Thukral & Tagra, 'Phantoms @ XIB -2a', 2008
Oil & acrylic on canvas
72" x 120" (183cm x 305cm) diptych (2 canvases)
Based in New Delhi, Jiten Thukral and Sumir Tagra work collaboratively in a wide variety of media including painting, sculpture, installation, video, graphic and product design, websites, music and fashion. For their first show in Germany Thukral & Tagra have produced a suite of works entitled "Nouveau Riche" which focus on the postmodern architectural style that can be found throughout India and is commonly referred to as "Punjabi Baroque."
Vulgar and ostentatious, confused and desperately misguided, the style has been propagated by builders without the assistance of architects, reflecting the jumble of sensibilities that come together to create the new exploding middle-class of India. T&T pump up the volume to turn these suburban homes into surrealist castles, sugar coated and floating on clouds of flowers. In paintings and sculptures, they explore this aesthetic of the proudly bastardized, the boisterous Mamma's boys who pretend to be gangsters, the teenage farmers who dream of making it big in Bollywood.
Jiten Thukral was born in 1976 in Jalandhar, Punjab. He received a BFA from Chandigarh College of Art and his MFA from the Delhi College of Art. Sumir Tagra was born in 1979 in New Delhi. He received a BFA from the Delhi College of Art and later studied at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad. Thukral & Tagra have worked together since 2003 and have held solo exhibitions of their works at Nature Morte in New Delhi (2005 & 2007), Chatterjee & Lal in Mumbai (2008), Bose Pacia, New York (2007) and the Barry Keldoulis Gallery in Sydney (2008). In 2007, Nature Morte and Bose Pacia presented their solo installation entitled "Adolescere-Domus" in the Art Statements section of Art Basel. They are currently included in a large exhibition of contemporary art from India at the Mori Museum in Tokyo, which will travel to the Essl Museum in Vienna in the spring of 2009. Upcoming exhibitions include major presentations at the Vancouver Sculpture Biennale and the Asia Pacific Triennial at the Queensland Art Gallery in Brisbane, Australia.
Thukral & Tagra: Nouveau Riche
Until 14 February
Nature Morte
T +49-171-422-7711
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