The Fold 2023

the fold

the eight collection

THE EIGHT COLLECTION

Like many things that seemingly have a solid raison d’être in the present, The Eight Collection didn’t start out with a form, a plan or an aim. With that all-transforming force called time, and those rich harvests borne of it—momentum and evolution, an instant turned into an idea, which progressed into a shape, and onwards onto a structure. Yet in this narrative of the genesis, a question arises - does a structure by its definition need to be solid and immutable? Why can’t a structure at once be fluid and flowing, yet exist with integrity and substance? That succinctly, yet fully, lays down what The Eight Collection is. It is at once, a serious endeavour to assemble a formidable grouping of art from Asia and beyond, but at the same time, it also is an exciting, supple, cross-cultural and cross-discipline platform designed to allow imaginative collaborations and innovative tieins. The Collection recognises and contributes to the notion that contemporary art doesn’t operate in a vacuum, but exists together with,

because of, and is an originator of popular culture, politics, design, architecture—literally every aspect of the human experience, of what people call ‘real life’.

I am excited to present the Collection’s first publication, chronicling the evocative first presentation of vital works of the collection, hung at the eponymous building that houses it. The visually and narratively rich exhibition presents multiple parallel aspects of the Collection, but does it while deftly capturing the intersectionality of these apparently disparate themes.

Citing the oft-quoted words of Heraclitus, the only thing permanent is change, and this book captures just a moment in what will be a continuous progression in the journey that is The Eight Collection.

Vir Kotak | Co-Founder, The Eight Collection

THE FOLD THE EIGHT COLLECTION

Curating a collection to embody a building is a joy and challenge like no other. This building is frequently visited by the everyday visitors of JM Baxi, college students from the Delhi NCR region and global and national art ecosystem stakeholders—so the idea was to have a curatorial theme that could be versatile for all these viewers. Those being introduced to art, and those that already have an ongoing conversation with it, would find themselves engaged and intrigued by this open-style architecture where each and every space was available to Poonji Nath and me to create this comprehensive showcase of Indian contemporary art.

The Fold as a curatorial theme became the apt concept, word and umbrella under which we placed artworks across 8 floors. This curation interprets The Fold as a fissure, a break, a pivot—be it moments in time or a line creating or deconstructing a form. In my view, the ethos of this collection is global shipping and trade, which is the result of historical cycles of human movement—and this Fold in innovation is represented from the ground floor upwards.

It was crucial to highlight that art is not hidden behind any cordoned-off area here. Rather, art is something that you can view from across two floors: in the case of the 18 feet tall, specially commissioned acrylic on canvas with mythological multitudes by Shrimanti Saha just as you enter the ground floor. Or, art is something you can walk through and inside and touch for yourself: in the case of Rathin Barman’s life-size architectural metal installation on the first floor.

For the daily movement of staff and visitors, floors 8-12 deconstruct the meaning of Fold as elements of everyday life, time and human progress, allowing for flowing audience engagement. Respectively, themes of colour and vigour, mythological stories, germinating life and the consistency of human migration to find home strike the viewer on each floor.

To name a few, contrasting colours by Jeram Patel and Anjum Singh, folklore and cultural imaginations by Rithika Merchant, the pulsating growth through flora, fauna and organisms by Parag Tandel and even the ache and resilience of human movement through Sangita Maity

and Treibor Mawlong: all these encompass such narratives.

and tables for discussions, or even debates, over a few drinks.

With the 14th and 15th floors, which are the penultimate floors of this building, our curatorial theme took charge of introducing the viewer to some of the greats of Indian art like Gulammohammed Sheikh, Nilima Sheikh, Atul Dodiya, KK Hebbar and Zarina Hashmi to name a few. Interestingly, Anju Dodiya’s artwork marks a literal fold in time, as it was the first work acquired for this collection. Receiving such a freehand in modular spaces that keep evolving, it is also crucial to play with the conversation that artworks have across boardrooms, walls and seating areas. We carry the motif of Rameshwar Broota’s ‘Ape’, our collective ancestor, as the hush-hush ‘monkey business’ is always ongoing in these boardrooms—so we created a tongue-incheek reflection for the same!

