Dilip Ranade's works on view
A new exhibition of artist Dilip Ranade's works presents a kaleidoscopic view of his three-decade long career.
The show titled ‘Shifting the Logic: Drawings (1977–2007)’ comprises select 150 drawings by the artist in three phases in Mumbai, New Delhi and Kolkata. Starting in Mumbai at Pundole Art Gallery Dilip Ranade's works travel to Threshold Gallery, New Delhi and then to Galerie 88, Kolkata. The works currently are on view at Gallery Threshold till December 4, 2007.
A mention needs to be made of the artist’s drawings that take definitive shape in the transit zone between whimsy and insight. This he attains through the adroit usage of illusion and allusion that together conjure up a universe whose forms are constantly in flux, swiveling between solidity and evanescence. Art Ranjit Hoskote mentions in an accompanying note to the exhibition: “In Dilip Ranade's universe, objects, images and residues leak across one another; the laws of stability and motion can be altered without warning.”
The artist received his Diploma in Drawing and Painting from Sir J. J. School of Art (1971). He studied Museology on receiving an Indo-US sub-commission grant in 1984. One of his noteworthy series of works titled '20th Century Fossil' represent the concept of 'identity' in a modern, changing society, questioning what our future will hold for us and our descendants.
Dilip Ranade's mixed-media paintings, drawings and sculptures often explore an intriguing area of consciousness. This is the area where our impressions of the material present, having been formed against the intimations of the psychological past, suddenly assume the strength and significance of revelations.
In his work, unassuming and simple objects of daily usage take on a strange symbolism, standing for much more than one could imagine. For example, plain bathroom faucets turn into extensions of the human body.
