Young Collectors’ Pop-Up Exhibition “The Evolution of Now” Showcases Diverse Perspectives on Contemporary Art

Date: 11th January to 14th January 2024
Venue: Kathiwada City House, Worli Mumbai.

MUMBAI: Teesta Bhandare, the Associate Director of Art Mumbai, has established the “Evolution of Now” pop-up exhibition for young collectors, which features eight emerging artists from across India. The exhibition, which takes place from January 11th to 14th, 2024, at Kathiwada City House in Mumbai, showcases diverse perspectives on contemporary art and incorporates technology and blockchain to establish a clear chain of provenance for each artwork.

The exhibition, curated by Teesta Bhandare and presented by Art Garde, provides a holistic avenue for art appreciation and meaningful dialogue through exhibitions, workshops, masterclasses, and panel discussions. The exhibition features a group of artists whose practices vary in style, medium, and genre, and who are currently in the process of self-exploration and evolution.

Through the utilization of blockchain technology, the exhibition establishes a clear chain of provenance for each artwork, linking the origin of each work directly to the artists themselves. This proof of origin is preserved on Art Garde’s proprietary technology, ensuring the authenticity and provenance of each artwork.

In addition to the exhibition, a panel discussion led by Anish Gawande will take place on January 13th, 2024, featuring diverse perspectives from esteemed panelists Tina Tahiliani Parikh, Sangita Kathiwada, and Kamal Malik. The discussion, titled “Art Beyond the Canvas,” seeks to redefine the boundaries of art and inspire a broader understanding of its significance in different industries.

Teesta Bhandare, the curator of the exhibition, is also the founder of Art Garde, a forward-facing platform that seeks to promote, protect, and increase engagement with the larger art ecosystem. Art Garde serves a two-fold commitment to art through the promotion of cultural engagement and the preservation of provenance tracing by creating a patented tagging technology.

Each artwork exhibited in the “Evolution of Now” show will have a corresponding digital twin that contains information regarding provenance and authenticity. The exhibition provides a unique opportunity for young collectors to engage with emerging artists and gain a deeper understanding of contemporary art.

List of Participating Artists : 

1. Purvai Rai 

Purvai is a graphic designer, textile designer, and multimedia artist. Her delicate graphite and ink drawings on rice paper are a reflection on current upheavals in society and politics, specifically discriminations based on religion and cultural identity, and expressions of dissent. Distilled into an abstract visual language consisting of circles and elliptical patterns, however, they allow Purvai to allude and (re-)present without contentiousness, and to speculate and hint at the precariousness of existences on the margins.

2. Ritu Aggarwal 

Ritu is a contemporary artist whose practice is associated with geometric abstraction, abstract illusionism, and hard-edged painting. A resident of New Delhi, one of the most densely populated urban centers in the world, her practice has always revolved around the idea of urbanization. Through her work, she questions interpretations and interactions with the spaces that surround her and uses two-dimensional picture planes and colors to express certain moods or thoughts.

“My work shows my love for architectural forms, painted, elevated, embedded, and layered on a colorful grid.” – Ritu Aggarwal

3. Kaushik Saha 

Growing up in Kolkata in a middle-class family in the tumultuous 90s and the first decade of the new millennium offered Kaushik a ringside view of how hollowed-out slogans of social piety that promised an egalitarian society turned into the bizarre and the ridiculous in my home state of West Bengal.

Landscape has always been a major presence in Kaushik’s work. A barren, undulating, chumming landscape painted in a quasi-romantic expressionistic flourish remained the mainstay of his imagery for quite some time. The landscapes have no vegetation but are pock-marked with that ubiquitous marker of a consumer society, the advertising billboards or the hoardings

4. Meera George 

Meera’s practice is heavily inspired by ongoing and alarming climate change.

She says, “Stoney white carcass, once bursting with color and life, resigns to a memory that once was. My recent mixed media artworks focus on the effects of climate change on the rising temperatures of seawater and its impact on the delicate coral life and biodiversity. Coral bleaching happens when the sea water is too warm. It forces the corals to expel the algae living in their tissues causing them to turn completely white. Some corals during the process of bleaching, change color as a last-ditch effort to survive. The dying corals gain more pigment and glow in shades of neon. Researchers believe it encourages algae to return. This phenomenon is a chilling, beautiful, and heartbreaking final cry for help as the coral attempts to grab our attention. My latest series is an attempt to bring your attention to this occurrence in the depths of our oceans. The works were created in mixed media. acrylic offers scope for exploration through color, texture, and illusion.”

5. Dheeraj Yadav 

Dheeraj believes that lines serve as the perfect medium for expressing creative vision. “It is within these lines that a world of endless possibilities opens, inspiring me to create novels that reflect my artistic practice.”

Through his drawings and mixed medium works, Dheeraj experiments with storytelling through lines and paper in all their forms.

6. Akshata Mokshi 

Akshata’s passion for painting landscapes and observational drawings around nature found expression in tapestry weaving, which she refers to as “painting by yarn”.

As a student of fine arts at the J.J. School of Arts, Mumbai, Akshata was initially introduced to weaving tapestries. Since then she has showcased her works with considerable praise in India and abroad.

7. Pavan Kavitkar 

Pavan’s practice is heavily influenced by the everyday objects that he collects. Each object, and by extension each work is a representation of some memory or emotion that he associates with the object. His experiences with migration also explain his connection with objects.

“Shifting my space mental as well as physical; my oeuvre evolves with the understanding of these spaces.”- Pavan Kavitkar

8. Sheena Bajaria 

Sheena’s efforts to capture spontaneous creation are much like the ongoing evolution of our world. She compares the strokes of her brushstrokes with how generations shape our journey as individuals and for humankind at large, weaving stories that unfold with surprises and revelations.

Through her abstract creations and powerful brushstrokes, the energy of each work is almost palpable to the viewer and invites the audience to get lost in the strokes and the intentional and unintentional shapes formed by them.