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Anandajit Ray
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Born in Kolkata in 1965, Anandajit Ray completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts at M. S. University, Baroda, in 1989 and 1991 respectively.
Ray works in controlled formats which recall genres as diverse as the miniature and the comic strip. This creates a hybrid which is laborious in rendering but irreverent in content, drawing as it does on areas of adolescence which create avenues...
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Born in Kolkata in 1965, Anandajit Ray completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts at M. S. University, Baroda, in 1989 and 1991 respectively.
Ray works in controlled formats which recall genres as diverse as the miniature and the comic strip. This creates a hybrid which is laborious in rendering but irreverent in content, drawing as it does on areas of adolescence which create avenues of escape from a potentially dreary reality, and whose desires are projected and materialized through the popular media. The underlying narrative, continuous or splintered as the case may be, defies a literal readability in spite of the very specific images which constitute it, relying instead on a visual logic where an image is what it is rather than what it could stand for. It represents a unity which is connective rather than whole.
The artist's diverse oeuvre, including miniaturist works in gouache, cut up paintings rearranged as visual puzzles, and large sculptural installations, is animated by a sense of the surreal. There is the simultaneous exploration of the mundane and the phantasmal, the ridiculous and the horrific. The seduction and intimacy offered by these works, far from being repellent, actually invite acquisition by providing a perfect frame for private fantasy. Ray calls himself a ‘surface painter’, subscribing to an enjoyment which does not presume to judge. Incidents of illogical violence scattered over the surface of a painting therefore metamorphose into decorative detailing, finding complete acceptance in our minds.
Ray’s works have been exhibited in solo shows at Gallery Espace, New Delhi, in 2007 and 2003; Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, in 2004, 2000, 1998, 1994 and 1993; Nazar Art Gallery, Baroda, in 1999; and Eicher Gallery, New Delhi, in 1995. His works have also been part of many group exhibitions including ones at the Gallery in Cork Street, London, in 2007; ArtsIndia, New York, in 2005; Gallerie 88, Kolkata, in 2003; Manchester Art Gallery, London, in 2002; and Kunsthalle Wein, Vienna, in 2002. In 1995, Ray was invited to participate in the Bangladesh Biennale. In 1999, he received the Sanskriti Award from the Sanskriti Foundation in New Delhi, and in 1991 he was honoured with an Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation grant. The artist lives and works in Baroda.
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Born
1965
Kolkatta
Education
1991 Master of Fine Arts (Painting), Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda
1989 Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting), Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda
Exhibitions
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2017 'Ocular Detritus', Pundole Art...
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2017 'Ocular Detritus', Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai
2011 'Tight Underwear', Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai
2009 'Inflate', Aicon Gallery, New York
2007 ‘I Fear, I Believe, I Desire’, Gallery Espace, New Delhi
2004 ‘For The Future XI’, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai
2003 ‘Fractured’, Gallery Espace, New Delhi
2000 Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai
1999 ‘S.M.T.W.T.F.S’, Nazar Art Gallery, Vadodara
1998 ‘Syrup’, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai
1995 Eicher Gallery, New Delhi
1994 Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai
1993 Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai
Selected Group Shows
2012 'Works on Paper- 2012', Gallery Espace, New Delhi
2011 'Natural Bodies, Subverted Canons', Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi
2010-11 'A Collection', Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai
2010 'Indian (Sub)Way', Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi; Grosvenor Vadehra, London
2010 '1.2.3.4.5...In the Line of Fire', Lemongrasshopper, Ahmedabad
2009 'Vicissitudes of the Constructed Image', Tangerine Art Space, Bangalore
2009 'Bapu', Saffronart, Mumbai
2008 'Anxious', Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai
2007 ‘Telling It Like It Is: The Indian Story’, The Gallery in Cork Street, London
2005 ‘KAAM’, ArtsIndia, New York
2003 Gallerie ’88, Kolkata
2002 ‘New Indian Art : Home-Street-Shrine-Bazaar-Museum’, Manchester Art Gallery, London
2002 ‘Kapital and Karma’, Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna
2001 ‘In Conversation’, Gallery Espace, New Delhi
1997 ‘Private Languages’, Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai
Joint Exhibitions
2006 With Dilip Ranade, Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai
2001 With Debnath Basu, Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai
Participations
2014 'Ode to Monumental: Celebration, Visuality, Ideology', presented by Saffronart at Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi and Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai
2012 'Art for Humanity', Coomaraswamy Hall, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya, Mumbai
2012 ‘To Let the World In: Narrative and Beyond in Contemporary Indian Art’, as part of Art Chennai, Edition II at Lalit Kala Regional Centre, Chennai
2010 'Art Celebrates 2010', represented by Gallery Espace at Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi to coincide with the hosting of the Commonwealth Games
2010 'ARCO 2010 Madrid', presented by Aicon Gallery, London
2009 'Lo Real Maravilloso: Marvelous Reality', 20 Years Celebration of Gallery Espace at Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
2009 'Expressions at Tihar', Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, New Delhi
2009 'ARCOmadrid', Spain represented by Gallery Espace, New Delhi
2008 'Artparis 2008', AbuDhabi presented by Pundole Art Gallery, Mumbai
Honours and Awards
1999 Sanskriti Award, Government of India
1991 Greenshields Study Grant
1999 Sanskriti Award, Government of India
1991 Greenshields Study Grant
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Q. How would you interpret an image?
I would like to think of image as image, without trying to put it into any perspective. I try to look at my work at that level rather than at the artistic level. I consider myself very much a surface painter, but being in Baroda everything turns out to be very heavy by the end of it or it ends up with some weight on it, which is not the intention - which is where I fail most...
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Q. How would you interpret an image?
I would like to think of image as image, without trying to put it into any perspective. I try to look at my work at that level rather than at the artistic level. I consider myself very much a surface painter, but being in Baroda everything turns out to be very heavy by the end of it or it ends up with some weight on it, which is not the intention - which is where I fail most often.
Q. Is it ahistoricity that you are looking for?
That sort of lightness, yes.
Q. There was something that you had previously said about adolescence which seems very pertinent.
I think there is an area of my own personal adolescence which I would like to be able to still paint. Looking at one's own mindset at some level in a way where you where you cut out everything else - it's terribly hedonistic, but trying to deal with that hedonism and working towards it, just hedonism and nothing else - I have mentioned it before to people but more to myself that I would like to be able to draw and paint anything - that's it - just the physical act of drawing and painting anything.
Q. Is there a standpoint that you take in relation to the questionable things which happen in your paintings?
To take a stand - somehow it doesn't hold. You shift yourself to a different reality and it forms all these leaks. That's also one reason why one deals in pop imagery - something which is lighter, 'surfacial', very immediate.
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