by 10 Chancery Lane Gallery Location: 10 Chancery Lane Gallery
Artist(s): Atul DODIYA
Date: 20 Nov 2013 - 18 Feb 2014
10 Chancery Lane Gallery presents Atul Dodiya for his first solo exhibition in Hong Kong, Duplicator’s Dilemma, following his opening retrospective at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. Atul Dodiya (b. 1959) is a highly personal and referential artist often going into his subject matter in both a playful yet luringly dark ways. Being one of India’s most celebrated artists he works on subjects that layer and combine traditions of his native land with art historical clichés paying homage to famous artists such as Roy Lichtenstein seen in his newest series of shutter doors exhibiting at 10 Chancery Lane Gallery. The shutter doors bring the commonly seen Bombay shop fronts into the contemporary art genre. Dodiya uses the duplicity of imagery to play with wild contrasts of scenery. This series combines the metal fronts of the pop art work of Lichtenstein with deeply expressionistic long and stringy figures of his paintings. A man whose bones can be seen through his skin reads a book, a skull lay by his side. When the door is closed, piercing cartoon like eyes peer with the phrase, “What? Why did you ask that? What do you know about my image duplicator?” Highly original, his works physically add layers of meaning to his works. They can be read half closed or open as well as fully seeing one image or the other. His shutter door series were inspired by views of the city’s previously bustling small businesses locked down in fear of religious persecution and violence following the 1993 bombings in Bombay.
His works on paper are composed of delicate lithe-like figures that float within a phantasmal reality. Glowing and flowing water paint sets a mood that is strange yet gentle, the figures lounge and fly in a surrealist reality that the artists so aptly provokes into a curious dialogue. Dodiya is known for combining many ideas into one series of works that are transcultural and transhistorical. His inspiration is vast and rich with references that are sometimes obvious and other times highly personal.
