Experience 22nd Century Studio Portraiture With Nandan Ghiya | Verve Magazine
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April 01, 2017

Experience 22nd Century Studio Portraiture With Nandan Ghiya

Text by Huzan Tata

Visualise the future of photography through his creations

(Click on any image to view in larger gallery.)

Blue screens. Pixels. Photoshop. Distortion. Camouflage. Sound familiar? These are all aspects of technology that have seeped into the ever-evolving digital world, things that have made their way into the world of photography as well. In artist Nandan Ghiya’s debut Mumbai show Studio Portraits from the 22nd Century, he explores the future of projection of our images through his arresting, quirky artworks. Says the press note for the show, ‘ It seems likely that instead of holding one stationary, fundamental self, we are all just a disordered, vulnerable shape shifting collection of traits and histories and tendencies that seem to wax and wane over time. And these various ‘selves’, jostle for distinction from moment to moment- organically transforming, with the click of the mouse, in a blink of an eye’.
5 Questions with the artist, Nandan Ghiya
  1. Artistic motivations “The appearance of things around me – objects, spaces et al. I make changes according to my vision of the world that we exist in today by creating art. I translate and document my observations into a visual language that could truly define our times – the Zeitgeist of the 21st century, if I may say so.”
  2. Inspirations “Digital technology, traditional Indian aesthetic values, history, cinema, music, anthropology, consumerism and mass culture. I am also inspired by the values of Francis Bacon, Wes Anderson, Gerhard Richter, Tim Walker, Nick Knight, Patrick Caulfield, and Pop and Op Art.”
  3. On the wall at home “If I could afford them, I would like works by Alain Vonck, Albert Oehlen, Matthias Weischer, Richard Prince, Anastasia Savinova, Patrick Caulfield, Basquiat, MC Escher, Dominique Petrin, Tom Wesselmann, Gilbert & George, Andrew B Myers, David Hockney, Jacques Villegle, Sarah Lucas and Julian Opie.”
  4. Concerns that find a place in your art “Issues of identity – the one thing I think we are really losing somewhere. What really concerns me are the blurring lines between tradition and modernity, Indian and global, digital and real, and how they directly impact our identities…. I wonder what will really define us as individuals in the coming century.”
  5. If not an artist, you would be… “an activist or a part of the governance system. I’d find ways to sensitise people at every level. But I would be institutionalised and would have gone mad with all my concerns, for the lack of a creative voice.”
Studio Portraits from the 22nd Century is on display at Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai (6/19, 2nd Floor, Grants Building, Colaba) until April 8, 2017.

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