Thukral & Tagra At Art Basel
Jiten & Sumir were at Art Basel again this year with Nature Morte. These are some pictures from their booth at Basel.
They have also showed in Tokyo and Sydney this year. Most interesting is the variety in their work. When I met them a few months ago at their home studio, it was great to see two creative minds exploring possibilities, mediums and narratives. T&T have so many exciting projects that will keep us asking for more.
They have also showed in Tokyo and Sydney this year. Most interesting is the variety in their work. When I met them a few months ago at their home studio, it was great to see two creative minds exploring possibilities, mediums and narratives. T&T have so many exciting projects that will keep us asking for more.
Tags: art basel, t&t, thukral tagra
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by IAN Editor on -
WARNING:
This is not meant to be a platform to get personal. I will ban any member who continues to be abusive, personal and vindictive on this site. I will send relevant members a personal warning, after which I will ban them if they continue to behave in such a manner.
The IAN Team
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Permalink Reply by Bhupesh gupta on -
you should have stopped him in his tracks .................. if some one gets personal and abusive with me i won't take it lying down !
Deepak said:WARNING:
This is not meant to be a platform to get personal. I will ban any member who continues to be abusive, personal and vindictive on this site. I will send relevant members a personal warning, after which I will ban them if they continue to behave in such a manner.
The IAN Team
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Permalink Reply by IAN Editor on
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We have sent emails to members we feel have been a little too enthusiastic on this forum. Good to see no more personal remarks. Lets all take a deep breath and relax. Ooooooommmmmmmmmmmm.
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Permalink Reply by Bhupesh gupta on
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i think there's a HELL lot of difference between " LITTLE TOO ENTHUSIASTIC and BEING INDECENT AND ABUSIVE " ................ the debate should have been THOUGHT- PROVOKING ONLY but now-a-days you can get away with everything under the sun in the name of freedom of expression !
" sticks and stones are thrown only at fruit bearing trees.......... old indian proverb !"
Deepak said:We have sent emails to members we feel have been a little too enthusiastic on this forum. Good to see no more personal remarks. Lets all take a deep breath and relax. Ooooooommmmmmmmmmmm.
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Permalink Reply by Kapil Chopra on -
They have to be great artists if they inspire people with so much hate and love ! I am a big fan if these guys and think they are fantastic and have a lot of content.
Artseek- I liked Jayanta Roy also on his show with Nature Morte, has evolved well if you have seen his previous works which were mediocre but in the current show liked his newspaper work and also the Zebra work, he is good but would need to develop content and evolve, good potential for the future. In the younger guys, I think Gurusidappa is awesome, check out his solo in Sakshi in the archive section, Shilpa Gupta has always been good.2 guys coming on the scene are Nandan Ghiya and Yati Jaiswal, just won the National Award and the Kashi award, check them out also in the sub 2 lac category.
In my top list its T&T, Atul Dodiya and TV Santosh, let everyone else say what they have to say !
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Permalink Reply by IAN Editor on
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I jsut received the gallery guide (which is a mini version of a full catalogue) from the Christie's sale in HK on 30 Nov and 1 Dec. Some very high quality works by T&T in auction. There is a also a lovely work in the Bihar Charity Auction at www.saffronart.com next week.
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Permalink Reply by IAN Editor on
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From the recent Outlook Magazine
Tribhuvan Tiwari Sumir Tagra, left and Jiten Thukral at their studio in Gurgaon 
An art gallery-turned-supermarket stocked with fake branded products. A looming 23 ft pink mall-o-saurus, assembled out of custom-made cans. Busts of Punjabi lads adorned with Mercedes logos. These are a few of the cheeky, playful ways in which artists Jiten Thukral, 31, and Sumir Tagra, 29, are making themselves the most sought-after figures in Indian pop art, taking subversive aim at the things they see in the world around them—the cult of consumption, the hollow yet seductive coercions of advertising and the blinkered aspirations of Punjabi youth who want nothing more than to flee the country.ART: CONSUMERISM Beaux Mundas Consumerism turns into overblown, cheeky visual puns. What's more, it sells.
Thukral and Tagra are multi-disciplinary artists, who work in a range of media—installations, sculptures, painting, websites and videos. They delight in irony, an ingredient common to all their work. The biggest irony of all, however, is that their sophisticated kitsch and their slickly packaged takedowns of consumerism are now so popular that these Punjabi lads have themselves become irresistibly saleable commodities.
Sotheby's and Christie's periodically auction their pieces for crores of rupees, the cult design magazine Wallpaper named them among the 101 top emerging designers in the world, and GQ has hailed them as style icons for their natty "new-age retro" suits which they design themselves. They've also made exclusive lines of bags and clothing for Puma and Benetton, and designed the packaging for an international batch of Pepsi cans.
