‘Inside the Empty Box’ a retrospective of artist Prabhakar Barwe, curated by Jesal Thacker, has been opened for public viewing, at National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai today. Smt. Lalitha Lajmi was the Guest of Honour, while Shri Amol Palekar & Shri Dilip Ranade were the guest speakers for the opening event. The event was chaired by Shri Suhas Bahulkar. The exhibition will be open for viewing until 8^th March, 2019, from 11:00 am to 6:00 pm, on all days except Mondays and National Holidays.

 

Prabhakar Barwe, Echoes in Blue 1969, Oil on canvas, 48 x 36 Inch.

Collection: NGMA, Mumbai

Exhibition Events:

 

• Book Launch: Chitre Vastu Vichaar by Prabhakar Barwe

in collaboration with Popular Prakashan

Date: Friday, 22^nd February, 2019

Time: 5:00 pm to 6:30 pm

Guest Speakers: Prabhakar Kolte and Vasant Abaji Dahake

Venue: NGMA Auditorium, Mumbai

 

• Artists’ Symposium: Talking Shadows

Artists: Anant Joshi, Anju Dodiya, Manisha Parekh, Padmini Chettur, Ritesh Meshram, Vidya Shah and Yashwant Deshmukh

Date: Friday 1^st March to Sunday 3^rd March, 2019

Time: 6:00 pm to 8:00 pm (Friday); 5:00 pm to 7:00 pm (Saturday & Sunday)

Venue: NGMA Auditorium, Mumbai

‘Inside the Empty Box’ is artist Prabhakar Barwe’s first retrospective, presented by the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai in collaboration with Bodhana Arts and Research Foundation. Two decades after his untimely demise in 1995, Barwe remains a unique artist with a style entirely his own. This project aims to decipher the artists’ mind through his art and intricate untold diary notations. The title is derived from a series of works created by the artist in the 1990’s; the box here has a dual connotation. First comes the literal meaning – of a box as a space that holds archives, memories and significant objects, left untouched for years. Secondly, the box symbolizes the mind of the artist, a cognitive realm storing the intangible components that form his thoughts and perceptions. ‘Inside the Empty Box’ thus excavates the archives of Barwe whilst simultaneously unravelling his peculiar visual language – a process that requires a viewer to enter the recess of an empty mind.

Emptiness here doesn’t imply an absence of meaning; rather it marks the presence of a space pregnant with a plenum of intuitive abstracted sensations – an ideology that resonates with Zen philosophy. The empty space then becomes an invitation; the viewer is no longer external, but enters this void within the canvas. The box is also a recurrent motif in Barwe’s diaries; he explored its dimensions, imagining a life inside it. Suffering from asthma, he was compelled to close the doors and windows to confine his studio – not even a single speck of dust was permitted to enter. This experiment triggered Barwe to recreate objects from his mundane life into a box, physically enclosed yet expansive in possibilities as he embarked on a multi-dimensional journey through time and space.

He then realised that the box was never empty, nothing ever is void. In this empty box itself, he found a quantum of space and it’s relational objects. What contains these objects in a universe to be where they are and how are they construed from different perspectives in space? Such questions persisted inside his mind; and are intimately explored with the curatorial mandate of this show. ‘Inside the Empty Box’ plays the dual role of an exhibition and laboratory, with over a 100 works on display. At each step every viewer is engaged to explore an artist’s cognitive process through a mosaic of perspectives; along with dense archival material, all of Barwe’s 50 diaries will be exhibited, with selection of 8 diaries as exhibition copies.

Prabhakar Barwe, The box, ink and watercolour on paper, 12 x 19 Inch, 1992.

Collection: Bijay Anand

Interactive Spaces are designed throughout the exhibition, based on Barwe’s paintings. These spaces engage each viewer to participate, create and ultimately take back with them a dimension of Barwe’s own thoughts. Each space is activated all day, throughout the duration of this exhibition. For instance, on Level 1, viewers are invited to draw and sketch on the imprint of leaves, an object that Barwe was intensely preoccupied with. Or as you walk into Level 4, the staircase is activated with a hidden corner. A series of postcards lie on the table, along with some stamps – each distinctively etched with a motif sketched by Barwe in his diary. Viewers may design and address these postcards, and our team will post them. Barwe painted and drew many postcards, enraptured by the grid that composes each one, and the journey it initiates.

’Inside the Empty Box’ exhibits over a hundred works comprising of canvases, watercolours and diaries borrowed from the Estate of Prabhakar Barwe, National Gallery of Modern Art New Delhi, National Gallery of Modern Art Mumbai, National Gallery of Modern Art Bangalore, Museum of Art and Photography (MAP) Bangalore, Piramal Museum of Art Mumbai, Jehangir Nicholson Art Foundation, CSMVS Mumbai, Glenbarra Museum Japan, Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Chemould Prescott Road, Chatterjee & Lal and several private collectors such as Ajit Gadgil, Bijay Anand, Vijay and Sunita Choraria, Sumeet Chopra, Priyanka Mathew, Bharti and Vijay Malkani, Sudhir Patwardhan and many more who choose to remain anonymous.

‘Chitre Vastu Vichaar’, a book of Barwe’s writings in Marathi, will be launched on 22^nd February, 2019. This book begins with Barwe’s discourse on a universal creative process, but ultimately concludes with his innermost thoughts on art, and his life as an artist. It also contains an exclusive yet comprehensive selection of excerpts and drawings from the diaries Barwe maintained throughout his life. This book offers an insight into the artist’s creative psyche, published in its original handwritten form. It becomes the first primary resource into his life, published 24 years after his death in 1995.

‘Talking Shadows’, is an exciting symposium by artists’ spread out over three days (1^st to 3^rd March, 2019). For an artist, the form of an artwork and the space it inhabits (or creates) becomes a visual language in itself – one that defies the confines of words, to discover new ones. Or even unearth histories that lay hidden. On these lines, this symposium seeks to imbibe viewers with intimate insights into the creative process of an artist. Seven leading contemporary artists will give lectures on their practice, which will be followed by conversations with the audience. Each artist will focus on a single piece, or a series, to make the dialogue more focused on the subject. This symposium is presented in collaboration with the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai.

Link of the images to be used in the Exhibition: https://we.tl/t-H8PKUdWmBh

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DJM

(Release ID: 1563610)