ARTIST ANIRBAN MITRA AT Beyond Superflat SAKSHI GALLERY TAIPEI

SAKSHI GALLERY TAIPEI

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Yitong Street,
Taipei, 10486, Taiwan   map 
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http://sakshigallery.com.tw/eng/exhibit/exhibit_past_detail.php?id=54

Beyond Superflat
by Sakshi Gallery Taipei Location: Sakshi Gallery Taipei Artist(s): Anirban MITRA, HSU Yin-Ling, Yuree KENSAKU Date: 9 Jul - 21 Aug 2011 Takashi Murakami’s proposal of the Superflat concept was received with shock that reverberated throughout the art community.    Due to this, the incorporation of consumerism into pure art began receiving attention, successfully promoting a new kind of contemporary, popular sub-culture in Japan. Japan had become the economic engine for post-war Asia. Therefore, if Superflat is Murakami’s mockery and summary of post-war Japan’s visual culture, then how would the cultural shock of Superflat be reproduced in affected, neighboring regions? Sakshi Gallery proudly presents the group exhibition, “Beyond Superflat,” which features the works of three cutting-edge artists that hail from a new generation in Asia - Indian artist, Anirban Mitra; Taiwanese artist, Hsu Yin-Ling; and Thai artist, Yuree Kensaku attempt to combine the three regions of Asia.    Specializing in anime/manga style drawings, these artists explore Superflat - originally a cultural phenomenon native to Japan - in addition to possibilities beyond flat. Born in Kolkata, India in 1981, Anirban Mitra uses collage methods to present the co-existence of different realities, which include ready-made images and symbols from popular culture.    Through a slew of accidents, the combination of collage and fractals expresses the artist’s refusal of modernist discourse, eliminating the hierarchy of art forms and destroying the norms of conventional artistic styles. Born in Pingtung, Taiwan in 1987, Hsu Yin-Ling specializes in images of silent condensation to present concealed fears and madness in herself and amidst people.    In the planning for her work, Super Moon, she stated that: “My creative materials are mainly themed around ‘people’ and the various organizations formed by ‘people’, such as families, gatherings, retirement homes, psychiatric hospitals... they are a type of authority mechanism schematic that is reverted back to an ideal form. However, the moment in which we view this schematic is really the only truth we should recognize.” Born in Bangkok, Thailand in 1979, ethnic Japanese artist, Yuree Kensaku, uses a flat and bright style to recreate her memories.    For example, her recent works depict the process of natural allergy treatment prescribed to her by her doctor.    These works not only reflect her participation in the treatment, they also include her concerns over quality of life issues. The new generation of artists utilizes new cultural codes to create art.    Perhaps, the so-called lack of depth is due to the lack of tendency by this generation of artists who grew up with cartoons and manga to use magnificent narrative techniques to tell their - or our - story.    Perhaps, you and I are included amongst this generation of cartoon/manga fans. And, Sakshi invites you to experience the world beyond the flat together.

ANIRBAN MITRA AT ART TAIPEI 2011 SAKSHI GALLERY TAIPEI TAIWAN

ANIRBAN MITRA 
AT 
ART TAIPEI 2011 
SAKSHI GALLERY 
TAIPEI TAIWAN
http://sakshigallery.com.tw/eng/exhibit/exhibit_past_detail.php?id=54 

ANIRBAN MITRA AT SAKSHI GALLERY TAIPEI TAIWAN 2011 BEYOND SUPERFLAT

ANIRBAN MITRA AT MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART,TAIPEI, 2010, TAIWAN

FINDING INDIA

ANIRBAN MITRA Artist Statement

ANIRBAN MITRA

Artist Statement

An Explanation of the images

            The images of my paintings represent collage or co-existence of different realities. They reflect multiple existences having multiple meanings which have been brought about by juxtaposition of ready made images or signs taken from popular culture. I am dealing with popular semiotics from the popular culture where the signs are potentially able to emanate infinite possibilities of signified(s). It has immense signification power, signs which are potential enough to emit a whole lot of possible signifiers. I am using a language which is very edgy, that is picking things up from a world which is replete with hundreds of meanings and I am reworking on them again in a way which also has many meanings.  