A unique aspect here is that the sculptural work of Vir Kotak connects the audience through a staircase, to what we dubbed as the ‘thinking area’, where there are freestyle stools

On the 15th floor, Rana Begum’s jewel-toned metal artwork is the original inspiration for our name—The Fold. We spell out this floor with abstract heavy artworks ranging from the fold-ed lines of graphite by Idris Khan to prints highlighting the never-ending horizon line by Jyoti Bhatt and Ronny Sen. In artworks by Martand Khosla, Renuka Rajiv, Somnath Hore and Savia Mahajan, the viewer is introduced to wood, textile, paper pulp and ceramics, which are only the first bookend of the multitude of texture and materiality on this floor, and in this collection.

The second and final bookend to this viewing journey never arrives, as in this curation of the collection, the viewer will always find themselves invited to a series of conversations between form, material and memory. This Fold in time is only the beginning of a viewer’s journey with The Eight Collection.

Curation and text by Shaleen Wadhwana

As visitors enter the lobby of Number 8, Noida, they are met with Shrimanti Saha’s domineering 17ft long work with a Chinese scroll-like flattened perspective. It simultaneously weaves in stories from mythology and pop culture references with speech bubbles, while recording the historical tenet of human movement—travel. This migratory aspect of survival is reflected in the blues of Rithika Merchant’s boat guided by a constellation sky. It is an ode to the innovation in human history before the advent of compasses and navigation. The ubiquitous motif of the open eye on the boat, as well as under the sea, is a constant reminder of the memories and the beings that didn’t survive. Both of these works bracket one of the largest works in this collection, a cartographic slice of the globe rendered on cloth by CAMP. With each of the ports’ names dotting the edge of the land mass, one is brought close to collective commercial histories of shipping and trade. This cross section of three diverse practies brings in the narrative histories of travel, movement and mythology which introduces one to the essence of this collection, as they are welcomed into this building.

Acrylic on wooden panel 204 x 108 in.

MERCHANT Bateau I and II, 2016

Gouache and ink on paper 13.7 x 39.3 in. (each)

Moving up to the first floor, Rathin Barman’s prowess in translating topographical legacies of living spaces into paper, brass, concrete, ink and rust marks a comprehensive introduction into his wide practice. His spatial language is rendered in two as well as three-dimensional form with an all-encompassing, life-size, site-specific metal installation as the lift opens into the floor. This is reminiscent of the region’s collective lived history through Neoclassical columns, morphing into the existing floor and glass walls. It showcases the global and local reality of symbiotically reducing greens in a burgeoning Delhi NCR metropolis dotted with fast urban construction. Using coarse pumice and brass with graphite lines provides a metaphor to the core materials that are used in building living and working spaces. Furthermore, Barman has effectively captured the aging of elemental building blocks of architecture through his use of rust in a sixpart bird’s eye view of a map, which is in deep contrast with his wall mounted sculpture where the altered transformation of painted steel and concrete ties the floor together.

BARMAN Altered living spaces, 2018

Brass, coarse pumice, ink and brush on paper 30.5 x 22.5 in.

RATHIN BARMAN Waiting for more than five decades (set of 6), 2016 06 Rust transfer on paper on dibond 36 x 30 in. (each)

Multiple interventions of acrylic and oil paint, lithography and Chinese ink explore how colour is interpreted by diverse artists on the eighth floor. With both of Jeram Patel’s works, one is transported to Indian art history of the sixties when he started creating a visual identity through abstraction. His printmaking beginnings are also reflected in the 1980 lithograph, which contains a tight movement and is complemented strongly by his ink laden strokes on paper making a pulsating form shift and turn while also remaining still. Interestingly, one can observe how this language of colour and abstraction reflects itself in Anjum Singh, Pandit Bhila Khairnar and Manisha Parekh’s works, all practising three decades after Patel. Each of them is a window into how the movement of abstraction is realising itself in India.

The lift opens to a textural experience provided by Singh’s powerful brush strokes, which encase an almost autobiographical representational imagery of her seeing herself on a TV screen. This self-reflection in form is contrasted well by Khairnar’s formless echo of the transformative light at the edge of dusk, or even dawn, depending on one’s vantage point. With repeated layers, the hues of red, yellow and orange in his work create a stillness akin to the uninterrupted row of Parekh’s light punctuations of Chinese ink on rice paper. Her organic forms lend a certain delicacy to the brighter renditions by Singh and Khairnar.

