Haunted House
05/09/2010 · Grant Davis
The haunted house/cool house, the home of famous magician O.P. Sharma.
Bhoot Banglow
Barra-2, Kanpur-208027 (U.P.)
Anish Kapoor
01/08/2010 · Alexander Keefe
Confession: I’ve walked by Anish Kapoor’s Chicago “bean” (ok, ok: Cloud Gate) one too many times, and if familiarity has not, in this case, bred any real contempt, it has bred something akin to disinterest. It is an expensive-looking, starchitectural funhouse mirror cloaked with the same solemn air of profundity that the art directors of BMW web-ads achieve with a far greater economy of means, and far less self-importance. In a sense, it is perfectly emblematic of the corporatized busy funness and funny business of the Millenium Park vibe in general, and of the AT&T Plaza in particular, where the orecchiette-shaped behemoth sits demanding attention, looking a bit like a random freeze frame snatched from a sci-fi film: the part where a giant malevolent metallic demonoid robot shape-shifts into a fast-moving blob of all-devouring, extraterrestrial mercury.
Stilled in the midst of this collosal machinic alchemy, however, it evokes neither awe nor terror. A far better aesthetic journey can be had perusing the many amateur youtube videos featuring the object in question. And maybe, in the end, this simple technique could stand as a useful measure of the efficacy of any art object these days—and provide a telling spectrogram of its aura: ask yourself which is more interesting, the work itself or the youtube videos made of it by tourists goofing around? The Cloud Gate as it were, or the beloved “Bean”? Either way, it is most accurately categorized as an art-ertainment mega-bauble, one short step away from the Wynn Las Vegas. Watch out, Chicago: the Great Whore of our contemporary and cosmopolitan (remember, this is Anish Kapoor we are talking about!) Babylon has lost an earring on the way back to her suite, stoned and speeding, after a long and weird night at the Cirque de Soleil afterparty.
Anish Kapoor, Cloud Gate (2004)
Anish Kapoor has made a career out of this sort of midbrow accessibility, engaging and cleverly surprising, producing gentle aha-moments and a sense of having thought something big and ennobling. This American Life, Wes Anderson, The English Patient and Malcolm Gladwell are all staring at me right now saying: “what the hell’s your problem?”
My strong feelings on the matter notwithstanding, when I was in New York last month I stopped by the Guggenheim to see his Memory. It is a corseted and ruddy corten-steel zeppelin, somewhat deflated looking although still plenty bulging and tumescent, belted and bolted and stuffed into a room seemingly too small to contain its swelling immensity. And that right there tells you that Anish Kapoor’s preferred brand of heavy-handed populism is about to nail you with a David Copperfield-style ship-in-a-bottle effect. Don’t fall for it. It’s the sort of thing that appears to have worked some magic over cosmopolitan sensibilities in this decaying late-capitalist moment of ours but the imagineer’s spell, after all, isn’t that powerful. There is a whiff of Andrew Carnegie’s megalomania about Kapoor’s work, an atavistic steel-baron gesturalism that imparts an old-fashioned appeal (this one is patinated with powdery-looking rust, an au courant steampunkish touch), and there is the inescapable stench of rampant Jindalism as well, the icy and soulless stainless-steel rot of maximalized modernist minitude.
Anish Kapoor, Memory (2008)
Memory wants so badly to be interpreted that it practically coerces it out of you. Jammed in to its undersized quarters, and forcing curious visitors to navigate uncertainly through the early-period Kandinskys and lavatory waiting-areas of the Guggenheim to take it all in, it is all about Memory, which also grows really big as time goes on, and also takes on a kind of slippery steel skin. The seams are visible, but they are tight. Nothing could escape from there… or could it? If you could open a window into it—but you can!—you would see a black square of absolute darkness—but I think I see a little light in there!—an unenterable black hole of memory and time past. I’m feeling like memory is empty and yet it is full. It is the past, but it is also endlessly protean and capable of creative change and refashioning! That black square sometimes looks flat and two-dimensional, like a painting, and sometimes looks three-dimensional, like a cosmic door. (I am at heart your guide on otherworldly journeys in time and space, says Kapoor with this, really working as a painter, but doing so surreptitiously by actually working as a sculptor). Much as in the David Bromberg joke about the original leather-bound edition of Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet with all the significant passages underlined, here too every stinking word is underlined.
