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'GenNext' has by now, transformed into the parable of new generation art. With its basic motivation to revolutionize the creative spree of young minds as well as the curatorial endeavour, GenNext is being conceived as a unique discourse to make its way into the pages of history.
There was a phase in the twentieth century Europe when art movement evolved with a rebellion thrust in the form of Surrealism and Dadaism. Both the movements challenged the established safe structure of practicing and executing art. This was for the first time when the whole system of patronage of art and cultural constitution of the society was disregarded because artists turned their back to the galleries. This became more prominent when installation was thoroughly conceived as an anti-gallery art movement both in Europe and America.
Though Indian art scenario was completely different from all these due to its strong Oriental tradition, yet this didn't remain long because the impact of these European movements captivated the Indian artists in the later half of the twentieth century. And in the Indian subcontinent, a process of amalgamation began where the basic ideology of those art movements was no more important but those genres were perceived both by the artists and the patrons according to their contextual realities. Probably that made it very lucid in the first decade of the twenty-first century where all these art forms including installations made a dominant space in the Indian galleries as the prime initiative to promote such art and its creators. Hence, ideas like 'GenNext' under the patronage of a contemporary art gallery has become utmost popular to boost up a meaningful direction to art practice as a whole.
'GenNext' was conceptualized as the annual show of Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata when it completed one year of its thriving in the art world. The show from the level of its inception was designed with a difference where the prime focus was on the young generation artists below forty and the process of bringing them together was through selection by a panel of judges including artists, historians, connoisseurs and critics. From regional to the national level, GenNext has already traveled to the global dais in its third anniversary and this year when the fourth GenNext is ready to be unveiled, once again thirty-four artists from India, Pakistan, South Korea, Hungary and USA are in assignation for creative expedition in form of painting, sculpture, printmaking, interactive sculpture, video art, photography and installations. A panoramic creative carnival of international stature will begin on the 1st day of October to commemorate the onset of GenNext IV. Apart from being a fortnight show, GenNext IV will provide platform of discourse, debate, ideation and thought process through interactive sessions, symposiums and so on.
The gamut of creative exercise these thirty four young and dynamic artists are going to showcase in the GenNext IV in turn welcomes for reaction and reciprocation with comparative study of the evolution of such art from diverse contexts, social and cultural realities of the artists belonging to different part of the world.
Atul Mahajan from Baroda intertwines beauty and abstraction in his interactive sculptures where he has attempted to invoke inquisitiveness towards the binary of an inflated and an understated structure filled with and without air. In building up so he has already invited the audience to undergo an interaction with the works. The sensitive feeling his sculptures shares completeness and vacuum to hold the crux of the message that life cannot exist without air, similarly beauty is a natural quality inherent in human, hence not to be artificially inculcated. Mansoor Ali Makrani also from Baroda makes it both subtle and obvious through his sculpture that doesn't imbibe the conventional sculptural structuring. In the glass incubation, he creates a pattern of beehive with magnification in shape that on the other hand reflects the idea of a geographical map. But without making any clear denomination, Mansoor makes it much more intriguing by inscribing on it, “Once upon a time in my village lived a wise man named Kabeer”. While Mansoor leaves it open for the audience in spite of portraying through the structure, his personal anecdote, Sanhita Banerjee from Chandannagar makes it much more the reflection of a personal experience yet a collective discourse.
Sanhita's regular journey to her home by train in the suburbs allows her to cross the congested widows in the structure of beehive where Shefali, Maya or Nargis peep out or stand for their customers every night. This passing trail allowed Sanhita to sculpt 'Heartless Heart” in the structure of human heart made of beehive and fibreglass moulding that will be lit up with openings as windows in the final display. She has in fact built up an allegory of this skin trade where objectification of women souls loses identity and left inanimate just to survive heartless. Nabanita Datta Guha from Kolkata explores the changes in the urban psyche and lifestyle through her paintings. She makes it much more organic both through figurative exposition and colour selection and somewhere sews the solitude in the urbane hangover that retains the solidarity towards the inherent roots that is getting lost. Somewhat similar Oli Ghosh from Mumbai takes us through the journey of the changing nature of human psyche and their selfish and corrupt outcomes. Oli prepares prints that are continuation of a multimedia installation. It recollects images of the trauma experienced by some of the victims of Gujarat earthquake. Unable to accommodate the ease of the physical re-construct that came as aide to the aftermath of this trauma, there are harrowing visions recorded deep in her mind. On the photographic reel, she treats the human spirit akin to that of a rubber band; pulled in a million ways returning to its original form, until it is snapped but in fact the mockery lies in its originality.