MANISHA PAREKH Beads on Silk (set of 8), 2007 12 Gouache and chinese ink on rice paper pasted on mount board 6.3 x 8.4 in. (each)

The tenth floor reflects mythology, embedded histories and stories in contemporary contexts with a satirical mirror that Saha and Merchant bring to the fore. With watercolour, graphite and pencil colours, Noah’s Ark has been reimagined by Saha, moored on a waterless land. A cacophony of animals, plants, birds crisscross this saviourapocalyptic ship. The chaos of a modern-day manufacturing factory is replete with monikers of ‘development’ like long chimneys with billowing smoke and interconnected rooms with assembly lines. This language shifts its tone with Saha’s purple hued rivulets that partition an all-terrain landscape. Architectural milestones beckon one to look at the evolution of human innovation from transporting on rafts and boats, to free standing sculptures and composite buildings. This growth is realistically tempered with many types of agricultural harvest cycles and a dystopian farming implement creating more craters than growth. In a similar vein, the feathered humanoids of Merchant are literally carrying what they can, referring to multiple stories and realities of human migration connecting the globe in a web of movement. Some lie under water beds, some walk across mountains, some on boats across rivers. Some willing. Some forced.

SHRIMANTI SAHA The Ark Conspiracy, 2014

Mixed media on paper 40 x 62 in.

SHRIMANTI SAHA

Jambu Dwipa, 2014

Graphite, pencil colours, watercolour and casein collage on paper 44 x 61 in.

RITHIKA MERCHANT The Things They Carried (set of 3), 2016 15 Gouache and ink on paper 9.8 x 14.1 in. (each)

RITHIKA MERCHANT Shapeshifter, 2019 16 Gouache and ink on paper 29 x 23.5 in.

RITHIKA MERCHANT Shrine for the Forsaken, 2017 17 Gouache and ink on paper 25.5 x 19.6 in.

RITHIKA MERCHANT Something Akin to Absolution, 2017 18 Gouache and ink on paper 25.5 x 19.6 in.

The practices of Anandita Bhattacharya, Samish Ahuja, Waswo X. Waso and Parag Tandel, who respond to the pulsating flora and fauna around them, are tied in the eleventh floor. Bhattacharya’s large painting impresses upon the viewer as a conversation with the self. The black centre is surrounded by a cityscape/ waterscape rendered in gold hashia, where one sees crocodiles tussling with each other or devouring men as the waves thrash little boats asunder. A large part of the painting is the black centre, in which one sees oneself reflected, implicating the viewer as a participant.

The antiquarian collector in Bhattacharya speaks to Tandel’s documentation of fish, fisherfolk communities and their ecosystems. In his ink on archival paper series, he has superimposed the underwater with construction cranes, rigs, graphs, navigating ships and endangered and extinct marine life. A call to attention about the impact that expanding urbanisation has on the natural environment is only heightened by the tipping balance between human needs—and wants—showcased clearly in Waswo’s detailed colour lithographs. This tension is further commentated on by Ahuja’s tight germinating botanical forms. The power, presence and impact of nature and the environment is an indisputably important contemporary concern of our time, exemplified potently on this floor.

WASWO X. WASWO WITH SHANKAR KUMAWAT Untitled, July, 2019 (Moon and the Earth), 2019 24 Gouache on Wasli paper 9.4 x 13.7 in.

WASWO X. WASWO WITH R. VIJAY A Dream of Death (diptych), 2012 23 Gouache on Wasli paper 11.5 x 11.5 in. (each)

WASWO X. WASWO WITH R. VIJAY Tilt, 2019 25 AND SHANKAR KUMAWAT Colour lithograph on acid free Fabriano paper 22.8 x 18.5 in.

WASWO X. WASWO WITH R. VIJAY Encircled, 2019 26 AND SHANKAR KUMAWAT Colour lithograph on acid free Fabriano paper 22.8 x 18.5 in.

