'City of Spectacle' was exhibited at Tamarind Art, New York, 14 December to 3 FebruaryVideo of 'City of Spectacle'
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'City of Spectacle' was exhibited at Tamarind Art, New York, 14 December to 3 February
'City of Spectacle' was exhibited at Tamarind Art, New York, 14 December to 3 February
CV 2022
Kausik Mukhopadhyay
12 Nov. 1960
Place Kolkata
Education:
1989 Master of Fine Art, First Class, Viswa Bharati University, Santiniketan, India.
1986 Bachelor of Visual Arts, First Class, Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta, India.
Fellowships:
2002 Charles Wallace, grant for residency at Gasworks, London, UK
1994-95 Fellowship for Artists Working In India, Inlaks Foundation.
1990-91 Fellowship at Kanoria Centre for Art, Ahmedabad.
Residency:
Khoj, Delhi, 2010
Tamarind Arts, New York, USA, 2007
Gasworks, London, UK, 2002
Kanoria Centre for Art., CEPT, Ahmedabad, 1990
One man shows
‘Squeeze Lime In your Eye,’ Chatterjee and Lal, 20 January to 25 February 2017, Mumbai
‘Guaranteed to work throughout its useful life,’ Pundole Art Gallery & The Guild Art Gallery 9th to 25th April 2009
"Day And Night Show Peace", Lakeeren, The Contemporary Art Gallery, Bombay, 2000
Selected exhibitions
Kochi-Muziris Biennale, Kochi, Kerala, 2018
Delirium/Equilibrium, Curated by Robina Karode, Kiran Nader Museum oF Art, New Delhi, 2018
Waste Land, Curated by Birgid Uccia, Tarq, Mumbai, 2018
Detritus / Matter out of Place, Curated by Vidya Shivadas, Serendipity, Goa, 2017
Shanghai Biennale, 2012
‘Continuum Transfunctioner’, Curated by Gitanjali Dang, 2010
‘Mechanisms of motion’, Curated by Marta Jakimowicz, Anant Gallery, 2008
‘Re-visioning Materiality’, Gallery Espace, New Delhi, 2008
‘Maps, Metaphors and Mythologies’ New York, 2007
“Making Unmaking Objects”, Vadehra, New Delhi, 2007
“Reverse depth”, Tamarind Arts, New York, 2006
‘We are like that only’ collaborative work with Mohua Ray, Vadehra Art Gallery, 2005
‘Edge of Desire’, Perth, Australia, 2004
‘Diverge’, NGMA, Mumbai, Curated by Geeta Kapur and Chaitanya Sambhrani, 2004
‘Glued’, Sumukha Art Gallery, Bangalore, 2002,
Stephen Lawrence Gallery, Greenwich University, London, 2002
“Art on the Move”, SAHMAT, New Delhi, 2001
“Century City – Art and Culture in the Metropolis” Tate Modern, London, 29th January 2001
Art for the Art District, Site Specific Work for the "Kalaghoda Artfest", Bombay, 2000.
"Kalaghoda A Meeting Place" Collaboration with Anirudh Paul, Architect, Chemould,
Bombay, 2000
9th Asian Biennale, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 1999
“Edge of the Century”, Curated By Amit Mukhopadhyay, New Delhi, 1999
"Icon of the Millennium" Lakeeren, The Contemporary Art Gallery, Bombay 1999.
Presence of the Past -A Response to the British Museum Exhibition “Enduring Image”-As
A Gift to India, On Its Celebration of 50 Years of Independence, NCPA, Bombay, 1998
‘Collaborative Space’, Collaborative Work with Tushar Joag, sponsored by Pundole Art Gallery, At Y B Chavan Centre, Bombay, 1997.
Gift for India, Sahmat, New Delhi and Bombay, 1997.
Young Contemporaries, Lakeeren, The Contemporary Art Gallery, Bombay, 1996.
100 Years of Cinema, Lakeeren, The Contemporary Art Gallery, Bombay 1996.
Joint Show with Tushar Joag And Jyoti Kolte, Gallerie ‘88, Calcutta, 1995.
Joint Show with Tushar Joag and Jyoti Kolte, Pundole Art Gallery, Bombay 1994.
Bibliography
‘Squeeze Lime In your Eye,’ documentary by Avijit Mukul Kishore and Rohan Shivkumar.
“Live Pulse,” Marta Jakimowicz, for the catalogue of ‘Mechanisms of motion’, Anant Gallery, February 2008
“Abstract Realities”, Pia Brancaccio, for the catalogue of ‘Maps, Metaphors and Mythologies’ New York, 14th December 2007
“Edge Of Desire” Chaitanya Sambrani, Perth, 2005
“Century City – Art and Culture in the Metropolis”, Geeta Kapur, Tate Modern, London, 29th January 2001
Twentieth-century Indian sculpture, edited by Shivaji Panikkar, Marg Publications, 2000
“In the Rag and Bone Shop of the Hart” Geeta Kapur, Art India, Volume 5, Issue 4, Quarter 4, 2000
“Day and Night Show Peace” Shubhalakhsmi Shukla, Exhibition Catalogue, Lakeeren, 2000
‘Presence of the Past’, Tasneem Metha, Catalogue, 1998
Of Tradition And Contemporaneity, Ranjit Hoskote, Art India Vol. 3, Issue 2, 1998
Art Speak, Kausik Mukhopadhyay, Art India, Vol. 3, Issue 2, 1998
‘Collaborative Space’ Art India, Anupa Mehta, Vol.3, Issue 1, 1998
‘Trends in The ‘90, West Bengal’, Pranabrajan Roy, Catalogue, 1997
kalaghoda project
This started as a proposal to public space sculpture and ended as a web-blog, an 'adda', a place to meet, not having any particular agenda but having a rather gray and oscillating boundary.
