Bose Krishnamachari at the Aicon Gallery, LDN until 12 Aug

Exhibition Description:

This is the renowned Bose Krishnamachari's first UK solo exhibition. His work explores the psyche of the 'average Mumbaikar' and the surrounding community. With this sense of discovery in mind, Krishnamachari has created a series of new, multi-disciplinary works made for the Aicon Gallery in London.

Bose Krishnamachari is well-known internationally for his series of bold abstract paintings entitled Stretched Bodies. For this London exhibition he presents his wider practice, confirming him not only as an artist. He is also a keen partaker and practitioner in the far wider cultural-social discourse. Krishnamachari describes the average Mumbaikar as 'an ocean of anxieties that have arisen from the everyday question of acceptance'.

Krishnamachari maps his subjects appearances, archiving those intangible emotions and the experiences they portray, by focusing sharply and enlarging every nuance of feeling and expression, in the five large-scale portraits from the Mumbaikar series.

The artist's subjects are part of the household staff from his own private residence. He recognises and records not only their existence, but also their individuality and concerns, whilst acknowledging his own Keralan (and Communist) origins.

These portraits dizzy and embarrass with their giant scale, and contrast greatly with Krishnamachari's Ghost /Transmemoir , a giddying installation of 108 used tiffins (or dabbas), serving to frame video loops showing interviews with a multitude of Mumbai residents from all levels of society. This piece functions as a multi-faceted portrait of Mumbai. Here, the dabba plays a central role in the daily ritual of delivery of 'home cooked' food. It is filled each day by housewives, the boxes are collected, exchanged and re-exchanged until they reach their owner on time for lunch.

Collectively, the installation literally vibrates with the chaotic order of the city, and at the same time individually portrays the thoughts, frustrations, religions and emotions of the strata of their individuals.

Highly representative of Krishnamachari's involvement in the current, international discourse concerning the role of the museum within society, is a series of architectural drawings and a maquette depicting an idealised vision of a museum.

Krishnamachari affirms the traditional ideal of the museum as a repository of knowledge, and that art has an inherent "intellectual usefulness" which makes the act of instituting a museum a sacred one. He is currently designing and building his own museum in Kerala, to house not only his own art collection, but also those of international collectors.

Bose Krishnamchari will be Guest of Honour at the ARCO '09, Madrid. He will also be curating the India Pavilion there.

Bose Krishnamachari (b. 1963, Kerala, India) gained his Batchelor's in Fine Art from the Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai in 1999, and his Masters in Visual Arts from Goldsmiths College in 2000. He has participated in numerous group and solo exhibitions internationally.
Considered the mentor of the generation of young artists from Mumbai known as the 'Bombay Boys', Krishnamachari's Mumbai studio attracts artists, designers, filmmakers and architects and has often been compared to Andy Warhol's Factory.

Description:

Bose Krishnamachari
Amuseum/Ghost
2008
Image copyright Bose Krishnamachari, courtesy Aicon Gallery London.

Full Contact Details:

Aicon Gallery, 8 Heddon Street, London W1B 4BU
Tel: +44 20 7734 7575, Fax: +44 20 7734 0090, london .at. aicongallery.com