One of the themes that governs the decisions of individuals and groups across time is the yearning for home and the need to belong. This search of belongingness is witnessed on the twelfth floor across the practises of Sangita Maity, Soghra Khurasani, Treibor Mawlong and Sujith SN. They have transformed this ache for home into a timeless truth—resilience.

Maity meditates on the growth of iron ore mines in Odisha impacting the land and its tribal inhabitants. By including a linguistic imprint on the iron sheet, she is literally and metaphorically giving a voice to those directly impacted, but remain unrecorded, unheard. Right opposite lies the reminiscence of the forgotten landscape of a developing hometown, on similar small-scale iron sheets. In complete textural and representational contrast lie Khurasani’s patient woodcuts of

rolling pink and purple. She peels off multiple layers of the landscape with each precise gouge in the wood. Her gradation in a quiet landlocked terrain is contrasted with Sujith’s effervescent water colours of waiting ships, port side bridges and ever-lasting horizons tinged with bright little explosions. It highlights his discomfort with fast paced Mumbai, as he has lived the transformation that rapid urbanisation brought to the many South Indian cities that he grew up in. This resonates with Mawlong’s Khasi childhood in the hills of Meghalaya. Each of his woodcuts display a refreshing everyday mundane routine, with tell-tale signs of how urbane growth is not equally distributed throughout India. In seeking homes, and changing homes, this floor provides quiet contemplation to understand such transitions.

SOGHRA KHURASANI Skin and Skin IV, 2018

Woodcut print on paper 24 x 19.3 in. (each)

MAWLONG Woodcut Series (set of 9), 2015-2016

The collection display on the penultimate floors (fourteen and fifteen) reflect the curatorial theme by Poonji Nath: The Fold. The ‘Fold’ is interpreted as a fissure, a break, a pivot and a pause. Be it about moments in time, milestones in human progress or a line creating or deconstructing a form.

The lounge on the fourteenth floor presents the most concentrated conversation around the line—what it encloses to keep in and what it marks to keep out. Nostalgia is coded in the lines and folds of artworks in this room. Zarina brings in the formative beginnings of how spaces created with lines start becoming homes. This also begs the question of that in reverse; lines have also historically determined when homes are purely defined by cartographic lines and not by belongingness. This meditation on the concept of home has been a driving force of Zarina’s printmaking dominated practice, and here lie embedded memories of the homes she has associated with, showcased through skillfully etched lines and directional annotations in Urdu. Zarina’s thickness in line is contrasted by her other work whose saturation and form defines the walls that encase homes. The subtle, detailed and

minute indentations on clay paper by Ayesha Sultana inform a different vocabulary of the line, with density and tightness. This same line takes on a naturally occurring phenomenon like the interplay of light and shadow in Jong Oh’s small mixed media installation. The line also beckons the simplest elemental formation of a fold in Chetnaa’s paper and the resultant shadows from that, which invites one to sit, stand, change vantage point… and engage.

The fourteenth floor continues to unpack collective human history and its milestones, punctuated with historical, social, political, and personal conflicts. Contested geographies of changing urban landscapes and their struggles are represented with shifting perspectives in Sachin George Sebastian’s work. Another part of the Indian map, the Gujarat region, is highlighted by the deftly applied colors of Ghulammohammed Sheikh. An amalgamation of vibrant perspective play, the quiet solitude in an enclosed nestled space, the rapid movement of a rushed motorcycle and strong demands outside collapsing doors— leading one straight to the tensed conflicts endured (and still being endured) by these communities. In his other work, Sheikh uses

papier-mâché-laden textural topographical divisions that are accompanied with the hustle bustle of everyday transport, conversation and movement. Shedding light on such moments where ‘history’ has been lost is Atul Dodiya’s large scale oil painting, depicting the burning of the library of historic manuscripts in Timbuktu in 2013 through the crackling yellow sun-moon. This is a definitive reminder of intolerances suffered globally, in this case, Boko Haram’s regime, and closer home, to Gujarat’s tensed landscape in Sheikh’s practise.