Youn Mi Ock, the South Korean artist develops a collage to create the realization about the essence of human life that is getting exhausted in the process of mechanization of the human existence in the ultra-modern society. Kondor Valéria from Hungary paints the human figure in silhouette in the halo of the surroundings that metaphorically relates to the inner journey of human mind. She mostly uses water colour with light oil touch that gives his works a dream-like quality because of the translucent effect. In Priyanka Lahiri's (from Howrah) paintings in mixed media she has confronted with human suffering and agony with much more gory effect to give it the terrorized or horrific form. In different shades of yellow ochre on a dark-patched background, the impact holds intensified anguish of human destiny in the present context of global terrorism.
Kolkata-based Piyali Sadhukhan creates a naïve quality in the depiction of human anatomy especially the brain and the spine in pencil, acrylic and ink on paper. The interesting representation of human mind which carries the core of all emotions is shown to pop up in different areas of the brain and hence Piyali very placidly narrates the tale of basic human desires through her simplistic yet surreal drawings. Sujit Karmakar also from Kolkata on the other hand confronts with the process of urbanization and the entrapment in the rat race for mere survival. Thus the realistic depiction of a plate of food on the flat surface of floating miniature-like figures attempt to build up the essence of human struggle and severe crisis to exist under the city roof.
Barun Pramanick from Kolkata dwells in the conventional casting process of metal sculptures with traditional mythical figures where as Nantu Behari Das also from the same city experiments with scrap material to develop psychological associations more conceptually rather than being faithful to the real trait of the subject. Thus his sculptures give a jerk and at times shock from within much akin to installation quality of rejecting conventions. Amit Kumar Debnath, another Kolkata-based sculptor in his work, 'Golden Flower' in stone and bronze recreates the metamorphosis of a female figure into floral structure as if through the process of blooming.
Mantu Das, Baroda-based painter induces mock element to the so-called democratic system we dwell in the modern society. He also questions the inherent latent desire in power-politics of gaining and exercising hegemony to fulfil one's vested interest when he creates the three Gandhian monkeys camouflaged with human faces, with their awful desires. But Prandeep Kalita from Assam draws the existential crisis in a much more critical way commenting on the severe degeneration of moral ethos in the name of progression of human civilization. Another young artist from a north-east state, Arunachal Pradesh, Punyo Chobin concentrates on the identity crisis and violence in contemporary situation and rapid process of acculturation that these places have undergone both due to militancy and social unrest. Punyo in order to create a subtle satire refers to images and text from local magazines and picks up the comical strips that allow him to distort forms and figures. In this way instead of creating a direct depiction of agitation and violence, he prefers to place a punning statement on the issue in his paintings.
Aharon Rothschild is a photojournalist from USA but he deals with images that are mostly unreal. He photographs gay, superheroes, suspended nudes, and burlesque dancers. The images carry subtle detail that transforms them from the realm of the unreal into a hyper reality. This story of hyper-reality is also connoted through the digital prints of sculptures of Huma Mulji from Pakistan. 'Pardesi Pride' in white cement and marble dust is anecdotal in conveying Pakistani history of its space and temporal reality by taking us to and fro in the past as well as in future. There is a deep sense of lamentation under the garb of pride and as the horses and the buffalo are realistic in representation, instead of following the surreal parameters, Huma is more prone to hyper-real depiction with somewhat magic-real content. KX2 - the collaboration of sisters, Ruth Avra and Dana Lynn Kleinman from USA work on the combination of metalwork and painting. The metal is cut and the surface is worked to create unique textures. The metal apparently loses its quality yet in appearance maintains the sleekness. The paintings in oil on raw canvas, adding an extra texture and colour can be seen through the cut areas of the metal sheet. Whether arranged in group installations or solo pieces, each work involves a sense of rhythm and mathematics.
