Modernist painter and print-maker Jyoti Bhatt marches into the gates of the Vadehra Art Gallery with his much-awaited solo exhibition titled ‘Revisitations’ at our modern gallery space, on view from 30 January to 6 March 2024. In this exhibition, Bhatt revisits his oeuvre across two decades and presents various works exploring quotidian and conventional Indian lifestyles while bringing together notions of culture, religion, nature, and gender with fresh context.
Courtesy – Vadehra Art Gallery
Rendered in acrylic on plastic film, his paintings feature his well-regarded inquiries into iconography, portraiture, rural life, still lives and the natural world. With a staggering 80 works from 2004 to 2023 on display, the exhibition poses as a dynamic and developing archive, offering insight into the evolution of Bhatt’s ongoing and long-serving artistic language and practice. Working in diverse mediums, from oil and watercolour painting, as well as photography, Bhatt also gained tremendous recognition for his work as a print-maker.
Courtesy – Vadehra Art Gallery
His oeuvre reveals a variety of European art historical influences, from Cubism to Pop Art, which he reposits into the Indian rural cultural imagination – speaking to concerns as much as contentment – often by rendering and reinterpreting images from traditional Indian folk art. Bhatt’s plastic film artworks traverse the non-linear distance between traditional ethos and modernity as they democratically shuttle between depictions of the sylvan and urban, accompanied by self-portraits, still-lifes and grids that read like an anthropological record of the changing mores of society.
Courtesy – Vadehra Art Gallery
In the introductory essay to the exhibition, Gayatri Sinha, the founder and editor of ‘Critical Collective’, writes, “Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of this series of paintings is the conversation the artist has with himself, dredging up works from the past and revivifying them through the lens of the present, thereby implicating the passage of time and newer stylistic accretions. Bhatt also engages in larger conversations about the environment, signs of ageing, and temporality. Certainly, in terms of his visual language, there is enormous variation, borrowing as he does from archaeology, mythology and fantasy, symbols and snatches of song, personal milestones and signifiers of nationhood.”
Courtesy – Vadehra Art Gallery
About Jyoti Bhatt
Jyoti Bhatt (b. 1934) is a Baroda-based artist who has also served as faculty at the Maharaji Sayajirao University of Baroda. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 2019 and elected as a Lalit Kala Akademi Fellow in 2022. Bhatt’s works have been widely acknowledged and celebrated and within the scope of his artistic vision, he was the founder member of the Baroda Group of Artists in 1956 and Bhavnagar’s Group 1890 in 1963. His works have been included in exhibitions nationally (Vadodara, New Delhi) and internationally (Oxford, Holland, Brazil, Paris). The artist lives and works in Vadodara, India.
About Vadehra Art Gallery
Vadehra Art Gallery was established in 1987 with a passion for pioneering South Asian art around the world. Their comprehensive programming takes the form of frequent exhibitions at two prominent locations in Delhi, alongside art events, engaging conversations and a growing digital platform. The gallery ventured into publishing in 1996, in addition to contemporaneously producing literature on ongoing exhibitions and artist projects.
Image Courtesy – Vadehra Art Gallery
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