"Atul Dodiya - Bombay : Labyrinth / Laboratory "
2001-06-30 until 2001-08-04
Japan Foundation Asia Center
Tokyo, , JP Japan

The Japan Foundation Asia Center presents Atul Dodiya, one of the most prominent artists in contemporary India, for the second exhibition in the series of solo shows to introduce the artistic talents of the Asian region. This will be the premier show of Dodiya's works in Japan. Dodiya was born in Mumbai (Bombay) in 1959 and graduated from the Sir J.J. School of Art in 1982. He began to show his works in group exhibitions in the early 1980s, and held solo shows in different cities around India almost annually throughout the 1990s.

He is now highly acclaimed as one of the most important painters in India. Since the mid-1990s, he has moved on from painting to three dimensions through new experimental works. The rolling-shutter paintings of 2000 mark his change of mode to using “ready-mades”: taking everyday objects that can be found in the public space of a city, such as a collapsing gate, ladder, cart, movie billboard, bed with mosquito net, etc. These objects construct the images of Dodiya’s interest in the autobiographical narrative; the collective fantasies embodied in popular-cultural forms like the cinema; consumerist mandates of globalization purveyed by the signage of mass culture; and the distinctive pictorial vocabulary found in the persons of popular deities, saints, and national leaders.

Ranjit Hoskote, our guest curator for this exhibition, is one of the up-and-coming art critics from the younger generation. He is the art journalist at The Hindu, and is the contributing editor for the art magazine, Art of India. He is also actively involved in various projects as a free-lance art critic and curator. The upcoming exhibition at the Japan Foundation Forum will embody Dodiya’s artistic concept in the form of an installation that takes hints from the streets in Mumbai, a city undergoing rapid change under globalization and a city where the artist currently resides and works.

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