Lasting Art Impressions of 2010 !

Dear Friends,

Here are the 3 artists who impressed me the most in 2010, they are unique and distinctive in their own way and at values which are reasonable. Do check them out as they make it to my top picks for 2010. This is a copy of the article published in The Telegraph newspaper's Sunday magazine "Graphiti" and reaching close to a million readers.Comments are welcome !

As another year draws to a close, I sit back and reflect on the artists who impressed me the most in the last 12 months.

They all come from different backgrounds and different cities but they have one thing in common; the intensity and drive to do something different. They’re all unique and distinctive in their approach.

The first time I saw the works of Deepjyoti Kalita was at Latitude 28 run by Bhavna Kakar, who still holds the record for showing at least one artist every year who impresses me with his work and style. Kalita obtained his Bachelor’s in 2008 from the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda, and followed it with a Master’s in Sculpture from the institution two years later and won several awards when in college.

Kalita, who was part of First Look 2010, does what I call wall mounted installations — the works hang on a wall like a normal painting but have moving images. And he works with an electronic engineer to complete them.

I was most impressed with the image of a man on a bench moving between a gas mask and a man with a typewriter in a glass jar. At the click of a button, the man moves as does the light behind him. The work is stunning in its visual appeal and yet its message of being caught in a situation and unable to decide is haunting. I also like his other works, the key being his use of technology to convey a message and at the same time working with traditional watercolours and outlines. I was most impressed by the amalgamation. Large scale works from him, sized at a minimum of 3ft by 5ft with all the circuitry, were priced between Rs 1.5 lakh to Rs 1.8 lakh.

The Incompetence Of Being Complete by Deepjyoti Kalita

Another artist who caught my eye was Paribartana Mohanty. I was told about his works by Peter Nagy from Nature Morte who was curating a show for Bestcollegeart.com and scouting for some great fresh talent. He ended up with seven top picks and they all made it to his record-selling show The Present is Now on Bestcollegeart.com, an online initiative for great art at reasonable prices.

When I first saw the works I was impressed by the fact that they were all very intense and oil on canvas which is rare nowadays as you’ve to paint layer by layer and wait for the paint to dry. All six works in the show sold before the show opened, taking me back to the 2007 days when works would sell before the exhibition formally opened. The difference here was it was happening for someone who was virtually unknown and only due to the brilliance of his work which was spotted by a top curator.

Mohanty was then featured as an artist to watch out for by art critic Johny ML in his Sandarbh residency. While he was there, he was declared the artist of the year by FICA and won India’s top art prize. That award gave him a three-month residency to hone up his skills in Switzerland and a solo show at Vadehra Art gallery. Watch out for him — he’s one of the most impressive artists that I have seen in recent times.

Paribartana Mohanty’s work Bandwala, Then And Disco

Another artist to look out for is Saad Qureshi, based in London. He finished from The Slade School of Fine Art with a Master’s in painting. Qureshi shot to fame as he was among the six finalists for the reality TV show by Charles Saatchi, chosen from thousands of applicants. London’s Aicon Art Gallery, managed by the very experienced Jag Mehta, spotted Qureshi’s talent before he became well known and he had a solo again with Aicon post his reality TV success in London called Disappearing in Yesterday.

Saad is exceptional in his treatment but the painting which impressed me the most from his solo show was Via Dolorosa which shows railway tracks set in a barren landscape that disappear into the distance. They fade away and the imagery used with Urdu inscriptions between the railway tracks gives quite a contrasting feel — soft dialect in a hard landscape. He also uses texture to great effect and the subtlety of his work is breathtaking. Again a body of work which makes you ponder as there are no answers — but you see what you perceive.

Via Dolorosa by artist Saad Qureshi

So these are the three artists to keep in mind all working in different mediums — from wall mounted kinetics to deep oil on canvas — all ending with subtle touches and taking you on a journey which promises more but can’t be seen!

Kapil Chopra is Senior Vice President of Oberoi Hotels & Resorts.He writes a blog on collecting and investing in Indian Contemporary Art at www.indianartinvest.blogspot.com.He also writes for The Telegraph Newspaper in the Sunday magazine " Graphiti" every fortnight. In Delhi, he writes for "The Mail Today " Newspaper and the "First City" Magazine.

The Crash and After !

Dear Friends,

This is the article published in "Graphiti" the Sunday magazine of The Telegraph newspaper on the 3rd of January giving my views on the year gone by and the road ahead !

It’s been a turbulent year for all asset classes including art but it’s thankfully drawing to a close on a better note than it started. However, it’s left behind some hefty damage — especially at the speculative end. What are the relevant lessons of the past year for Indian Contemporary Art — how can one build a portfolio that holds its value during rough weather?

