Freddy Birdy
04/11/2009 · Mansi Shah
SMS Shakespeare, 2009
Oil on Canvas
47″ x 47″
Chain painting , 2008
Oil on Canvas
84″ x 60″
“Highly idiosyncratic within the context of contemporary Indian art, [Freddy] Birdy’s works participate in a long history of language-based paintings and art works that characterize Western Modernism: from the word/image puzzles of the Surrealist Rene Magritte, the studies of meaning by American Conceptualist Joseph Kosuth, the Pop Icons of Los Angeles painter Ed Ruscha, to the linguistic experiments of Feminist artists such as Barbara Kruger and Jenny Holzer. Yet Mr. Birdy does not recreate an academic’s dry rhetoric. Rather, his works are humorous and highly entertaining, self-deprecating and tongue-in-cheek, placing him in the context of his own generation of artists such as Richard Prince, Maurizio Cattelan and Martin Kippenberger, who poke fun at the conventions of art so as to take it forward. Mr. Birdy posits painting as a type of stand-up comedy.” – Nature Morte