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EDITION COPENHAGEN

Edition Copenhagen from T&T Studio on Vimeo.

Edition Copenhagen was founded in 1959 by Carl Urwald. Today the gallery has three partners Rasmus Urwald, Dannie Vieten and Peter Wissing Sørensen. The gallery is located at Christianshavn in Copenhagen and houses both a lithographic workshop and a gallery space. Edition Copenhagen is one of the leading lithographic workshops inEurope. Each year the gallery invites a number of international and Danish artists to create lithographs in the workshop. The invited artists have all exhibited widely in galleries, contemporary art centers and museums. Besides inviting established artists Edition Copenhagen also aims at working with new and upcoming artists. Thukral and Tagra were invited by Edition Copenhagen / Arken Museum for the same.

THE MATTER WITHIN: NEW CONTEMPORARY ART OF INDIA

THE MATTER WITHIN: NEW CONTEMPORARY ART OF INDIA | 2011

As contemporary art becomes more widely recognized within India, there has also been a growing awareness of its international development and impact. YBCA is pleased to present The Matter Within: New Contemporary Art of India, an exhibition of sculpture, photography and video by artists of India living inside the country as well as in the diaspora.

Inspired by material culture, literature, spirituality, and social and political aspects of the history of the South Asian region, the exhibition is organized around three thematic threads that resonate from contemporary India—embodiment, the politics of communicative bodies and the imaginary. Of particular interest are the artistic practices that either incorporate these concepts or operate within a gap between these existing thematic categories. Whereas sculpture and painting have a long history within both sacred and secular traditions of Indian art, in recent years photography and video have emerged as significant media as well.

Until very recently, contemporary Indian photography has had little exposure in the United States. With a focus on “straight” and staged approaches, the photographic works utilize either reality-based settings—such as the informal street shoot or a formal portrait—or constructed realities and imaginary personas. These photographs merge the vision of the artist with the social dynamics of India’s vast cultural landscape to create a revealing narrative of contemporary life in an ever globalizing world.

Sculpture has a long tradition within both sacred and secular art of India, and its rich legacy of materiality and iconography has had an impact on contemporary art. Human and animal bodies continue to play an important role in new perspectives on nationhood as well as on ancient pasts. This is evident in an adherence to traditional forms as well as in expanded imagery and physical forms signaling the future.

Some of the video works provide a unique window into the lives of ordinary people. The artists are able to extract poignant and powerful narratives from complex situations, offering alternative forms of storytelling. Video also provides an opportunity for shaping multi-referential narratives examining contemporary conditions such as displacement and community formation, unlikely personages and lost artistic legacies, often against the backdrop of colonialism and other forms of occupation.

Working with ideas that are both highly personal and representative of the shifts and changes taking place in the global sphere, these artists are navigating the complex routes between the historical past and the present, fact and fiction, or new and old identities, during a period of societal flux. As India continues its expansion on the world economic stage, the work of its artists will become an even more widely acknowledged vehicle for expressing new ways of being that are hard to convey outside the terms that art provides. This exhibition hopes to further this potential by contributing to a better and deeper understanding of current shifts and their emotional, intellectual and spiritual effects on the artists and their communities, as well as the potential for representing new aspirations.

Thukral & Tagra use disposable bottles in installations and sculptures that depict the diaspora of India’s youth. On a series of bottles, Thukral & Tagra portray young Indian men whose visions of success assume leaving their home country.

The System of Contemporary Indian Art”  – Interview with Thukral & Tagra  by Margherita Artoni

- When did you decide for the first time to work together?
answer: we never decided, to work together, it just so happened.

- Which is your creative process? Do you divide your duties or you work together simultaneously?
answer: it starts from a simple idea and then it progresses to a
complex system, where medium comes in and the final series of work are conceived.
There is always rush to the things, we never divide, its just that
some one chooses to start fro one point.
- Have your previous experience in the field of graphics and design contribuited to develop the style
that now characterizes your art?
answer: its communication design, and it teaches one how to present an
idea. Its essential part of our work, its blur between a solution and
artistic expession.
- The critique of consumerism is a constant in your production. Yet,
you also have embraced the
advertising formula by forging an alternative brand. What’s “Bosedk”?
answer: “Bosedk is a fake lable which we conceived in 2003! here is
little more about it.
BOSEDK:
To use a well-known term of abuse from the Punjabi language and change
it into English, our intention was to comment on the
over-commercialization of art within the booming marketplace. It
seemed to us that with too much emphasis being put on “art as
investment” and the re-sale value of art works and the manipulation of
their prices by galleries and auction houses, that art had become
vulgar and abused, turned into just another mass-produced commodity.
For this reason we also presented the BoseDK products in multiples,
presenting them in an installation in our exhibition at Nature Morte
in 2007, which recreated the interior of a supermarket. Our use of
BoseDK for the branding of our artworks also indicated our
self-conscious recognition that all artists and art in general are now
trapped within a spiral of marketing, commodification and consumption.
We all are both innocent and guilty within this system and the only
moral position is to acknowledge this hypocrisy and complicity. This
situation has only been further amplified and aggravated by the
globalisation of markets and cultures, by India’s head-long
rush on to the world stage in the past 20 years. For us, using BoseDK
was to slap the viewers and naive art audience in the face, forcing
them to wake up to the realities in which we find ourselves today.

Tomorrow at 5:30pm, monday  PEHNO Project, at saket, push vihar market - Foundation Thukral and Tagra