chintan upadhyay unlimited

MOCA Taipei. Taiwan

NATURE GOD

Chintan Upadhyay will open his first solo in Taipei at Sakshi Gallery Taipei on 5th June 2010. Chintan Upadhyay has developed a particular language over the years and is one of the few contemporary artists who has remained consistent with exploring a single language of art completely his own. Over the last few years Chintan has been depicting images of babies in his work. These babies are usually male and have Indian miniatures painted on them. They have very exaggerated features, however each one of them has a very emotive face. In a way the image of a futuristic looking baby with miniature paintings depicted on them speaks of societies of today where in we follow a mishmash of ideas and conventions part our own and part borrowed. In fact the boundaries between the two are blurring by the day, giving rise to issues of identity, mutation and culture. He has named these babies ‘Chintu’; rather they are the icons or symbols of the hybridized, mutated and genetically modified today. One cannot identify if Chintu is a toy or a custom made natural baby. Chintan has always used Chintu as his voice: be it female infanticide or Art Toxicism, Chintu has always been present; lending a life and a form to the concerns that Chintan wants to project. Chintan founded an artist’s initiative named Sandarbh in 2003. This initiative organises residency programmes and workshops in rural locations around the world. It encourages artists to work in context to their surrounding environments and people, thus has been able to act as a stimuli for many interesting new ideas. Chintan has actively participated in these workshops and has done projects that reflect and connect with the surrounding environment. Through his art, Chintan has been bridging the gap between time (rural-urban), culture (traditional and modern/global) homogeneity and ethnicity, natural and artificial, subjective and objective worlds.

Chintan Upadhyay in this new series attempts to understand and explore the relationship man has forged with nature. He has been looking at the different aspects of cultural hybridism through his works, however in this series he attempts to move beyond societies and look at a much broader perspective.

This is not the first time that Chintan would actively showcase these concerns through his studio practice, his first ‘baby’ painting was titled ‘nature god’, in the show Designer Babies. The works that will be part of nature god are a natural progression for Chintan who has consistently moved ahead with each new body of work. The small one-foot baby sculptures, titled Chintu Nature Gods, have very intricate nature scenes from miniatures painted on them. These works were produced in a very traditional Indian manner i.e. the Karkhanna system of working, usually followed by miniature painters. It is a system in which each person can lend his expertise towards making a superior work in the end. (A bit similar to large scale corporations of today). These babies are unique for their size, this is the first time Chintan has made a baby so small, and one can almost hide them. Apart from the sculptures the show also comprises of five large paintings.

Chintan is a multi dimensional artist who has discovered a way to deal with new media in painting and sculpture and gave a new life and perspective to so called traditional medium like painting and sculpture. This show is an insight into Chintan's inner world and his concerns to nature. The works live in their autonomy and narration been submerged. This new body of work has a clear indication of chintan's future engagement with traditional paintings.

For more information about the artist and the show please contact Sakshi Gallery. Mumbai, email: art@sakshigallery.com. www.sakshigallery.com