Beneath the Surface - Recent Works by Nobina Gupta

recent works by nobina gupta

beneath the surface

Published by Gallery Sanskriti Text : Anirudh Chari Design : Vedika Jhunjhunwala Photographs : Goutam Mukherjee Printing : PIXCEL India, Kolkata

Gallery Sanskriti

invites you to the preview of recent works by

nobina gupta

I dedicate this show to you, my Teachers, who initiated me to Look Beyond and Find Life.

For I would not be whatever I am, without you.

21 march - 14 april 2011

beneath the surface

Drifters of the Deep-1 Pen & Ink on Archival Print 9.5 x 9.5 Inches 2011

Much can be said about the nature of the improvisational structure of Nobina Gupta’s work and its close relationship with emotional and lyrical construction. What also becomes clear, however, in looking at her recent body of work is its relationship, not just to the abstract composition of emotion, but also how she uses this relationship to explore and articulate profound emotional and metaphysical ideas that cannot be expressed through traditional pictorial modes. This body of works demonstrates a complex layering of forms and meanings, some of which connect her to classical modes of abstract painting, and some of which connect her to the contemporary visual world and other types of expression. There is the quality of the simple, the straightforward, the whimsical, and even the surprising aspects of contemporary visual culture that have begun to invade her imagery and this balance provides a dynamic energy to her work. Empowered with a variety of associations, they make the viewer seek, question and look beneath the surface to find timeless and universal values which surpass the individual and the finite. It is a journey towards infinity as well as towards an invisible and indefinable core: i.e. the essence.

Drifters of the Deep-2 Pen & Ink on Archival Print 9.5 x 9.5 Inches 2011

Drifters of the Deep-3 Pen & Ink on Archival Print 9.5 x 9.5 Inches 2011

Alluring Fervour Ink on Paper Construction 36 x 22 Inches 2010

Nobina’s works are products of an intense intellectual as well as intuitive approach to the act of image making. She views art and the practice of making it as a way of participation as much as a means of communication and is an artist whose imagery has been developed over time by working out ideas through creating a series connected to a single theme or image. She has a profound understanding of principles of abstraction, the possibilities that minutely worked and bled colours provide as well as the richness of a well organized, complexly designed composition. Each work represents a series of related compositions and all the works share a kind of organizational resonance, an implied musicality of structure. In this way, her internalization of a lyrical structure emerges, bringing together seemingly unrelated works. Another important aspect of Nobina’s art is crucial to understanding her work: craftsmanship.

This term can be problematic in a world of Duchampian found objects, but there are many contemporary artists who continue to be interested in the vocabulary and syntax of form, image and colour quality and Nobina can be included among them.

Her attention to compositional unity, application of colour and its harmony demonstrates her commitment to the physical and intellectual elements of art making and places her within a venerable pedigree of artists who share this fascination with the formal devices of painting. Her paper relief works exemplify her commitment to the fundamental elements of three-dimensional design. She balances negative and positive space, large elements and small elements, and broad but separate areas of the pictorial surface.

Arboreal Diminution Pencil & Ink on Archival Print 42 x 28.5 Inches | Diptych each 21 x 28.5 inches 2010

Arboreal Assault Pencil & Ink on Archival Print 26 x 25.5 Inches Triptych 26 x 8.5 Inches each 2010

Claustrophobic Emergence Ink on Paper Construction 22 x 36 Inches 2010

Nymph-2 Ink & Paper Construction 12 x 16 Inches 2010

Inchoative Cataclysm Ink & Paper Construction 53.5 x 27.5 Inches Quatrych 9, 11.5, 14, 19 x 27.5 each 2010

What is most fascinating about Nobina’s work is the congress of the elegant craftsmanship of modernist abstraction and the bold language of contemporary visual culture.

This close relationship appears to have evolved over time and emerged out of a natural and organic development. Her style is neither forced nor contrived, nor a self-aware cynical act.

It is also important to address the lyricism of Nobina’s forms which plays a dominant role in many of her works. Her lines become whimsical characters in themselves, providing a sort of narrative element within the composition, bridging the two seemingly disparate approaches of form and formlessness.

The lines seem alive, a sensibility that reinforces the organic nature of the larger images.

It is in this kind of balancing of the whole where we see again the musicality of her structure, a complex organization of classical abstraction, contemporary visual culture and organic form. It is, however, important to spend time with this body of work. The denselyworked images only reveal their richness and subtlety after prolonged scrutiny. To hear the music of these images and explore their subliminal depths, one must gaze into their essence, into their distances away at their horizons.

Dubious Concurrence Ink on Paper Construction 10 x 10 Inches 2011

Nymph - 5 Ink & Paper Construction 12 x 16 Inches 2010

Nymph - 1 Ink & Paper Construction 12 x 16 Inches 2010

The work is at once agoraphobic and space-loving: incidents of colour hug the sides of the pictorial surface, as if fearful of trespass on the wide openness beyond, yet the expansive field of subtly-modulated colour contained within these edges is filled with a radiant evocation of space and light. Initially the works may seem sparse but on closer inspection one finds them filled with incident in which energies flow in every direction without, somehow, creating a tumult.

These are extremely elegant works and, yet, demanding of the viewer. They are cartographic without being, in the least, map-like. The colours edge at the viewer, bleeding into, flooding and renewing each other, effecting unexpected conjunctions of rare lyricism.

