Melting Pot

Simply City, Indian Express
Saturday, September 13, 2008
By Navdeep Sandhu

Lalit kala akademi ’s Annual Art Exhibition is a confluence of inspirations, ideas & visions.

We have waited for this one, and now that it’s happening, Chandigarh lalit kala akademi’s Annual Art Exhibition 08 hasn’t left us disappointed. Three different categories – Professional, student and invited, have brought the trinity’s artists- both professional and student, under one roof. And what do we get?…a confluence of inspirations, ideas and visions. The selection of the works and awards has been done by M. K. Puri, Usha Biswas and Prof. Aditya Prakash. Different mediums like paintings, sketches, photographs, graphics, sculptures et al define the different isms of that the mind of and artists plays with, and we must say this is the best one we’ve seen this year.

There’s ‘Space for Advertisement’ with shadows making for complete human forms. ‘Steps and shadows’ is beautiful in its simplicity and ‘Ace’ uses colour as a symbol to comment on the religion. Drunk driving finds itself in the middle of irony in ‘Good Night Sweet Dreams’. The frame within which ‘chess players’ are placed integrates multiple stories. Cycle carrier and other metal parts intelligently form a scene of an old person watching a duo playing a game of cards. The story of a Punjabi wedding is told in six episodes with featureless faces yet powerful gestures. These are just a few mentions. Realistic, abstract, impressionistic, symbols…every expression at the exhibition is a unique and individualistic…the it is the only influence, and it inspires you to take a fresh look at yours.

Art Works On Display

Chandigarh Tribune
Saturday, September 13, 2008

The Chandigarh lalit kala akdemi organized Annual Art Exhibition- 2008 in the memory of Prof Aditya Prakash at Punjab Arts Council, Sector 16, here today. Adviser to the UT administrator Pradip Mehra was the chief guest at the exhibition. An award ceremony was also organized. A total of 103 art works, including paintings, sculptures, and photographs were showcased at the exhibition out of which, 16 winners got the awards. The awards were given in the professional and student categories.

Creative Muse

The Tribune
Saturday, September 13, 2008
By Parbina Rashid

It is tribute to the man we all loved and lost- Aditya Prakash.

The man who gave us art as a member of the Chandigarh Lalit Kala Akadmi which he led as the chairperson for the last council, gave us theatre as a leading member of Abhinet group and as the architect of Tagore Theatre, gave us Chandigarh as a team member of the Capital Project. He needs not to be reminded as the entire city is soaked with his presence, nit we do it anyway. Because this particular art exhibition at Punjab Kala Bhawan -16 gives us a reason to talk about him, recall the moments we shared with hem and like always, it brings out a smile.
There one is the last annual exhibition Aditya Prakash conceived but could not execute. Carrying forward the torch is Diwan Manna, bringing out the works of 103 artists in three categories- students, professionals and invitees. An uphill tasks for the organizers and even more difficult one for us reviewer, because subjects vary and so does the style of execution. So we look for a comman thread and we find that three artists’ works—Anjali .S. Aggarwal has done it and so have Braham praksh and Rajinder – they all have used blocks in the fore ground. Brahm’s love for the city and city’s influence on his works in nothing new, but when we see the others following it, we get curious, is it a trend which is emerging in the city arts cape? “well, trend I do not know, but this is definitely an influence of the city on us artists. I wanted to capture the inner strength of the city through the null the bring the inherent character of the city through the blocks. Also I wanted to play with textures.” That sums up Anjali’s painting. Couldn’t have been more befitting for a tribute to Prakash.

Through in the student’s category we see promising works by Mukesh Kumar, Hirdey Kant Sandil, Deepak , Robin Singh, Parul, Anuradha, Rajbir Singh, Harmeet singh, Joginder Pal Gandy and Geetika Pathania (all award winners), in the professional category we see familiar names and a few familiar paintings, for instance Vinay Vadhera’s Ace, which is based on the greeds of the pandas of Hardwar. Six have won awards in this category, which includes Ritu M. Bansal , Dr. Anand Kumar Sharma Subhash Shorey, Preeti Sharma, Jagdeep Jolly and Vinay Vadhera.
In the invitee category one sees works of Shiv Singh, Malkit Singh, Viren Tanwar, Madan Lal,Satwant Singh and Bheem Malhotra besides others.

Add On

What stands out in this exhibition is the cormer, which displays t-Shirts, coffee mugs, greeting cards and bookmarks with prints of familiar paintings on them. “this is an endeavor to make art a part of everyday life,” says Diwan Manna, way to inculcate the love for art among children,” says Manna.one can pick up one’s favorite artist’s works in a t-shirt for Rs. 500 or a coffee mug for Rs. 15 while a bookmark is available only for Rs. 3.