Continuing in the vein of titular historical moments, Atul Dodiya’s tryst with Gandhi and Tagore continues with capturing the former on his evening walk and super imposing it with the latter’s characteristic scratchings and doodles. The primary colour palette here speaks to the many earthy-toned layers ‘unearthed’ by Kumaresan Selvaraj in his penchant to use paper waste to create sculptures. The timeline pushed further back historically with Rameshwar Broota’s large scale canvases using the earliest common ancestor—the Ape—as a protagonist playing out the political powers that subtly control societies in a

structured world, as well as the layered inner monologue creating havoc in one’s mind. This intense intrapersonal conflict is also reflected in Anju Dodiya’s clever mastery of tension and anxiety an artist faces staring at a blank canvas inside a studio. All of these are placed in rooms that engage with debate, discussion and negotiation, purposely calling attention to the difficulties of conducting businesses in capitalist societies and the nuanced corruption one may face. One will also find fissures in one’s mental landscape reflected in the un-spiralling thoughts from Anju Dodiya’s stoic protagonist—and in the same vein, the consistent politico-religious conflict in the Kashmiri landscape shifts from an ache, into lament, in Nilima Sheikh’s subtly powerful small scale pigment works. Similarly, Broota’s untitled humanoid forms, arrested from collapsing inwards as well as the representation of Christ—when religious fervour can overtake basic necessities—annotate the floor with a comprehensive mirror of all such ‘folds’; geographical-regional conflicts, birthing of nations, territorial identity-driven politics and the intrapersonal disturbances—historic and of the everyday.

Homes made / A life in nine lines, 1997

Chine colle on handmade Nepalese paper 13.5 x 12.5 in.

ZARINA Untitled (Wall), 1970 34 Relief print from collaged wood on Indian handmade paper 21.75 x 20.75 in.

AYESHA SULTANA Untitled (Scratched drawings), 2018 35 Scratched clay paper 8.5 x 11 in. (each)

Folding Drawing #10, 2019

Wood panel, paint, graphite and shadow 7.9 × 6.9 × 2.2 in.

Folding Drawing #14, 2019

Wood panel, paint, graphite, metal rod, chain and shadow 7.9 × 7.1 × 2.75 in.

Fold, Bend and Overlap, 2018

Paper on paper

SACHIN GEORGE SEBASTIAN Constructed Conversation, 2016 38

Digital print on canvas, mounted on dibond 92 in. (diameter)

GHULAMMOHAMMAD SHEIKH Land II, 2011

Papier-mâché relief mounted on ply board 33 x 48 in.

GHULAMMOHAMMAD SHEIKH Sursagar, 1987

Oil on canvas 42 x 48 in.

Oil, acrylic with marble dust, crackle paste and oil stick on canvas 90 x 66 in.

RAMESHWAR BROOTA Projection, 1975

Rust Stumble, 2014

Charcoal and soft pastel on paper

Red Ascent, 2014

Charcoal and soft pastel on paper 72 x 45 in.

Oil on canvas 56.6 x 36 in.

Leading to the 15th floor, the works bring out nuance in Fold with a dual toned, jewel-esque work by Rana Begum, and a convergence of lines by Idris Khan to name a couple, opening the many forms made with lines—their erasure and the gradation of their depth on this floor, like the more subtle works of Ayesha Sultana, Julien Segard, Parul Gupta and Vipeksha. The natural conversation between silver albumen and archival prints by Jyoti Bhatt, Ronny Sen and Sohrab Hura bring a teasing question about elusive horizons, which play well with the blow torched wooden waves by Jeram Patel and reflective print folds by Pratap Morey. A book-woven textile work by Renuka Rajiv, a rich movement on paper pulp by Somnath Hore, and an Anju Dodiya watercolour highlighting a troubling linguistic history translate similar pulsating energy into the collection’s bookshelves. Dedicated to textural diversity, metal, wood and ceramic forms by Himmat Shah, Martand Khosla, Kallol Datta, Savia Mahajan, Sanko Chaudhury, the room at the far end of this floor tempts the viewer in. The unique moniker bracketing all the floors on the staircases are the black and white photographs by Vir Kotak, and historical architectural exploits by William Dalrymple, both exploring patterns and materiality in nature.

No. 666, L Fold, 2016

Paint on mirror finish stainless steel

52.3 x 51.5 in.

Linen, cement, acrylic and chalk 70 x 94.5 in.

