Art moves out of the gallery

GURGAON: The meagre attendance figures usually recorded at galleries and exhibitions in NCR show how the popular appeal of art has begun to wane in urban India. The question aficionados, curators and artists are now asking is how best to revive the scene. And the answer to this may well lie in a curious inversion - people may not be attending exhibitions anymore, but exhibitions can still be taken directly to the people.
In recent weeks, the city has seen a series of such unconventional art events, where the organizers seemed to have turned their backs on art galleries in order to effectively move into the public space. Art exhibitions are now being hosted at residential blocks, hotel lobbies, malls, and - in one instance - a factory compound.
One of the objectives of such an approach, of course, is to get the eyeballs. But taking a work of art outside a gallery also serves another crucial function. It 'contextualizes' art by taking it off a pedestal, as it were, and placing it in a real-world setting, as Sharan Apparao, director of Apparao Galleries, put it.
Apparao has an art gallery in Chennai. But apart from this, she has tied up with hotels in Chennai, Mumbai and Delhi, where she has organized various exhibitions. Her new exhibition space in Gurgaon is inside the high-end condominium on the Golf Course Road called The Magnolias. "In total, we have 220 works of art on view here. We rotate the collection every once in a while. It's like a 24/7 art exhibition," said Apparao.
Gallery owners everywhere, according to Apparao, are looking for alternatives to the usual way exhibitions are organized. "When the business is down, you're forced to think in alternative directions. We are trying getting art to the audience rather than the other way around," she said.
The artworks on display at the Magnolias include ceramics by Rahul Kumar, who has had his works auctioned at the Sotheby's in London in 2012. Kumar's sculptures are a part of an exhibition called 'Engaging the Earth.' "What is interesting about this show is its structure. Here you take art out of a wide cube sort of a setting and place it where it naturally fits and belongs," Kumar said.