Romicon Revola from Bangalore deals with the subconscious and unconscious states of mind and hence with the concepts of id, ego and super-ego in Freudian terms. 'Cereboscope' the name created by Revola is very interesting because as any other medical instrument, she uses it as something to detect, engulf and tame all these stages of mind in her paintings in mixed media. Mumbai-based Pramod Kumar Singh creates an abstractive from of banking structure (bank balance sheet) in what he paints keeping precisely in mind the relationship between economic policies and human struggle for existence. He constantly harps on the fact that how in the consumerist culture, everything is saleable that includes dreams, moral values and social ethos in the same was as any material object. Prafull Singh, a sculptor from Mumbai tries to leave an optimistic message through his ultra-marine blue shades on the fiber-glass figures posed as sitting in meditation. He identifies that self-realization through meditation can help out man to survive even in the most adverse situation and thus these blue figures are the reflection of inner self that he considers to be pure and close to the God.
Sagar Bhowmik from Kolkata makes a critical statement on 'freedom' through his photorealistic images in oil on canvas. Sukanya Ghosh also from the same city prepares an amalgamation in the forms of film, animation, painting and installation. Her image making process moves through creating an image that is naturally found then altering or distorting it, layering it and erasing markings and traces. The final work is often multi-layered. She presently deals with video collages that are reflection of everyday life yet intruding and interrogating the fictitious mindscape that the entertainment world produces and welcomes us to be a part of it. Basically she raises a moral question that how we are torn apart and swayed away due to these eyewashes of media elements. But for Soma Das, it is sharing experience of collecting water on an afternoon from a community tap in a local area within the cityscape. And her technique and handling of medium, mainly acrylic is quite traditional because she juxtaposes the pata style with miniature art and also remain close to the Baroda narrative school using fauvist colours and two-dimensional structure. Paltu Barman from Tripura is similar to Soma but retains more collage quality in the depiction of a landscape vibrant with activities more in the rural and primitive style in the lap of the nature. Delhi-based Siraj Saxena gives a relief from figurative images and essentially socio-political and culturally motivated content through his very abstract dominantly red-based paintings as if tuning in to celebrate the charisma of this vibrant shade.
Partha Guin from Burdwan district of West Bengal plays around with and intriguing installation prepared out of PVC pipes stripped and blocked within a wooden box as if forming a wrack carrying books in series. But each of the cut-down PVC pipe shows the face of internationally acclaimed persons like Marilyn Monroe, Charlie Chaplin, Che Guevara and so on. It is exactly at this level he critically treats the pop culture and the extreme artificiality that breeds within this culture. Priti Kahar from Baroda focuses on ideas such as 'Real Unreal' or 'visual illusion'. The work 'A for Apple' made of fiber and paper is again the echo of playing with toys and the fun element associated with it. She is very unconventional in using and handling mediums and also in shaping contents to exercise on the element of ambiguity. She attempts to create the surface using text and play with words, languages, terms, expressions, as well as the changing meanings of the word and its sound and hence allows the text to metamorphose into the visual. Debasish Dutta, also Baroda-based follows the narrative school style and re-interprets the institution of marriage and wedded couple in a closed system confined within glass jars. Whether he is critiquing or praising this system is left open to the viewers to be understood and appreciated.
Debasish Sarkar from Kolkata brings out the reflection of the merging of the 'traditional' and the 'modern' dominantly in acrylic medium but Dipta Bhattacharya is more into handling of mixed media with furry elements of soft toys giving birth to 'Coral' in a more ambiguous and abstractive form. Tusar Kanti Pradhan, another Kolkata-based painter does away with the conventional trends of paintings and invites three-dimensional masked structures on boards and canvases. His attempt is to retain subjectivity of the element but being very objective in its depiction. Hence the correlation and simultaneous existence of objectively subjective in the post-modern era is very interestingly portrayed through his works. Jaishri Abhichandani presently stays in Brooklyn, USA and is also fond of subjective exposition of ideas and thoughts with individualistic perception and sensitivity that accounts to create a unique discourse and meaningful assertion. In this show she is presenting a video to convey her ideas.
This was precisely the outline of ideas and expressions that the thirty-four young artists have tried to reveal out through their execution of artworks to be displayed in this show.
The profusion of thinking ability and the unification of every unique discourse of the participating artists in the GenNext IV is ready to prepare a vivacious rendezvous globally this year. And kudos to all the participants who have finally been able to make into this show with a footnote of hope and rejoice that they will become the glittering stars of the art world in the years to come.
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