                    

             I look back at the artistic styles and canonical masterpieces of early artists such as the Pop artists and their ‘appropriation’ (or borrowing) of popular imagery from comic strips, advertisements and the mass media in general. My works show traits of post modernism which concentrates on the way images and symbols (‘signifiers’) shift or lose their meaning when put in different contexts (‘appropriated’) revealing (‘deconstructing’) the process by which meaning is constructed. Images have been combined from various sources, juxtaposing and overlapping cartoons, news photographs, technical drafting, famous paintings and movie stills.

            

             The images reveal non-narrative play of detached signifiers where the relationship between the two images is left unclear. Does one erase or cancel another? Do they comment one on each other? Do they replicate the effect of vision in the world today; where (as, for instance, on televisions that allow you to watch two channels at once) things may have no relationship to each other at all?

                

             In my work there is a denial of any frozen meaning. They have a tendency of not to resolve the problem between one interesting fragment and another fragment and lead them to a convincing whole, on the contrary I keep them side by side to emit better result. These paintings give us a feeling as if everything has been unassembled where you look at bits and pieces: a flash of colour here, a reference to graffiti or cartooning there, a passage of paint elsewhere. These paintings are made without “any preconception” and are composed directly on canvas without preparatory drawings, where there is use of reference, quotations and pastiche. These works abjure any claim to spontaneity and directness of expression, making use instead of pastiche and discontinuity.

                   

                   There is a rejection of modernism’s grand narratives of artistic direction, erasing the boundaries between high and low forms of art and disrupting genre’s conventions with collision, collage and fragmentation. Instead of grand narratives I have used local narratives in my painting. Meta narrative is a story about a story, encompassing and explaining other ‘little stories’ within totalizing schemas. In the grand narratives there is a tendency to dismiss the naturally existing chaos and disorder of the universe. So the grand theories or the grand, universal narratives are replaced with small, local narratives on specific local context as well as the diversity of human experience. They argue for the existence of a “multiplicity of theoretical standpoints” rather than grand all-encompassing theories.

                  

                 Signs themselves have multiple readings but my viewers are expecting a singular kind of reading. Is it possible? If it is possible, then there is a contradiction in this possibility. This is a very interesting contradiction, a very interesting aspect which I am dealing in my work. ‘Contradiction’ is a major subject in my art where I am addressing this ‘contradiction’. I am not starting from a multiple reading and leading it to a more singular, deliberate reading. Instead I am de-contextualizing the popular signs and working out an intended reading, a manufactured, a produced and a reworked meaning.

                 

                 I have also used ‘cliché’ and worked upon them in a definite context and endowed them with a meaningful existence. In my works I am isolating the signs and then returning them again to a second kind of crowd, without freezing them where the viewer gets involved in generating the meaning. There is no definite issue, no agenda in my work. I am choosing a restless, un-peaceful path full of tension. Choosing things from one kind of a restlessness and tension and placing or throwing them into another restless position.

               

                 In these works where there is a fundamental play of signs, I am deliberately avoiding any kind of safe play with these signs. I am respectful to the ‘confusion’ amid which these signs actually exist in real life. This is a confusion these signs exist in. This is the kind of confusion in which these painting has resulted into, where ‘confusion’ is the quality of the painting. ‘Confusion’ is the situation in which we encounter or confront these signs in our daily life.

                

                Through these images it can be understood how we create meaning, we generate meaning, we connect signs and therefore multiplicity is very interesting because it generates interesting ideas, reflecting deeper truths of life. Post modern art considers all stances as unstable and insincere and therefore irony, parody and humor are the only positions that cannot be overturned by critique or revision.

                                                        ANIRBAN MITRA.

