Nataraj Sharma, 'Air Show', 2006, Medium: Stainless Steel, mixed media, Dimensions: ca. 800 cm x 500 cm x 500 cm (variable) / © Foto: Berthold Stadler, courtesy BodhiBerlin
Annegret Beck for ceative face Magazine
BodhiBerlin, one of the worldwide galleries for contemporary Indian art opened its new exhibition space in Berlin in May 2008. For abc art berlin contemporary, BodhiBerlin presents two large-scale installations of two contemporary Indian artists, who live and work in India. Their works reflect the concerns of both individuals and society as a whole, and the questions they raise involve both the international arts community and various spectrums of India's public, and they create bridges of meaning between global and local. Nataraj Sharma has reconstructed his large-scale installation Air Show in stainless steel, which he had also showcased at the 51st Venice Biennale in 2005. The artist N.S. Harsha shows a floor-based installation, Untitled (2007), which is a series of 240 watercolours showing sleeping figures.
Based in the city of Baroda in the western state of Gujarat, Nataraj Sharma is ranked one of India's most prominent and creative artists with numerous solo exhibitions and the Sotheby's award to his credit. As a multi-faceted artist, his works, paintings, sculptures and installations represent part of the vital and engaging art practices to be found in India today. He continuously explores the relationship between urbanization, landscapes and the human presence at the interstices of modernity, bringing rigor and commitment into practice. He is inspired by the harsh political, geographical, economical and historical realities around him.
Born in 1958 in Mysore, India, he spent his childhood in three different countries, Ethiopia, Zambia and Britain. It might be possible that the experience he gained in these culturally contrasting countries and continents, especially his years in England in the late sixties and early seventies marked by characters such as Enoch Powell and the Beatles, as well as witnessing the cold war gave him a sense of ambivalence. Nataraj Sharma's works are reflecting a world of plurality and sometimes shocking variability where crisis and serenity are standing side by side. There is a constant interplay of contrasts in his artwork, characterized by terms such as beauty and violence, play and aggression for instance, which are inherent in the work Air Show.
The sculpture Air Show, featuring a grid made of thin steel wires, with planes trapped within the grid, arranged in strict and curved lines, was conceived when he watched an Indian Air Force parade. The idea of Air Show had initially been captured in a flat painting, and only later was it realized by the artist in a three dimensional work, representing space by the use of grids. Fascinated by the logic and definition of grids, this work was a way of measuring nature's immensity, the expanse of the sky for Nataraj Sharma: The brilliance of being able to defy gravity and then the terrible realisation that we're all enmeshed within our moral limits. And here again we find a contrast - life and death. But what might lie behind all these contrasts? Once in an interview the artist said that looking at an artist's work he would much rather savour the human struggle that goes on before that accomplishment had been achieved. But he said also that art should not have to be just about suffering, oppression and violence, and that our lives could be lighter than that. Art for Nataraj Sharma is a progress, always making visible new views on certain life themes and reflecting the artist's ideas, often born out of an enthusiasm with which he perceives the world.
N.S. Harsha (b. 1969) lives and works in Mysore, India. He studied painting at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Baroda and since then he has taken part in a great variety of collaborative projects and exhibitions internationally, including the Singapore Biennale 2006, Private Corporate IV at Daimler Contemporary, Berlin (2007) and HORN PLEASE at Kunstmuseum Bern (2007/2008). He also received the Artes Mundi Prize 2008, the largest international art prize in the UK and one of the largest in the world. The jury's decision was based on the artist's works over the past 6-8 years, which have fully satisfied the jury's special interest in works that would add to the understanding of humanity and the human condition.
N.S. Harsha's artworks, including paintings, large-scale installations and community projects, are based upon the artist's locality and cultural traditions as well as the shifting world today. He engages and connects with a continuously growing audience. As a storytelling artist he combines details of everyday life in India with international news events and images by using the Indian tradition of miniature painting and mixing the specific with the universal. He draws attention to the absurd as well as the significant and tragic aspects of life. The artworks, showing the artist's witty and poetic, political and social responses to various issues relating to global economics and the cultural heritage, suggest that the global is always already located within the local imagination.
His artistic form of expression has evolved from gestural and expressionistic painting to more minimal and grid-like compositions, which recently have been supplemented by calligraphic marks. The installation Untitled (2007), shows sleeping figures sumptuous in their waking dreams, their lying, legs splayed and nearly hidden under sheets and accompanied by personal accruements in a half-hazy world where a vague beauty speaks of loss, care and vulnerability. It's an artistic space often occupied, but rarely shared. N.S. Harsha's artwork engages a unique language of great sensibility directed to his surroundings, provoking a reaction about India and its place in the global reality. His multi-layered narratives suggest that the global is always already located within the local imagination.