SULTANA Shift III, 2016

Graphite on folded archival paper mounted on aluminum dibond 36.4 x 24.7 in.

When the corner is in Centre – V, 2016

Archival print on paper mounted on aluminum dibond 15 x 20 in. (each)

Brick, dust and perspex 3.9 x 3.9 x 3.9 in. (each)

RONNY SEN Jharia-End of Time, 2014

Digital print on archival paper, Ed. 1/8

RONNY SEN Jharia-End of Time, 2014

Digital print on archival paper, Ed. 8+1 AP 9 x 6 in.

SAVIA MAHAJAN Lithified Lives (Resurgõ series) 5, 2019 69 Paper clay, wood ash, slips, iron oxide [Fe2O3] and found glass fired at 950°C and re-fired at 1220°C. Post-firing addition: epoxy 8.75 x 7.75 x 2 in.

SAVIA MAHAJAN Lithified Lives #4, 2014

Ceramic, manganese dioxide, iron oxide and cobalt-based slips 9.8 x 7.8 x 1.3 in.

PRABHAKAR BARWE Three Glasses, 1990

Pastel and watercolour on paper 7.3 x 10.6 in.

SAUBIYA CHASMAWALA Untitled, 2017

Ink, graphite, thread and needle on handmade paper made out of cotton 8.5 x 11 in.

PAUL BARRITT Ten Leisure Machines (2 from a series), 2012 74

Drawing on paper 11.75 x 8.25 in.

DODIYA The Blue Screen Demon, 2017

Acrylic and gouache on book pages 13.5 x 18.5 in.

ANJU DODIYA Apocalypse, 2017

Acrylic and gouache on book pages 13.5 x 9.25 in.

The Culture Keepers (suite of three, The Curator, 80 The Registrar, The Director), 2018

WASWO X. WASWO

Digital photographs hand-painted by Rajesh Soni and R. Vijay, gold border 16 x 16 in. (each) (Signed Edition of 3)

KHUSHBOO PANDIT PARAG TANDEL SAVIA MAHAJAN

VIR KOTAK The staircases running through the 15 floors of Number 8, Noida have been transformed into exhibition spaces where 99 multimedia works by Vir Kotak are displayed.

Since the exhibition opened, over the course of two years, Number 8, Noida hosted several events and programmes, inviting groups of people who were interested to see how a dynamic international collection opens itself up in an office space. Throughout 2019 and up until March 2020, gallerists, collectors, curators and friends from both domestic and international galleries and museums visited the building for curated walks and tours of the exhibition.

In 2019, curators associated with the Prameya Curators’ Hub, collectors, the team of India Art Fair as well as that of the leading international gallery from Berlin, neugerriemschneider, were invited to see the display. In the shorter duration of pre-pandemic 2020, friends from the art community, the teams of Art Basel Hong Kong and Tate, and the Belgian Art Patrons group, associated with the Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, visited India to experience for themselves how a young collection is built, that too with a museum

quality of display. For all these groups, The Eight Collection at Number 8, Noida became one of the best examples.

The importance of such events and curated tours for this evolving collection and agile exhibition has been paramount. The visitors are well-travelled to other international art fairs and art destinations. For some, like the team of patrons with Museum Dhondt-Dhaenens, this was their first trip to India after 13 years of extensive travelling. The private, curated tours became an opportunity for patrons, curators, collectors, afficionados and enthusiasts to intimately see the coming together of important names in contemporary Indian art. One could also observe how works by these artists formed dialectical relationships with those of their peers from across the world. The events highlighted the zeitgeist and synecdochic nature of The Eight Collection, becoming a melting pot of art from around the world, housed near the national-capital, which itself is a melting pot of people and cultures.

the eight collection

Number 8, 14th - 15th Floor

A 8, Sector 136, Noida

UP 201305, India

T: +91 120 2553100

E: info@theeightcollection.com

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A FOLD IN TIME

© 2019 theeightcollection

RESEARCH AND CO-ORDINATION

FAQ Art

(Poonji Nath, Keshav Mahendru, Navina Lamba)

ESSAYS

Vir Kotak

Shaleen Wadhwana

PHOTOGRAPHY OF ARTWORKS

Vicky Roy

CATALOGUE DESIGN

Reha Sodhi

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