Tarshito

The Fish and the Lines
April 25 - May 23, 2009
Kolkata

Bose Pacia Kolkata
Stephen Court, 18 Park Street,Kolkata 700 017
Tel: (033) 4001- 148 Email: bosepaciakolkata@gmail.com


Tarshito: " The Vase and The Lines "
April 25th to May 24th, 2009

Bose Pacia Kolkata is pleased to announce "The Vase and the Lines," the solo exhibition of new works by the Italian artist known as Tarshito.

On display will be a range of works that demonstrate the artist's amazing breadth of practice. Large wall-mounted works use texts (in both English and Italian), paintings and textiles to create banners promoting world unity. Golden Vases and Hybridized Maps (India and Italy joined together to create one new continent, for instance) are paired with robustly striped textiles from Nagaland, usually in just two or three colors along with black and white. Some of these banners proclaim "One Land, One Humanity" ("Una Sola Terra, Una Sola Umanita" in Italian) while others incorporate longer texts attributed to Mother Teresa. These banners are flags for a new unified populace, in the spirit of John Lennon's famous dictum: "Imagine there's no countries." In smaller works, Tarshito combines text, vases and brushwork to create paintings that are both spontaneous and meditative.

On display will also be a number of works using ceramics that the artist has made while in Calcutta. Tarshito uses the fish as a symbol of peace and freedom. He combines schools of them together in different colors to create striped relief works and as the skin of vase forms. The Vase, which occurs repeatedly in Tarshito's work, is a symbol of the self being a receptacle, open to the sky ready to receive.

Born Niccola Strippoli, he was reborn as Tarshito on his first visit to India in 1979. 'Tarshito' means thirsty for inner knowledge. An architect by training, Tarshito merges his western design sensibility with the iconographies and materials of India through a creative meditational practice. Profoundly impressed by the diversity and richness of Indian craft traditions, he has developed collaborative relationships with a wide variety of artisans all over India. Open to all techniques, his production encompasses painting (both large-scale and miniature), sculpture, drawing, textiles, jewelry, and applied design. Tarshito gives full credit to the artisans he collaborates with and acknowledges fully their input in his works.

Simultaneous with the exhibition at Bose Pacia will be a show entitled "The Vase and The Warriors of Love" being hosted by the Taj Bengal Hotel from April 28th to May 9th.
Tarshito's exhibition entitled "Jugalbandhi" is currently being shown at the Nehru Centre London, after which it will move to the Italian Cultural Centre, also in London. He has had two previous solo shows in India: at the Nature Morte Gallery in New Delhi in 2007 and the Crafts Museum, New Delhi in 2001.

Bose Pacia Kolkata is a partnership between two galleries: Bose Pacia in New York (est. 1994) and Nature Morte in New Delhi (est. 1997). The gallery is open everyday from 11 to 7 and closed on Mondays. For more information and press photographs, please contact Bhavana Agnihotri at 9836287111.