Finding a new direction
Art Route is offering a platform to young artists to display their talent
By : dr seema bawa
Update: 2014-10-08 22:26 GMT
There seems to be quite a few shows of younger talent early in the season before the bigger artists take the floor. Pooja S. I from Chennai explores optical illusionist art through the many colourful fragments that make up her Intercepting Kaleidoscope. If the connoisseurs and collectors want to catch fledging talent from art colleges before it has been discovered by galleries, then the forthcoming India’s first students’ arts festival Prarambhat IGNCA, organised by the Art Route seems to be the place to do it.
Certainly the geographical expanse of the participating artists seems quite broad based as also the genres they represent. The interests of the younger generation, the kind of themes and techniques that attracts them is also quite evident here. Urban scapes and conceptual art with an emphasis on the subjective self and its relationship with the environs it inhabits seems to dominate the art practice.
This kind of show provides a platform to those for whom it would otherwise have been difficult to display their works. One such artist is Mohammad Hussain of Jamia Millia University, who like his namesake M. F Husain was a sign board painter till the age of twelve. He even sold corn on the streets along with his younger sister. Hussain now paints doves flying across the canvas in mixed media to express his new found longings and hopes.
Ujjwal Ankur, one of the organisers notes that, “Prarambh will be a platform for young students of visual arts to showcase their talent and receive real market exposure. It will provide them hands on practical experience and prepare them for their future career.”While it is very important for young painters and sculptors to gain experience through presentation of their works for critical scrutiny, whether they should be exposed to market forces before they have had time to explore their own creative self, develop some interest in a genre or style, experiment with medium and surface can be debated.