Their art has found favour with celebrity collectors too: Elton John trekked all the way to Sydney to purchase a steel dome painted with nostalgic childhood references, part of their 'Somnium Genero" series. Hedge fund billionaire and influential collector Steve Cohen bought two pieces from their 'Immortals' series, mock-trophy busts of Punjabi lads bedecked in luxurious foreign baubles.
A dinosaur assembled from custom-made cans
Goods favoured by the "foreign-returned", like whisky and chocolate syrup, feature prominently in their supermarket-style installations, labelled with the pair's fake brandname, Bosedk. That, true to their style, is a mock-anglicisation of an unprintable Punjabi swear word that refers to the female genitalia.
Thukral and Tagra's work is eagerly consumed by those towards whom their irony is directed: a nouveau riche visitor to their exhibit in Delhi's Gallery Nature Morte in '06 came away with a cheeky "pen chor" T-shirt stuffed in a jar. Later, he phoned to find out when their funky Bosedk "branded" products would be retailed. And various malls have eagerly phoned to find out whether they might be able to acquire the pink mall-dinosaur, which mocks consumerism's monstrous mascots, for children to play on.
"People love our work, even if they don't always understand it," says Sumir Tagra, with an indulgent grin. "But we can't explain everything!" If they did get around to offering explanations, though, the titles of their work would be a good place to begin—they seem to specialise in giving lofty Latin names to societal maladies. For instance, their project titled 'Effluvio', or escape, refers to young Punjabi boys who desperately hanker after foreign shores and foreign goods. 'Somnium Genero' (Dream Generator) refers to nostalgia, childhood and the subconscious. 'Adolescere Domus' (Adolescent's House)—their installation for the prestigious Art Basel festival in 2007, depicting an adolescent's room—shows the importance of brands in a teenager's construction of his identity.
And 'Dominus Aeris', or flying houses—wedding cake confections inspired by their own neighbour's house—is a tongue-in-cheek depiction of the denatured, hotchpotch architectural style that's come to be known as Punjabi baroque.
Thukral and Tagra met in their college days and developed an instant artistic and personal rapport. All their projects are constantly revisited and reinvented. For instance, Jiten Thukral, who grew up in Jalandhar, and whose father is a one-time wrestling champion, spotted photos of an old friend while trawling a social networking site. He was struck by the sight of his once-puny friend posting portly, snow-flecked pictures of himself in Canada. That inspired the duo to add a new element to their Effluvio project—a trophy bust hooked up to a compressor; gaunt and dour-faced at room-temperature and ecstatic when frozen.
Thukral and Tangra profess great admiration for conceptual artists Damien Hirst and Subodh Gupta. But in their layering of pop-culture references, their blurring of distinctions between high art and kitsch, and representation of their own selves as slickly packaged statements to go with their work, they're closer to American sculptor Jeff Koons and Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami. Koons is known for his oversized kitsch sculptures and attentiveness to his brand image. Murakami's artistic style blends references to underground culture, consumerism and fetishism—and can be purchased in Louis Vuitton stores in the shape of the Murakami bag.
Thukral and Tagra make local tongues speak an international language with such effortless fluency that their diaries are booked all the year round. Over the coming months, for instance, they'll hit Tokyo for a Mori Museum show, then London, Miami and New York, followed by Berlin and Singapore. Visiting relatives from Punjab, agog at their passports covered with multicoloured, multilingual stamps, often push their kids forward and say, "Here, take him along. I'll pay you." Perhaps that'll be inspiration for yet another installation.
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Permalink Reply by Bhupesh gupta on
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Messrs. Lewis and Ford analyze what’s happening in the world of contemporary art—or, rather, in the world of the contemporary art market—as a “classic investment bubble.” There’s a lot to be said for the analogy—or maybe it’s more than an analogy. The metabolism of the contemporary art market has learned a lot from the “specullecting” practices—part collecting, larger part financial speculation—of entrepreneurs like Charles Saatchi, the advertising mogul who was so immensely successful at insinuating the values and methods of celebrity advertising into the world of contemporary art.
First, find some unknown young artists who produce items of nugatory aesthetic but substantial shock value; buy their wares for a song; then open your own museum to exhibit them and devote your immense skills as a PR specialist to talking them up. Presto: huge profits, some of which can be reinvested in next year’s crop of enfants terribles.
near home you have a very long list of names which shot up in value out of nowhere.............. but simili's can be drawn from what bodhi art and saffron and a host of other less inspiring names rolled under the guise of international impresario's were doing untill very recently.
well it's a very unforgiving world out there and there are bound to be comparisons and need of the hour is that some heads must roll............. that's hardly any solace for the wrong doings of the dream merchants thanks mainly to abscence of accountability and any regulatory measures in place which are abetting open loot of ignorent people's money!
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