In what is a dance but also a duel, there resides a discovery of self and meaning which transcends the actual process, while at the same time being totally reliant upon it. These images are about emotions but also about landscape; about the placing of pictorial elements; yet ultimately about the locating of self within the wider context of the world.

Igneous Flux Ink on Paper 22 x 30 Inches 2010

Inchoative Cataclysm Ink & Paper Construction 53.5 x 27.5 Inches (Quatrych - 9, 11.5, 14, 19 x 27.5 each) 2010 Unfathomable Emancipation Ink on Paper 58 x 25 Inches 2010

Intangible Dilemma Ink on Paper 28.5 x 83 Inches 2010

Nobina pursues a constant crossreferencing of colours. Black may be applied over light green, for instance, but instead of dominating, it is somehow absorbed into the light.

They are akin to the footlights to the real drama of nature; something also of the cinder path; areas of shade and shadow like smoke or the precipitate in a chemical reaction. The texture is assertive, it draws attention to itself, to some extent it becomes the action of the work. These works are constructed, built up to the light.

Or perhaps they have grown: there is certainly a sense of the organic here.

Like many good works of art, these draw its strength from the apparent contradictions within it.

Mystical Diffusion Ink on Archival Print 21 x 28.5 Inches 2010

Drifters of the Deep-4 Pen & Ink on Archival Print 9.5 x 9.5 Inches 2011

Drifters of the Deep-5 Pen & Ink on Archival Print 9.5 x 9.5 Inches 2011

Effervescence-1 Ink on Paper Construction 10 x 10 Inches 2011

Nobina does not finish a work – be it a drawing, painting, an installation or a video – so much as she discovers that it has reached its most perfect point: the moment at which to touch the work once more would be to risk ruining it, and when the optical and intellectual sensations she strives for are at their most intense. Her work is activated by the observed world, but filtered through a sensibility naturally attuned to the language of abstraction.

She is careful not to offer us certainties, but to concentrate instead on transitional states.

By subtle variation and through a profound gift for interval and rhythm, Nobina Gupta reminds us that our lives depend upon the fundamental interconnectedness of all things.

It is just a matter of seeking beneath the surface.

Effervescence-2 Ink on Paper Construction 10 x 10 Inches 2011

Installation View

NOBINA GUPTA Born 1972 in Jabalpur, MP

EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATION 2004 1995 1993

NET Scholar (UGC) Master’s of Fine Arts (Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati, Santineketan) Bachelor’s of Fine Arts (Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati, Santineketan) PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

1995 1996-2000 2000-2001 Since 2001

2011 2010 2010 2010 2010 2009 2008 2008 2008

Art Teacher at ‘Air Force Bal Bharati School’, New Delhi Lecturer at ‘Apeejay Institute of Art and Design’, New Delhi Art and Design Teacher at Birla Academy of Art and Culture Managing an Art School & working for Child Welfare using Art Therapy.

EXHIBITIONS India Art Summit 2011 Gallery Sanskriti ‘No Content Worries’ Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata Indo-Sweden’ Cultural Exchange Program at Gothenburg, Sweden ‘India International artists’ Jakarta, Indonesia ‘Summer show’ CIMA, Kolkata ‘Beyond Convention’ Anant Art Gallery, Kolkata ‘The Art of Santiniketan- Masters and Emerging Artists-II’ at Nehru Centre, London ‘18 Years’ Annual exhibition at Gallery Sanskriti, Kolkata ‘The Art of Santiniketan- Masters and Emerging Artists-I’ at The Royal College of Art, Henry Moore Gallery, London

2008 2007 2006 1998 1995 1995 1995 1994

‘Entourage de color’ at Birla Academy of Art & Culture, Kolkata ‘Gen-Next II’ at Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata ‘Gen Next’ the Anniversary show at Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata ‘Palash’ at Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi ‘Exploration’ at CIMA Gallery, Kolkata ‘Inaugural show’ of Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Mumbai ‘Birla Annual Exhibition’ at Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata ‘Juveniles’ at Birla Academy of Art & Culture, Kolkata

1997 1996

AWARDS

Awarded in ‘68th All India Annual Exhibition’ at I.F.A.C.S, New Delhi Awarded in ‘Swarnanjali Exhibition’ by World Gold Council, Mumbai.

WORKSHOPS & PARTICIPATIONS

2011 2009 2009 2008 2008 2007 2004 2003 2002

Wall Sculpture design “Waterlily” at Chennai for IGA, Bengaluru.

‘Acting, Psychology & Education’- Dr. Mohan Agashe at MACE, Kolkata.

‘Environmental Leadership’-Hard Rain organized by British Council, Kolkata.

‘Japanese Paper making’ under Japanese artist Nobue Nakama at Weavers Studio, Kolkata.

‘Signature Art Fest 2008’, Avani, Kolkata ‘Art Fair India 2007’ at Travencore Art Gallery, New Delhi Art camp for Tsunami victims at Metropolitan Art Salon, Kolkata Artists Workshop at Vikalap Art Gallery, Kolkata Kala Mela at Birla Academy of Art & Culture, Kolkata

Gallery Sanskriti

5C, Alipore Park Road, Kolkata 700 027 | T 91.33.2448 4925 / 2449.7931 | www.gallerysanskriti.com