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Email PageSheela Gowda 2006
September 14, 2006- October 28, 2006
Reception: September 14, 6:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Sheela Gowda
Bose Pacia Gallery
508 W 26th StBose Pacia presents recent works by Sheela Gowda from September 14th through October 28th. There will be an opening reception with the artist on Thursday, September 14th from 6 to 8 pm. Bose Pacia is located at 508 West 26th Street on the 11th Floor, in the Chelsea district of New York City. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday from 12 to 6 pm and by appointment.
Sheela Gowda’s work consciously blurs the line between fine art and craft, and between creative, political and domestic spaces as she questions the role of female subjectivity in the volatile mix of religion, nationalism and violence in contemporary Indian society. In her debut solo exhibition in New York, Gowda presents three installation pieces as well as two paintings. Gowda’s focus on process-based art is evident in her choice of materials as well as her handling of site-specific installations and manipulation of found space. Deceptively simple in appearance, her works are endowed with a richness and complexity of meaning.
‘Darkroom’ is an installation crafted out of tar drums collected from road building sites. The structure of this pseudo-house, which uses both unaltered and flattened tar drums, recalls an assortment of architectural forms ranging from the impressive colonnades of the Greco-Roman tradition to the barren simplicity of the migrant laborer’s seasonally built shack. One enters the structure by crouching through a doorway. Upon standing one finds the vast and empty darkness somewhat mitigated by a punctured ceiling which evokes a starry night sky. Through its contrast of ‘poor’ materials and monumental scale, Gowda’s pseudo-house comments on the vast inequity of Indian society. Her metal pipe and incense installations function in a similar manner using materials related to the local cottage industries of India, industries synonymous with the poverty of the masses, which in Gowda’s works are transformed and valorized.
Her two large watercolors entitled ‘2/11’ and ‘Agneepath’ further address her exploration of relationships between labor, disproportion and identity. The former, is an adaptation of a newspaper photograph depicting a scene of urban unrest as a lathi-armed policeman confronts a group of frenzied protestors. ‘Agneepath’, a still from an Amitabh Bachan film reveals a climactic moment; a wounded son returns to die on his mother’s lap after having avenged the humiliating death of his father. The frame is atypical and poignant as the expected sympathetic embrace of the Mother India figure is instead replaced by her averted gaze and reserved body language. Violence on the streets of India is commonplace, yet these scenes do not appear as spectacle to a desensitized public. Gowda is thus consistent in her aesthetic and compels her audience to engage in a more demanding reading.
Sheela Gowda was born in Bhadravati, India in 1957 and originally trained as a classical painter. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Bangalore University and later a Masters degree from the Royal College of Art, London. Gowda has had numerous solo exhibitions throughout India and has also participated in various group exhibitions. Her recent exhibitions include Play/Lila: Contemporary Miniatures and New Art from South Asia (Melbourne, 2006), Indian Summer: Contemporary Art from India at the Ecole des Beaux Arts (Paris, 2005), How Latitudes become Form at the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, 2003) and Traditions and Tensions, 27 South Asian Artists at both Asia Society and Queens Museum (New York, 1996). The artist currently lives and works in Bangalore, India.
Art Reviews of Sheela Gowda 2006
| New York Times October 20, 2006 | Holland Cotter | "...This dual effect of harshness and lyricism runs through the show. A spidery sculpture made from lead plumbing pipes looks merely ungainly until you catch the whisper of human voices emerging from it...." |
Books and DVDs related to artists in this show
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