ANAND AJIT RAY

Anand Ajit 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 -...this chain which we are attempting to pursue subdivides at various links giving birth to distributory chains which join it... They exist in spite of not being penned down in the minutest of details.

There is the simultaneous exploration of the mundane and the phantasmal, the ridiculous and the horrific. The seduction and intimacy offered by these images, 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. A perfect example is the series of four ice-cream sticks, from his solo show `Syrup`, each of a different flavour, each offering an incitement to a different dream, graphically described in iridescent water- colours.

Exhibitions

Selected Solo Exhibitions

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, Baroda
1998 ‘Syrup’, Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai
1995 Eicher Gallery, New Delhi
1994 Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai
1993 Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai

Selected Group Shows

2005 ‘KAAM’ Arts India, 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

Honours & Awards

1999 Sanskriti Award, Government of India

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