We should note right away that the market for the modern artists — especially Gaitonde, Souza, Husain, Raza and a real gem whom we lost this year, Tyeb Mehta — remains strong but even among those art titans there are some pretty steep price variations. What this difficult year highlighted was the importance of quality and not just names. So if you’re lucky enough to possess a Souza work from the late ’50s to the early ’60s, the price for a 2ft by 3ft canvas now could be Rs 75 lakh, but if you have a Souza work from the late ’80s, within the same size range, the price could be just Rs 20 lakh.

Landscape with Houses and Lake by F.N. Souza

In the contemporary space, the speculative side of the market has taken the biggest hit. There had been a lot of froth in the market and that has been pretty roundly removed. All the key stakeholders — galleries, artists and collectors — were caught up in the tide of ever rising values and when the bad times struck, prices crashed by as much as 75 per cent.

A lot of artists, even those who had been bracketed in the top tier, suddenly found they weren’t selling at all when confidence troughed in March. One of the most flamboyant art galleries in the last four years, Bodhi Art Gallery, which had presences in Delhi, Mumbai, Singapore, New York and Berlin, finally closed down all its locations this year under the weight of mounting costs as their roster of artists slumped from the lofty valuations they’d enjoyed just a year earlier.

Atul Dodiya’s Sleeping with the Stars

I feel the fall of Bodhi Art Gallery, which some rivals had regarded as too commercial, has not been a good thing for the world of Indian contemporary art. Bodhi was a leader in redefining some of the norms on presenting and displaying art, publishing arguably the best catalogues with each show and also taking Indian contemporary art to an international collector base.

It also had some of the best sites, welcoming and well-informed gallery staff and a really conducive environment for viewing art. But the scale and magnitude of the operation built on a group of artists who’d started to believe the hype was too much and finally led to the demise of what was, at one point of time, India’s most powerful contemporary art gallery. It was built on a model of investment and financial returns and though art is a financial asset anyone who looks at it merely through a commercial prism is bound to fail.

And there is a lesson in the recently concluded Christies’ Hong Kong sale of contemporary art. Its price estimates were completely out of whack with market realities. So it was not surprising to see that most of the works did not even manage a decent bid.

So what ultimately is the takeaway for collectors and galleries from these cautionary tales? In the good times, don’t get carried away by hype. It’s important to note that what keeps its value is quality — but only at the right price. Still even in these difficult times, a 1979 work by Jogen Choudhary was able to smash all records in the Sotheby’s auction to breach the Rs 2 crore mark due its incomparable quality.

All in the Landscape by Probir Gupta

Now, though, the situation is looking rosier for the art world. Art Tactic, an art research firm which tracks confidence in Indian contemporary art, has seen its confidence index recover to 46 from 19. This means that 46 per cent of the collector community surveyed will buy contemporary art at current valuations — perhaps not as good a figure as one would like but still a lot better than the 19 per cent registered earlier when times were tougher. Another pointer to improving sentiment is the recently concluded Saffron Art auction in which 62 per cent of its art works sold above the higher estimate — underscoring that the market is recovering its poise.

Looking ahead to the first quarter of 2010, one of the most interesting events is a show by cutting edge British collector Charles Saatchi at his Saatchi Art Gallery in London. The show, aptly titled “The Empire Strikes Back,” will put India — and Pakistan — in the global contemporary art spotlight once again, something which had happened with Arco Madrid last February where India was the focus country. But the timing of Saatchi’s exhibition is better in the context of the recovery in global markets than the Madrid show.

Saatchi’s show, which opens on 29 January, promises to be really eye-catching. The roughly 26 artists featured include a mix of the top names in the Indian and Pakistan contemporary art space and also some new names you may not even have heard of. Some of the younger artists showing are Sakshi Gupta, T. Venkanna, Kriti Arora, Rajesh Ram and Rajan Krishnan among others. You may also want to take a peek at some of the research Saatchi has put up for this show, which you can view at www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk.

Here at home keep an eye out locally for well-known photographer Rashid Rana’s show, curating at the Devi Art Foundation in Gurgaon starting January 16. This exhibit, focusing on the journey of Pakistani contemporary art, should be quite interesting, considering the passion of Anupam Poddar and the pioneering work he has done in the world of collecting Pakistani art.

Now in the meantime, let me wish you all a Happy New Year and a good time collecting in 2010.

Kapil Chopra is Senior Vice President of Oberoi Hotels & Resorts.He writes a blog on collecting and investing in Indian Contemporary Art at www.indianartinvest.blogspot.com.He also writes for The Telegraph newspaper in the Sunday magazine " Graphiti" every fortnight. In Delhi, he writes for "The Mail Today " newspaper and "First City" magazine.