 Vasanta, 2004 Installation view, 13 ft x 24 ft x 10 ft, Beeswax, dyed strings, pigments Ranjani Shettar The Indian Spring Talwar Gallery is delighted to announce an exhibition of new installations by Ranjani Shettar. This is the artist's first solo exhibition in the U.S. On view are two gentle and intimately constructed yet striking and compelling new installations. "Vasanta" is a cosmic curtain woven with thousands of handrolled beeswax nodes that connect a vast web of dyed strings. The installation suspended from the ceiling with rhythmic yellow and green buds symbolizes the transition from winter to spring, rural to urban, organic to the manufactured. "In Bloom" is a luscious composition, laden with a bounty of red lacquered beads with inlays of glass celebrating the indulgence of the material while blossoming from the more spiritual and peaceful intensity of "Vasanta". Employing organic materials invested with tradition and history, Ranjani Shettar creates multidimensional works that bring forth the metaphysical attributes of residing within a changing physical environment. She exposes the permeability of the often-distinct thresholds between craft and art, tradition and modernity, the physical and the spiritual while transforming the simple and mundane into the magical. According to Douglas Fogle at the Walker Art Center, "The organic qualities of Shettar's work might be profitably read in the art-historical contexts of Arte Povera artist Marisa Merz, postminimalist sculptors of the same period such as Eva Hesse, Brazilian Neo-concrete artist Lygia Clark, or Argentinean artist Gego… Each structure invokes a shelter that is poetically suggestive of our oneiric ability to invest spaces with our own desires and phenomenological memories". As the artist herself suggests, "Home is the body. The body is not the physical alone but the mental, emotional and the spiritual". Ranjani Shettar was born in Bangalore, India and received her Bachelors (1998) and Masters (2000) in Sculpture from Chitrakala Parishath (Institute for Fine Arts), Bangalore. Her works are currently on view in "How Latitudes Become Forms", curated by Philippe Vergne with Douglas Fogle and Olukemi Ilesanmi for The Walker Center, Minneapolis (2003) and travel to Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo per l'Arte, Turin, Italy (2003) and will be on view later this year at the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston and in 2005 at the Museo Internacional de Arte Contemporaneo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City and Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Monterrey, Mexico. Ranjani Shettar was awarded the Hebbar Foundation award in 1999 and 2003. Recently she was the recipient of the Charles Wallace Trust Award for 2004-2005 Residency at Gasworks in London, UK. Ranjani Shettar lives and works in Bangalore, India. Exhibition: June 5 - July 17, 2004 Gallery hours: Tue-Sat 11am - 6pm Talwar Gallery 108 East 16 Street USA-New York, NY 10003 Telephone +1 212 673 3096 Fax + 1 212 673 3097 Email mail@talwargallery.com www.talwargallery.com |
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