Kiki Smith in conversation with Atul Dodiya and Gieve Patel

In association with Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai

December 16, 2006 | 6.30 pm
Little Theatre, National Centre for the Performing Arts, Mumbai

On the occasion of world-renowned artist Kiki Smith’s first exhibition in India, The Mohile Parikh Center for the Visual Arts and Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke have the pleasure to invite you to a slide presentation by the artist, as she converses about her work with Atul Dodiya and Gieve Patel.

KikI Smith (American, born Germany, 1954) is among the most significant artists of her generation. Known primarily as a sculptor, she has also devoted herself to printmaking, which she considers an equally vital part of her work and covers the genres of anatomy, self-portraiture, nature, and female iconography. In the catalogue for her solo exhibition in Mumbai, Robert Storr writes: “It is difficult to think of a contemporary artist who has proven herself more eager to experiment with differing media. All are in some degree traditional means – thus far Smith has eschewed contemporary “media” such as film, video, and digitalization, though she has used the latter for altering imagery prior to reproducing it in older print formats – and to the same degree the aura of her work emanates from the tension between the unexpectedness of what she shows us and the familiarity of the visual languages she uses”.

Atul Dodiya, born 1959, studied painting at the Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, which was followed by a year at L’Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris on a French Government scholarship. Beginning with figurative painting on canvas, Dodiya gradually added an array of material to his repertoire including marble dust, bazaar-bought laminate sheets, metal roller-shutters, public furniture, pelmets, cabinets, popular figurines and ‘showcase’ objects found in Indian middle-class homes, photographs, and much more. Explorative and experimental in material and medium, his paintings took on sculptural attributes and he has worked increasingly in the format of the installation. Dodiya creates inventive images that are metaphorically suggestive, “for purposes that by turns may be political or satirical or sentimental and personally poignant”.

Gieve Patel, born 1940, is one of India’s best-known painters and writers. His paintings are quiet depictions of urban and rural India in a painterly script that is uniquely his own, and which at the same time shows awareness of a range of art-historical possibilities. His themes can sometimes veer towards painful realities, like violent death, or crows feasting on road kill. There is a meditative quality even to these, leading the viewer to inner questioning. And latterly, he has been exploring the theme of ‘Looking into a Well’ in a series of resplendent images showing the opening and the dank sides of wells, with the surface of the water reflecting the exterior. He has published three books of verse while his collected plays are currently in press. He has worked extensively with school children, exploring painting and poetry with them.