Art Heritage brings to Delhi audiences The Image Multiplied, an exhibition of young and emerging printmakers that questions where a medium that was the core technology used in the mass dissemination of information and knowledge – be it political messages and propaganda, personal postcards or educational leaflets – finds itself today given the digital revolution? And how does one contextualize the use of this medium in the production of ‘fine art’?

Accompanying the exhibition is Shukla Sawant’s curatorial essay, The Slow Art of the Fine Print (Download Here), that contextualizes the print medium in our current times and has as one of its key ideas that traditional printmaking requires patience, being a deliberate, manual act that teaches the practitioner to slow down and reflect upon that which is being created, rather than an act that is spontaneous and immediate. During the past two years, frenetic life as we knew it has ground to a halt, with many re‑evaluating their lifestyle and priorities. This exhibition allows us an opportunity to appreciate the work of extremely young printmakers who recognize that they have begun to experience ‘time’ in unique, new ways.

Abhishek Narayan Verma’s work is deeply introspective looking at the ‘self’ and its relationship to society; highlighting the mental struggles one experiences and the significance of attempting to get out of ones own ‘head’. In a similar vein, Tejswini Narayan Sonawane creates images of women in flight in a bid to escape a male-dominated society. Tushar Sahay echoes the sentiment, but sees it as related to the straitjacketing of the common man, whose circumstances bind him in shackles. Sagnik Samanta explores a range of print mediums such as woodcuts, photography and digital art, referencing a sense of ennui that set in during the COVID pandemic. With the farmers’ protests as his central theme in Farmland, Sagnik returns full circle to using printmaking as a simple, inexpensive manner of disseminating dissent among the populace. The works of Lakshmi Kiran K. and Chhering Negi, using the medium of woodcuts and etching, offer a glimmer of hope, reflective of personal histories.

The Image Multiplied brings forth an opportunity for the art connoisseur, patrons and collectors to engage and explore traditional and updated forms of the print medium.

Date

27 Nov - 17 Jan 2022

Artists

Abhishek Narayan Verma, Tejswini Narayan Sonawane, Tushar Sahay, Sagnik Samanta, Lakshmi Kiran K., Chhering Negi, Koustav Nag

Medium

Prints

Publications

The Slow Art of the Fine Print by Dr. Shukla Sawant