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An ancient Indian Vedic mythology speaks of Loka-Palas (world-guardians), eight deities and eight elephants who protect the world. Each deity and his guardian elephant are responsible for one of the eight major geographical directions, so that all countries come under the watchful eyes of the Loka-Palas. Eighth Elephant Contemporary Art derives its name and mission from this mythology, as it is committed to promoting and exhibiting contemporary art from all corners of the world.
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About our artists-
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Dhrubajyoti Baral: Few painters have mastered color so thoroughly as early in their career as Bangalore painter Dhrubajyoti Baral. He uses his remarkably rich and vivid natural-pigment hues to animate scenes that might seem lifeless in the hands of a lesser painter: for example a goat eyeing a worm or underwater life.
Though his pure, opulent foreground colors glow, Dhrubajyoti’s true genius lies in his use of incandescent color accents that dazzle across his figures like tiny streaks of lightning – for instance on the edges of Pravaah. These accents lend Dhrubajyoti’s portraits a unique expressionist aura, conveying at once a soothing serenity and an edifying exuberance reminiscent, perhaps, of a religious experience.
Though Dhruba is still a young painter, his reputation in India is rapidly growing. In 2005, he won the Rabindath Tagore Award, and in 2004 the Gopal Bomkin Ghosh Memorial Scholarship. He has exhibited in Mumbai and Kolkata in addition to Bangalore, and Eighth Elephant is proud to introduce him to the United States.
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Oleg Filin: Oleg's paintings are everything that 20th Century Russian art was not: vivacious, bright, abstract, hopeful. His coloration is audacious, with improbable and challenging juxtapositions used as organizing principles for compositions of extraordinary complexity, in a manner reminiscent of the acrylic abstractions of Gerhard Richter. But Oleg's work is also sensitive and emotionally evocative, as witnessed in the reflective contemplation of Motion in Blue II, the frenetic energy of Expectations, or the ghostly terror captured in Oil Drill. Above all, the paintings exude imagination, both the artist's imagination and human imagination in the abstract -- our capacity to think beyond ourselves and our own experience as we project order onto the world we live in today and, more pointedly, the one we will inhabit tomorrow.
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Omari Ahmad: Omari's paintings brim with dynamic energy, fueled by a dialectic between the rapid cultural modernization of East Africa and the retention or reclamation of traditional customs and mores. His arresting compositions are marked by an improbable harmony between his anarchistically arranged, brilliantly colored figures and a hypnotic white background accented with subdued darker shades in patterns borrowed from folk imagery. It is this harmony amidst chaos, a splendid visual cornucopia restrained by uncertain coyness, that Omari has developed into a distinctive style -- a style reflecting Omari's own maturation as an artist.
Omari's early work depicted traditional ways of life in his East African homeland -- for instance, in paintings of the pre-market barter system and of women in traditional dress. But as he developed these images further, his depictions became increasingly abstract, increasingly detached from the tangible reality of his subject matter. Faces have become jumbled, traditional headdresses morphed into decorative backgrounds, freestanding arms and pots managing improbable connections amidst the panopoly of eyes and smiles. His images, perhaps like Tanzania itself, have become more complex, more difficult to comprehend in a single gaze . . . but also more beautiful, more vibrant and more colorful.
Omari's paintings now inhabit an aesthetic space they have created -- a space of authentic, autochthonous modernism tinged, perhaps, with traces of European influence but decidedly not derivative. His vision represents one of the exciting avenues for the growth of contemporary African art, and Eighth Elephant is proud to introduce his work into the United States.
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Paresh Hazra: One of India’s leading artists, Paresh Hazra has developed a distinctive modern style that is rooted both in the traditional culture of West Bengal, and Indian and European modernism. Paresh paints in egg-tempera (natural color pigments mixed with egg-yolk) that was widely used in Renaissance Europe, but which he has adapted to produce modern paintings with unique texture, unparalleled reflectivity and lush ornamentation.
In the center of his paintings are traditional figures, rendered in vividly colorful images reminiscent of both Indian miniatures and Western Modernists such as Picasso or Max Beckmann. Around the periphery swirl kaleidoscopic commentaries on the central forms, a stunning backdrop of painstakingly arranged pigments, simultaneously traditional in their ornament and avant-garde in their near-fractal complexity. Texture is added by means of coconut fibers, gauze, jute and string. The resulting images are beautiful to perceive and yet impossible to fully comprehend at once – the paintings eternally fascinate, each new viewing providing a new reward: an undiscovered pattern, an unnoticed textural interplay, a subtle compositional logic.
Paresh’s international reputation is on the rise: Bill Clinton and Steve Jobs have recently purchased his work. With additional exposure in the United States, he is an artist primed to make “the leap” to grand master status.
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Sara Diciero: Even a brief glance at a Sara Diciero painting stirs the spirit. Her works are inspired by natural beauty, her images echoing the forms of geological wonders, coral reefs, seashells, even volcanos. Like Georgia O'Keeffe, Sara transforms these images into expressions of human emotions: sensuality, sexuality, spirituality. Frequently, Sara reaches a sublime level of abstraction, wherein the image contains a faint hint of a temporal form -- enough to remind us that our humanity can be reflected in the natural world, but also to insist that our soul transcends the physical realm
Sara's style is distinctive. Her forms are painted with bright, lush colors colors, accented by tiny streaks of white paint that burrow like sapling roots through and around the main forms to lend a visual texture of remarkable insight and complexity. Her compositions are improbable and even paradoxical, as the flat surface of the abstraction has nonetheless imbued with perceptive depth -- consider, for example, the swirling vortex of Entre El Cielo y La Tierra or the geological topography of Por Les Canales De Tu Amor. Sara's work has been exhibited throughout Argentina, and Eighth Elephant is pleased to introduce it to the United States.
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Vartan: Mumbai painter Vartan’s abstractions are gigantic works of art. Gigantic in size, of course – he commonly paints canvases six feet by six feet – but more importantly, gigantic in vision and spirit. Vartan is a master of composition: his paintings emanate a wild energy from what at first appears to be a free, unconstrained and even chaotic form, but a closer inspection reveals a structured dynamic of tranquility and turbulence. His paintings are frequently anchored by a simple yet elegant geometric shape (such as the oval in Beyond) or a region of serene, radiant negative space (such as the top right quadrant of Untitled 2). Around these figures or spaces, there is unceasing motion – whether it is the generative motion of a developing circle in Hollow Swirl or the unbridled energy of Composition in Yellow.
Whatever the internal logic, Vartan’s paintings are always intensely emotional and frequently uplifting, reminding us of the creative power that inheres in our abilities to forge order from chaos, or chaos from order. Vartan’s aesthetic, like his paintings, is always in motion. |
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