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October 2001 New York – Bose Pacia Modern is pleased to announce the winner of the 2001 Bose Pacia Prize for Contemporary Art,
"Prashant Salvi". The Bose Pacia Prize for Contemporary Art (formerly known as the Bose Pacia Emerging Artist Award), initiated in 1997, takes place every two years and is open to emerging artists from India. Encouraged by the increasing attention paid to India's twentieth century master painters as well as to its important contemporary artists, Bose Pacia Modern created the award to introduce new talent from India to the international art community.
This year's competition was judged by
Shamim Momin, curator, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and
William Stover, curator, New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York. This year, the call for entries drew a record number of high quality applicants. Along with selecting the winner, the judges named four runners up, in descending order,
Bose Krishnamachari, Yashwant Deshmukh, M S C Satya Sai, and Gopikrishna ; all five artists will be displayed in an exhibition at Bose Pacia Modern gallery from November 2 through December 8. The gallery is located at 508 West 26th Street on the 11th Floor. There will be an opening reception on November 7 from 6 to 8pm. The public is invited.
Even in India,
Prashant Salvi is relatively unknown, exhibiting only in his hometown of Mumbai. Bose Pacia Modern is excited not only to show his fresh talent to America but to the rest of India as well. Salvi studied at the prestigious Sir J.J. School of Art in Mumbai, receiving his BFA in 1996 and MFA in 1998. At the age of only twenty-nine, Salvi tackles very complex issues of prejudice, humanity, and sexuality. Each painting depicts a protagonist's plight in the encounters of a fantasy world representative of a parallel reality. Every element of his compositions symbolizes the relationship between cultural and natural phenomena in the world that interact on various levels in both harmony and conflict.
Just one year after earning his M.F.A. from Goldsmiths College in London, first runner up,
Bose Krishnamachari, has constructed a compelling narrative based heavily upon contemporary western art history in his triptychs. His powerful juxtaposition of graphite drawings, photographic images, and language probe multiple sensibilities in the viewer's visual vocabulary. At the age of thirty-eight, Krishnamachari has shown in several exhibitions throughout India. A native of Kerala, he currently resides in Mumbai where he earned his B.F.A. at Sir J.J. School of Art.
Another resident of Mumbai and alum of Sir J.J. School of Art, thirty-eight-year-old painter
Yashwant Deshmukh, uses everyday objects, such as jars and spoons, to explore the metaphysics of space and form. This minimalist painter is a native of Akola, Maharashtra. Deshmukh has shown primarily in Mumbai but has also been featured in two exhibitions at Gallery 7 in Hong Kong.
In the midst of pursuing a M.F.A. from the Jamia Millia Islamia in New Delhi, MSC
Satya Sai is the only current student in the show. Sai draws on more accessible themes of present life in India, such as the value of safety, or life for that matter, in the face of ever-increasing traffic and population. He has developed a unique method of coloring these photo-representational images of Indian life with indigenous and religiously symbolic materials, namely turmeric. Originally from Hyderabad, Sai is thirty-six years old.
Most of
Gopikrishna's life and career has been based out of Trivandrum, Kerala, but at the age of thirty-six, he makes his second international appearance here in New York after a group show at Schoo's Gallery in Amsterdam. After receiving his B.F.A. from the College of Fine Arts in Trivandrum, he went on to earn a M.F.A. from the College of Art at the University of Delhi. The dreamlike quality of Gopikrishna's vivid paintings lends a surrealistic commentary on the tumultuous journey of individualism in and out of the vastness of India.