City of Spectacle 2006
This video of 'City of Spectacle' is taken by Vinita Gatne, a student of KRVIA, when the work was still incomplete. 'The cities' were kept at a lower height and the electric connection being tried out. Other people in the video, are Prachi Patel, Vinod Sewlani, Sujata Chitlangia, all student of KRVIA and were helping me with the work. The older person in the video is me.
Other students, Tapan Maharishi, Arjunan Sanjayan and Anshu Tibrewala not in this video, also worked on the project.
The name, ‘City of Spectacle ’, is borrowed from Guy Debord’s book ‘The Society of the Spectacle’.
Placed on top of three stands, with ladders, each eight feet high, the ‘cities’, each two feet by two feet, are like models used for Architectural Design studio in our college, where the whole city shrinks to the size of a toy. Each building in the ‘city’ is made from digitally render images used to advertise real estate in Mumbai newspaper supplement. Within this arrangement of buildings, made from wooden blocks with printed images pasted on them, are electrical devices and lights, animating the ‘city’.
The ‘city’ can be reached by climbing up the ladder. Each ‘city’ has a glass basin in the center filled with water. From below, the ‘cities’ look sleek and glossy. Once up on top of the ladder the ‘cities’ reveal the exposed wooden blocks and electrical devices.
Mumbai is going through a frenzied state of urban development. The exclusive areas with its malls and housing societies, highly protected and polished, stands a little away from the rest of the city. This thickly populated city can have these development only by pushing away the less privileged others out.
The city looses its gloss when looked from a closer quarter It revels wooden blocks with pasted paper and mechanical devices.
Other students, Tapan Maharishi, Arjunan Sanjayan and Anshu Tibrewala not in this video, also worked on the project.
The name, ‘City of Spectacle ’, is borrowed from Guy Debord’s book ‘The Society of the Spectacle’.
Placed on top of three stands, with ladders, each eight feet high, the ‘cities’, each two feet by two feet, are like models used for Architectural Design studio in our college, where the whole city shrinks to the size of a toy. Each building in the ‘city’ is made from digitally render images used to advertise real estate in Mumbai newspaper supplement. Within this arrangement of buildings, made from wooden blocks with printed images pasted on them, are electrical devices and lights, animating the ‘city’.
The ‘city’ can be reached by climbing up the ladder. Each ‘city’ has a glass basin in the center filled with water. From below, the ‘cities’ look sleek and glossy. Once up on top of the ladder the ‘cities’ reveal the exposed wooden blocks and electrical devices.
Mumbai is going through a frenzied state of urban development. The exclusive areas with its malls and housing societies, highly protected and polished, stands a little away from the rest of the city. This thickly populated city can have these development only by pushing away the less privileged others out.
The city looses its gloss when looked from a closer quarter It revels wooden blocks with pasted paper and mechanical devices.
Balwan 2006
Two plastic G.I. Joes float in a blue tub and set in motion by a underwater pump. It has music with it, composed out of fragments from a computer game called "Rise of The Nation ". The movement of the toy soldiers keeps changing from one chasing the other to one trying to climb up the others back. Though the music is not synchronized our perception unites them and we look at it as choreographed motion.
Toofun Mail 2002-2003
Toofun Mail
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Discarded household objects, electric motor, lights, metal fabrications and paint. Contrary to its name it moves very slowly. The train, started from the fascination with the small roadside workshops� adaptability to use simplest machines to achieve complicate results. The train is made of assemblage of various pots and pans and have an electric motor. It moves on a circular track and switches on and off other activities. The train itself has parts that are motorised and move making a steady rhythmic beat. Train is the first colonial machine to come to India apart from printing press. It has a spell of power. To make it with a know-how which does not need an expert and making it small, almost like a toy, kind of neutralise it.
click on the text
Discarded household objects, electric motor, lights, metal fabrications and paint. Contrary to its name it moves very slowly. The train, started from the fascination with the small roadside workshops� adaptability to use simplest machines to achieve complicate results. The train is made of assemblage of various pots and pans and have an electric motor. It moves on a circular track and switches on and off other activities. The train itself has parts that are motorised and move making a steady rhythmic beat. Train is the first colonial machine to come to India apart from printing press. It has a spell of power. To make it with a know-how which does not need an expert and making it small, almost like a toy, kind of neutralise it.
Size: about 12x12x9 feet.
Assisted Readymades : chairs 2000-01
These are definitely not my earliest work.
These works I think are resent enough and also important as a shift from my earlier years. These objects claim a use value and stand at the threshold of becoming something else than art.
These chairs were supposed to sat on during the display which unfortunately did not happen.
Chairs were an assemblage of other mass produced chairs that are commonly used in all institutions. Every year a whole lot of these chairs, damaged, are thrown away, in the college where I work. I collected them and started repairing them. My ideal was the chairs or seating arrangements used by the watchmen of the multistoried buildings or the street side tea stalls. The randomness of the choice of objects that come together and the bare minimum of its structure that serves the purpose interested me. But the marks of repair stays back and needed other objects to cover it. So the chairs evolved as I repaired the chairs and tried to hide the mark of repair.
old works
Once started, it is difficult to hold back.
There is a pleasure in time travelling. I will put up some of my old works. As there is nothing much happening just now, I think I will indulge in this narcissist activity or should I call it a research?
There is a pleasure in time travelling. I will put up some of my old works. As there is nothing much happening just now, I think I will indulge in this narcissist activity or should I call it a research?
idea
Earlier I use to post slides but the time changed and I started emailing images. Why not put them up in a blog ?
Keep adding stuff as I work -- in this way the images would not be just of the finished work.
Keep adding stuff as I work -- in this way the images would not be just of the finished work.
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