But you know I actually enjoyed myself standing there digging the op-art special effects emanating from this dead-black yolk of a hundred-year egg, this unplayable ocarina of the titans. It was much better than Cats, which is also about memories. I felt a yawning sort of gravity in front of that window-door, a dicey pull into the enclosed and yet bottomless black. It even felt safely dangerous for a moment. That and the fact that it doesn’t feature dildos (Chelsea’s galleries right now, wow, dildo-central)… it may be just enough. But if challenging and dark post-Minimalist beauty is what you’re after, go upstairs and see what Kitty Kraus did with a light bulb full of black paint and two panes of glass. Mr. Kapoor, if you insist on plying me with quasi-mystical promises, then offer me hard, maddening wine, not some sweet watery spritzer!
Abdul Ghani Khan – Pashto Artist/Poet
11/28/2009 · Mansi Shah
Translation of When Man Sits Down In Dust:
Manhood stands tall and high, and becomes madness;
The self takes leave of being and becomes ecstasy.
When iron sated with blood embraces love,
It turns into a bewildered sitar string.
When time robs man of love and the loved one,
He sees the beloved’s glory and his own.
How man sprouts when he sits down in dust!
A manjila resting on riches becomes a serpent.
Don’t shower houris and gilman over me. Enough!
God, I swear, I’m not concerned with anyone save you;
Abdul Ghani Khan and his wife, Roshan
Where today, I walk oblivious and proud,
God knows, to this garden, who will be the heir.
I am a Pukthun and am not afraid of death;
I am angered at an empty life and a desolate end.
The river of doubt runs deep through my heart,
Wondering when the brilliant waterfall of hope will flow.
My heart gazes at your indifferent eye and so,
At times the great string breaks into tears.
Is music lament or rapture — I cannot decide;
Every tone now moves us, now becomes shrill.
Khan's sculptures
The self takes leave of being and becomes ecstasy.
When iron sated with blood embraces love,
It turns into a bewildered sitar string.
When time robs man of love and the loved one,
He sees the beloved’s glory and his own.
How man sprouts when he sits down in dust!
A manjila resting on riches becomes a serpent.
Don’t shower houris and gilman over me. Enough!
God, I swear, I’m not concerned with anyone save you;
Princess Durru Shehvar, Khan’s drawing of the Princess
Where today, I walk oblivious and proud,
God knows, to this garden, who will be the heir.
I am a Pukthun and am not afraid of death;
I am angered at an empty life and a desolate end.
The river of doubt runs deep through my heart,
Wondering when the brilliant waterfall of hope will flow.
My heart gazes at your indifferent eye and so,
At times the great string breaks into tears.
Is music lament or rapture — I cannot decide;
Every tone now moves us, now becomes shrill.
_____________________________________________
Read about Khan here/here and the Pashto language here.
Ghani Khan’s poems sung by Sardar Ali Takkar:
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Trust the medium, control the message
07/03/2009 · Mansi Shah
Galerie Christian Hosp presents Settlement, the first European solo exhibition of Gigi Scaria, which assembles his sculptural and photographic work. Scaria, an emerging New Delhi-based artist, is a cartographer of human habitats, his mundane urban objects that constitute our everyday environments are vital to understanding his artistic concerns. They occupy a central role in his sculptures and photographs, which through local specifities are able to transcend the local incidents of his Delhi residence.
GIGI SCARIA, SETTLEMENT
The exhibition curated by Jamila Adeli consists of nine large-scale photographs and Scaria’s latest monumental sculpture “Settlement”. A same titled catalog was published on the occasion of the exhibition. Currently showing. May 2nd — July 11th, 2009
Settlement, 2009
Photograph, digital print on archival paper
43 x 64.5 inches / 109 x 164 cm
Highlight, 2008
Photograph, digital print on archival paper
43 x 64.5 inches / 109 x 164 cm
Someone left a horse on the shore, 2007
Photograph, digital print on archival paper
43 x 64.5 inches / 109 x 164 cm
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Galerie Christian Hosp
Halle Am Wasser
Invaliden Straße 50-51
D-10557, Berlin
Anita Dube
03/25/2009 · Mansi Shah
Inside Out, 2007
Dystopia’s Spillage, 2006
Silver Gelatin Prints
Space Is The Place
03/11/2009 · Neil Doshi
Cloud Gate, 2004
Sky Mirror, 2001
Untitled, 1995
White Sand Red Millet Many Flowers, 1982
“I’m thinking about the mythical wonders of the world, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Tower of Babel. It’s as if the collective will comes up with something that has resonance on an individual level and so becomes mythic. I can claim to take that as a model for a way of thinking. Art can do it, and I’m going to have a damn good go. I want to occupy the territory, but the territory is an idea and a way of thinking as much as a context that generates objects.”