A comprehensive picture of contemporary Asian art
Thermocline of Art - New Asian Waves, a major Asia-centric art exhibition, features around 117 artists who represent almost 20 Asian countries from the Far East to Middle East, and from Southeast Asia to Central Asia and Near East.
It’s a significant international art event being held at ZKM, Museum of Contemporary Art based in Germany. The show was on view till the first week of November 2007.
Thermocline of Art offered a comprehensive, insightful picture of contemporary art in Asian sub-continent. The exhibition made an attempt to make visible Asian art that is still largely undiscovered in the West, from an Asian perspective.
The title of the show refers to a climatic phenomenon: akin to the whirlpool that one can notice shooting from the water’s turbulent surface when ocean waters witness a considerable change in temperature.
Prominent Indian artists whose works formed part of this significant show were Reena Saini Kallat, Jitish Kallat, Shilpa Gupta, Anant Joshi, Chitra Ganesh, B.M. Kamath, Sheba Chhachhi Amar Kanwar and Justin Ponmany.
The categories in which the woks were divided into were on basis of common issues depicted by Asian artists, such as Digitized Political, Social and Economic Status; Asian Modernity, Urbanization and Tailorism; Innovations from Myth, Tradition and Religion to Present; Globalism & Post-Colonial Issues; Identity Crisis, Hybridity, Conflicts and Poly-Contexuality; New Daily Life Reflections: Grounding and Dual realities, and Augmented Realities; Asian Fantasy, Imagination, and Black Humor’; Cynicism, Absurdity, Satire Paradox and Nonsensical Time & Space, and Asian Metaphor; Meditation and Skepticism.
The curatorial intention, that ran through the artworks of all the 117 participating artists from India & other Asian countries was to suggest how 'ambiguity', as the main theme epitomizing the chaos, ambiguity, confusion uncertainty & unstableness of Asian modernity, generates the affirmative, creative, productive time and space.
The exhibition focused on the multiple realities & hybrid identities which have arisen in Asian sub-continent through the effects of post-colonialism, globalization & the poly-contextuality of the diverse political, religious, cultural and economic systems. The artists react with skepticism, humor, and even cynicism to the conflicts and absurdities of the social systems between innovation and tradition.
It showcased paintings, films, installations, sculptures, photographs, videos and objects that commented on the perennial issues of globalization & its effects on the Asian realm.
The show encompasses the way Asian contemporary art is now confronting new values.
