and USA, from where a bunch of young creative minds feature.
As it happens with every beginning, the initiation of GenNext was not simple. The gallery had to go through several chaotic moments in the process of making such an important exhibition. The idea of such an exhibition was discussed among Aakriti's friends both in the art world and outside, who actively supported such an adventure. It was artists like Partha Pratim Deb, Aditya Basak, Chhatrapati Dutta, Samindranath Majumder and senior art critic Pranabranjan Ray, who helped in scouting the artists and selection process, enabled Aakriti Art Gallery to undertake such a project four years ago.
What was a speculative journey in the beginning has become much clearer in vision and application. GenNext is a platform to set the turning point in the career graph of young artists into positive directions. Already the GenNext credentials contain a list of young artists who are internationally acclaimed and their works are known world over. The gallery is aware that creative talents cross the boundaries of time and space. It thus explores, exploits and intervenes in different types of artistic practices. The result being a wide variety of artistic representation of life that is rooted in its specificity yet crosses all kind of borders. In fact, in such a situation the specifics remain, yet they collapse into a spacious-temporal schema. It has been an exciting experience for me to see such a huge array of art works from various corners of the world.
To give much substantial meaning to the GenNext show, Aakriti Art Gallery in association with Emami Chisel Art is also organizing a symposium with Amit Mukhopadhayay as the convenor. Young critics and curators from India and abroad has been invited for a two day symposium this year which will focus on “Radicalizing thoughts, renovating structures ground plan for a battle of two ways of life: global and Romani”. I hope GenNext IV will become a meaningful forum for artists, art critics and curators to come together and interact and participate in debates on various issues of art and life. I aspire to achieve excellence by projecting and focusing the best trends of contemporary art. By 'the best', I mean the extraordinary works that has been represented in this show, artists who will create ripples in the field of art in the near future.
But still GenNext has a long way to go. Quite alike Robert Frost's words in one of his poems, “Miles to go before I sleep…”, I feel the same in this show making its niche as the most astounding and aspiring display of art, unprecedented and unparallel.
--Vikram Bachhawat
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