A Manhattan gallery honors artist Rajkamal Kahlon this Friday with a reception opening her latest exhibit, ‘Unbound.’ Kahlon’s work, which I first saw at ‘Fatal Love,’ reminds me of the tortured visions of Frida Kahlo and Tarsem Singh, director of The Cell. (I said Kahlo, not J.Lo.)
Kahlon literally paints over history:
Kahlon’s new series of paintings respond to a nineteenth century tome entitled Cassell’s Illustrated History of India. After finding this book in 2003 on auction at Sotheby’s, Kahlon borrowed $400… with the intention of unbinding [it]… painting over texts and manipulating the illustrations set in front of her… she creates a charged, fragmented narrative about her relationship to India’s history and its colonial past.
You can see more of her work here and here.
‘Unbound‘ opening, Fri Apr. 22, 6-8 pm reception, 8-10pm afterparty with DJ Rekha; PPOW Gallery, 555 W. 25th St., 2nd floor, between 10th/11th Aves., Manhattan
Manish
I saw The Cell and thought it was boring. Warped and darkly lush visuals, but in a psycho-serial killer flick you want tension and fear. Any idea what Tarsem Singh is doing these days?
Do you have to RSVP for the reception/afterparty, or can you just show up? And how much is it?
These things are usually non-RSVP and free.
After the failure of The Cell Tarsem has been making television ads for a group called Radical Media. If you go to the website and scroll over to the directors from London, you can see four of the ads he’s done recently in quicktime.
He did one ad for Nike that I think was played in the last superbowl. It’s a little frightening!
My favorite is a commercial he did for an Italian shoe company called “Superga,” I think. It uses Prodigy’s “Firestarter” — a techno/dnb classic.
Here are the Tarsem Singh video clips Amardeep’s talking about.
I took a look at some of her work on the linked websites. I don’t know much about art, but I noticed that in addition to the charged, fragmented narrative about her relationship to India’s history and its colonial past, the work also contained a strong underlying theme of pink stuff coming out of people’s crotches.
Any thoughts?
Cheers Amardeep. I wonder if he will make movies again. Imagine if he put that dark stylistic into a desi story.
On a tangent, after seeing the picture of Rajkamal, I think there is something immensely sexy about female artists. They say that for men, being a writer or singer or artist is an aphrodisiac for the opposite sex. I reckon its true the other way too.
All of a sudden, someone becomes interesting and enigmatic and creative and that is immensely attractive.