Press Release: A solo Exhibition by Gulammohammed Sheikh.

A solo exhibition by Gulammohammed Sheikh. It was his first in N. Delhi since 2001. This exhibition included a number of works that were exhibited for the first time in India, in addition to his recent works at the Rabindra Bhavan, 12-31 October 2011. 

This show featured his seminal piece Kaavad : Home, which was premiered at 'Chalo India: A New Era of Indian Art' at the Mori Museum, Tokyo, 2008. 

A kaavad or a mobile wooden shrine is a traditional object containing painted narratives which performers like the Kaavadiya Bhats of Rajasthan used as a prop for their storytelling. So as the storyteller narrated his story, he would open the doors of the Kaavad to reveal a new layer, building anticipation to the long-delayed moment of the sight of the inner core. To G. Sheikh this portable format not only offered the possibility of greater visibility but could retain within it narratives which could be combined in various permutations and combinations by the mere folding-unfolding of its doors...

This exhibition included a selection of his gouaches, oil canvases and papier-mache works along with other Kaavad shrines and hand-painted and digital books.

As Dr. Kavita Singh noted, “This exhibition is a culmination: bringing to their highest pitch and fullest amplitude many of the themes, motifs, modes and obsessions that have haunted the work of Gulammohammed Sheikh for the past thirty years… That the works in this show mark a particular high-point in Sheikh’s oeuvre, however, is first apparent in the ambitious, even monumental scale of many of the works on show. On a sustained viewing, slowly, they show themselves to be also at the point where the densities of meaning, the intensity of affect, and the weight of elegiac beauty find their most condensed and intense expression.”

Gulammohammed Sheikh (b. 1937) is an artist, educationist and writer whose work has spanned more than five decades. He is a founder-member of Group 1890, which was founded in 1963 by a group of artists. Through his work as an artist and educationist he emphasized the need for engagement with the historical narrative, and the importance in locating it within contemporary art, in order to build a critical discourse. As a pedagogue in MS University of Baroda, initially as a lecturer in Art History (1960-63, 1967-80) and then as a professor in the Painting department (1982-93), he instilled in his students the rigor of art historical research, a discipline which he holds as central to his own artistic practice. As a writer he has published several books and monographs on Indian art, other than editing the Vrishchik journal of arts and ideas with Bhupen Khakhar, and contributions to Gujarati literature in the form of prose and poetry. He has invested his knowledge further in the field by being part of several national committees and organizations in change of policy and institutional advocacy. It is under his curatorial authority that some of the most seminal exhibitions in the last three decades have been realized – this includes Benodebihari Mukherjee Retrospective (2006-7) cocurated with R.Siva Kumar, New Art from India: Home, Street, Shrine, Bazaar, Museum (2002), Birth and Life of Modernity (1989) co-curated with Geeta Kapur and Anis Farooqi, Retrospective Exhibition: KG Subramanyan (1981) among others. His solo exhibitions include Mappings (2004), Palimpsest (2001), Kahat Kabir (1998), Pathvipath (1991) and Returning Home at Centre George Pompidou (1985). He has participated in numerous group shows, including the seminal 1981 exhibition Place for People curated by Geeta Kapur; recent exhibitions such as Horn Please: Narratives in Contemporary Indian Art (2007), Edge of Desire (2004-06), Crossing Generations: diVERGE (2003).






*img courtsey: Persona PR