The Pakistan Palette !

This is my article on The Pakistan Contemporary Art Show at Devi Art Foundation which appeared in the Sunday magazine "Graphiti" of The Telegraph Newspaper which has a print run of 0.5 million copies. Comments are welcome!

The art scene is back at its vibrant best! Week after week there are new shows and one of the season’s best has been assembled by Anupam Poddar at the Devi Art Foundation.

Poddar’s passion as a collector is well known but his initiative in mounting a show of his collection of Pakistan Contemporary Art gives viewers a chance to see new art from our neighbour that’s innovative and absorbing. I was also impressed with his choice of curator, Rashid Rana, one of Pakistan’s foremost contemporary artists best known for his Red Carpet & Veil series — tiny images of an abattoir forming a red carpet and pornographic images in the shape of a veil.

The exhibition of 45 artists, culled from the vast collection of Anupam and Lekha Poddar, is aptly titled Resemble Reassemble. It showcases Experimental Art rather than the miniature intricate work we associate with Pakistani art. The art which spans the past decade is fresh and for a country which has issues with travel visas and limited interactions with other countries due to security issues, strongly contemporary. It’s art with which you instantly connect and the satire, in fact, is sometimes too much in your face. It’s also refreshingly without the hype and speculation of Indian Contemporary Art.

And the icing on the cake — for me — is the show’s staging at the Devi Art Foundation in Gurgaon, a stunning museum with lots of open spaces and excellent ceiling heights where you revel in the experience of soaking in the works. I was quite impressed with the earlier works of Ayaz Jokhio, one of the participants in the recently concluded Asia Pacific Triennale in Brisbane which also had Subodh Gupta and Thukral & Tagra from India. The show featured his works from 2005 and if I look at his works today, they’ve changed quite a lot, but even in 2005 you can feel the intensity of his style.

So here are my top three picks. Imran Ahmed Khan in this installation Implode 1 has various parts of an AK 47 rifle suspended with surgical medical instruments all hanging from the ceiling in a spectacular visual display. According to him, weapons and surgical instruments are related. Both penetrate human flesh, one to kill, the other to cure, both are handled by human figures and in most cases draw blood. This was a haunting image and executed beautifully.

Implode 1 by Imran Ahmed Khan

In the second work, Amber Hammad gets herself into the photograph titled Maryam, the Arabic name for Mary. It recreates the Mother Mary & Child genre that has inspired many paintings and sculptures around the world. She recreates this image in front of traditional Islamic architecture and the photograph has a box of diapers and a book on erotic art next to it. I admired the way the artist conveyed the various dimensions of a woman’s life in an Islamic environment. It’s a subtle yet defining work with a touch of humour in it.

Amber Hammad’s Maryam

And of course, no commentary on Pakistan Contemporary Art can still be complete without some miniature work in it. Nusra Latif Qureshi has lived in Australia for many years and in this work, titled Rainbird, For What Place Are You Crying?, maybe the lovers pointing to some distant location in the work is her own longing for her country –— a yearning shared by all Diaspora artists. Her work, an excellent fusion of miniature art with an exploration of personal, social and political histories, is stunning. Take note specially of her deft use of striking colours and the subtle intricacies inspired by the traditional miniature work.

Rainbird, For What Place Are You Crying? by Nusra Latif Qureshi

I have also been collecting Pakistan Contemporary Art for the last two years and have been impressed with the quality of the work. The values are also quite reasonable especially for the quality of work available. It’s not difficult to get a nice work from a younger contemporary artist for around Rs 50,000 and even experienced contemporary artists are all available in the Rs 2 lakh to Rs 4 lakh range. Some of the galleries showing such cutting edge Pakistan Contemporary Art are Green Cardamom in London and Grey Noise in Lahore.

So if you are looking for art which is a commentary on the times in which we live, start looking at Pakistan Contemporary Art seriously. There’s some great art across the border just waiting to be collected! And if you are ever in the vicinity also do take a trip down to Gurgaon as the show stays open till May 10.

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.

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.

Painted with Passion !

Here we go, with the article published in "Graphiti" the Sunday magazine of The Telegraph news paper, published for the international readers of this blog. The Magazine has a print run of 0.5 million and a readership of close to 1 million. An update on the India Art Summit follows soon .......

Let me talk about some art initiatives and how some people in our country are trying their best to promote Contemporary art which will make the genre all the more sought after in years to come. A lot of private individuals are doing their bit by taking private initiatives to further the cause of Contemporary art.

Anupam Poddar took a fantastic initiative with the Devi Art Foundation by opening his collection with curated shows in the heart of Gurgaon to all. He has had students from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) come and curate a show which involved the community in the art world.

On a much bigger scale, Rakhi Sarkar has an ambitious plan to create a 10-acre museum in Rajarhat called the Kolkata Museum of Modern Art. This is being designed by the acclaimed Swiss architectural duo Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron. The project, backed by passion, will contribute to the larger cause of promoting art.

We have a history of arts and culture but if you go back before 2004, most of the earlier artists hardly had any money and what kept them going was just a love for art.

As passion, creativity and talent sometimes get blurred in a haze of commercialisation, it is refreshing to see some galleries encourage new talent just fresh out of college. Bhavna Kakar from Latitude 28 has done a show for the graduating class of Vadodara earlier in the year which featured interesting works from Shreyas Karle, Sandip Pisalkar, Bhavin Mistry and others.

Rajesh Ram’s ‘Pothi padhe padhe jag mua pandit hua no koi/ Dhai akshar prem ke padhe so pandit hoye’

I was also very impressed with what Sree Goswami is doing at her gallery Project 88 in Mumbai. In these recession-hit times, I see the galleries shying away from doing shows to keep costs low. But Goswami went ahead and did First Look 2009. It was a brave decision, without an eye on the bottom line.

She showed five artists from the graduating class of Maharaja Sayaji Rao Art college at a time when even well-known Contemporary artists are finding it tough to sell their works.

I was curious and went and had a look. I was extremely impressed with an eloquent work by Sidhartha Karwal that carried the inscription, “My generation is silent! A sign of our times as we live sometimes not saying anything till it affects our life and not speaking out for what is right”. A strong message conveyed using an installation and canvas.

My Generation is Silent by Sidhartha Karwal

This is very different art with a limited following. Art on canvas or paper still is the first choice for most collectors. This whole installation was sold for Rs 50,000 which just about covered the cost of the work.

We need many galleries like this with a genuine love and enthusiasm for art to keep shows going, downturn or no downturn. Also accolades only come with risk which may be one of the reasons that Project 88 will be the only gallery representing India at the prestigious Contemporary “Frieze Art Fair” in London.

One of the most notable initiatives without any financial gain in the art space has been Indian Art News. It started out as a simple website which delivered art news directly to your e-mail. The site sent out daily information on what’s happening in the art world — and that too on a daily basis without a subscription charge. Deepak Shahdadpuri, who is an avid collector, then took it to a larger scale by revamping the website and creating a social network indianartnews.com.

Today it has over 2,500 members exchanging views on a minute-by-minute basis, discussion forums and event updates.

If I ever want to know the latest auction results at Sotheby’s or any of the other auction houses and even information on what the atmosphere in the auction room was like, then just checking the discussion forum is the easiest and the most reliable way.

It’s a great service to the Indian art world and it helps to educate both collectors and upcoming artists. I have met so many artists on the forum and actually connected with them on buying their works and even discussed the logic behind their art.

Next week we will take a look at the recently concluded India Art Summit, where the action has been thick and fast.

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