New Delhi: Art Positive presents Mind the Gap, a group show by four young artists, Krittika Narula, Pampa Panwar, Sanjay Sundram and Sanjeev Sonpimpare. The artists play around with ideas in mixed media and varied forms and styles asking us to mind the gap created by consumerist culture in today’s metros. The exhibition will be on from November 2, 2010 to November 30, 2010 at Art Positive, F-213/B, Old MB Road, Lado Sarai, New Delhi- 110030.

According to curator Sushma Bahl, “Mind the Gap is an exhibition that meanders around the city, its changing ethos of all pervasive consumerist culture of instant gratification, popular icons, new media and traffic. They challenge the distorted notion of development and progress with its disastrous environmental impact urging one to mind the gap.”

Says Anu Bajaj, Director, Art Positive: “The works will be featured in four different sections of the exhibition within the gallery space, each with its distinct aesthetic, perspective and medium. The works will persuade one to rethink and mind the gap between perception and reality, between what is and what ought to be, while the reality of life, its joys and travails in a contemporary context.”

Brief Intro of the Artists and Their Works:

Krittika Narula: A Delhi based artist, Krittika Narula learnt painting at the Delhi College of Art. She works in installation, performance and mixed media using found materials of cultural significance. She is currently doing her Mater’s in Art History owing her interest in art practice and theory. Her work focuses on the city and life’s never ending search. The installation project exhibited in the show with a Tata Nano car, an icon of public imagination, covered to the brim with soft stuffed elephant toys, a trail of pollution masks and some typographical messages on its body (Proclaiming: Please Take Me Home), featured strapped shut as if to prevent a deluge, is a remark on the gap between consumerist craze and aspirations of the city bred as against the denial to many others. Her video is about the rapidly changing dynamics of our culture and India today, on a fast track to ‘progress’ unmindful of what it tramples over on the way. The congestion and packaging signifies movement and multi layering of the composition and the gaze, raises questions about the distinction between a product and work of art as the repetitive pattern turns hypnotic in a meditative mould in to get the message across. Using familiar and unfamiliar props from our collective memory that co-exist along with traditional techniques, she juxtaposes them against our new obsessions to signal the alert ‘mind the gap’. Inspired by Gandhi’s philosophy, Krittika also works with thread while Frida Kahlo has also been her muse.

Sanjeev Sonpimpare: A graduate in Painting from Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai, Sanjeev Sonpimpare received UNESCO-ASCHBERG residency at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. A Mumbai based artist, Sanjeev is also interested in art theory besides practice. His work in a semi realistic oeuvre has traversed from an abstract mode to representational art that emphasizes on the struggles that govern our life in urban metros. There is much preparation and planning including scene setting, photography, drawing and digital intervention that precedes his work on the canvas with paint and brush to give his work its special theatrical appeal. The work in the show confronts the urban unmindful unplanned construct and greed that undermines normal life challenging the notion of co-existence and convergence. He focuses on unplanned building and re-building that goes on in the name of infrastructure development that makes farmers landless and common people homeless.

Pampa Panwar: After completing her Bachelor’s degree in Painting from Vishwa-Bharati University, Santiniketan, and Master’s in Printmaking from Fine Arts Dept at M.S. University, Baroda, Pampa Panwar got a second Master’s degree from Slade School of Art in London and residency at Centre d’Art, Marnay-sur-Seine, France amongst others. Her work in mixed media meanders around nature and time in a fine incorporation of landscape, narrative and abstract. Her colorful paintings about the changing cycles of weather, seasons and time, display the use of collage and text. She plays around with her frame to encase the imagery and question the gap between human perceptions of reality at one level, between her own vision, and that of the viewer and his/her way of looking at what she creates.

Sanjay Sundram: A professionally trained architect who went on to specialize in visual communication with a Master’s from IIT Mumbai, Sanjay Sundram is currently the head of R&D (New Media) in a multinational company. Sanjay experiments with creative designing while also practicing and refining his art that has been show in New York besides India. The impact of his diverse interests is reflected in his thought provoking installations and paintings that underline the widening gap all around in the cities. The various sized toy cars re-formed and re-created unsteadily hanging and blocking the skyline evoke fear of traffic with intrigue and dismay. His paintings recall the gift of nature which human greed seems all set to engulf due to short sightedness.