ANIRBAN MITRA AT CHRISTIES HONG KONG AUCTION 2009

ANIRBAN MITRA AT Animamix Biennial 2009-2010, MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART,TAIPEI, 2010, TAIWAN

Exhibition Highlights

Animamix Biennial 2009-2010

Artistic Director:More about the Exhibition

Victoria Lu

 

When Victoria Lu curated "Fiction.Love" in 2004 at MoCA Taipei, she become aware of a new trend in aesthetics, and in 2006,when she curated a new version of Fiction@Love at MoCA Shanghai she coined atermto describe this new trend: Animamix, combining"animation" and "comics.".

 Animamix is defined by these four major characteristics:

§    All the various and abundant forms of Animamix in popular culture are centered on the worship of youth and the pursuit of an idealized youthful beauty.

§    The bizarre and ever-changing narrative texts in Animamix art imbue the images with a strong narrative character, which themselves form a visual language.

§    The colorful lights derived from the electronic media create a totally new and unique visual experience of art with colored lights. .

§    Animamix involves the use of great human, material and financial resources interacting and cooperating across different sectors.

The Animamix artists of the 21st century are not just the people who are engaged in creating animation and comics products; rather,Animamix artists are found in all the fields of the creative industry. Unlike the pop artists of the previous century who simply appropriated visual symbols from comics and animation, 21^st century Animamix artists are a new generation of Neo-Aestheticswho are already completely submersed in the aesthetics of Animamix. The multifarious styles of Animamix art actually are the very archetype of artistic creation. In other words, Animamix art has become the most important source of inspiration for the global art scene in the 21st century.

Looking back at modern art, which only emerged at the end of the 19th century, it developed at the beginning of the last century entirely in the abstract style. Even in modern literary works, where language forms the main narrative, deconstruction of words frequently occurredplaying around with semantics or abstract deconstructionswhich made it difficult for readers to quickly grasp the meaning. In the digitized environment of the 21st century, literary narrative has changed, becoming more diverse and more interesting. More and more information is being transmitted via pictorial language to convey and communicate ideas. The anthropomorphic characters found in cartoons, animation and comics, coupled with the narrative of the story line, together become an exaggerated form of distortions, which will become the new mainstream characterizing visual aesthetics in this century just as abstract art led the way in the aesthetics of the 20th century.

 Animamix art does not refer simply to animation or comics alone. Its derivative products are so abundant in variety and large in number, extending even to items related to people's livelihoods and to food, clothing, home and transport, that almost nothing is excluded. The value of the output of the Animamix industry is not just in the artworks themselves, but rather in the totality of the combined or multiplying cultural forces of an era. The production and marketing of Animamix art will become a most important link in the creative industry worldwide. This type of artistic creation is in perfect harmony with popular culture; in this new era, the division between high art and low art no longer exists.

 This new type of art records in the virtual world the creative forces of our  lives and saves them in the fourth dimension of the electronic and digital worlds.

 The inaugural Animamix Biennial was staged at MoCA Shanghai in 2007. This year, the Animamix Biennial is expanding to four venues. It will open at the end of 2009 and continue into 2010, staging at MoCA Taipei, MoCA Shanghai, Today's Art Museum in Beijing, and Guangdong Art Museum in Guangzhou.

 Animamix Biennial 2009-2010 is the first major cross-straits international Biennial jointly hosted by four museums. It consists of fourdifferent exhibitions with a book, Animamix: The New Aesthetics of the 21^st Century,will be published jointly by the four museums.

   

Venues:

Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai

December 12, 2009 - January 31, 2010

Curator: PAN Qing

Assistant Curator:Ivy Zhou

 

Visual Attract & Attack - Animamix Biennial

Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei

December 6, 2009 - January 31, 2010

Curator: Maple LIN Yuchieh

 

Enliven- In Between Realities and Fiction -Animamix Biennial

Today's Art Museum, Beijing

December 27, 2009 - January 10, 2010

Curator: LIU Chunfeng

 

Dazzled and Enchanted - New Age Animamix

Guangdong Art Museum, Guangzhou

January 21, 2010 - February 28, 2010

Curator: HUANG Yun, ZHANG Jiaping