Traversing empirical spaces - Solo Art Exhibition

Traversing empirical spaces Vijayaraghavan.S http://vijaysvhavan.wix.com/vijay

Dedicated to my mother, my wife, my daughter

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Traversing empirical spaces 9 Nov - 17 Nov 18 | Vijayaraghavan.S http://vijaysvhavan.wix.com/vijay

This art exhibition was presented at: Hamburg Hall, Goethe-Zentrum Hyderbad 20, Journalist Colony, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, India http://hyderabad.german.in/

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CONTENTS Critic note - Sudeep Ghosh | 5

Art works series

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Video Art project

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Biography | 33 Acknowledgements | 34

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Traversing empirical spaces Vijay’s artistic consciousness is a dialectic of continuum where the semiotics of memory is interrogated by invoking the epochal, the subverted and the unarticulated. Space, the unifying rhythm, mobilises three levels of cognizance – cultural, architectural and futuristic which are inextricably intertwined.

Its dissemination into history, popular culture, technology and digital media unmasks ideological interfaces, unties knots of desires and unravels binary opposites in artistic paradigms. Vijay’s referential narrative crafts a compelling and exuberant model of post-modern discourse on the theses and antitheses of forms and frames, contexts and metaphors.

The triads of machine, mind and myth in Vijay’s works integrate archetypal images of social-cultural paraphernalia to contest prejudices of puritan mentality. He gets into the inner logic of consumerism which capitalises unabashedly on bourgeois hangovers. What whips up passive nostalgia is the need to reorient the anachronistic.

The value tag, the world of urban space claims, is more about spurring senses where power-quest fantasies gatecrash as a political sub-text of transgressive affinity with quasi-democracy. Icons, contextualising agencies and fault lines, suggest how the sobriety of faith nurtures the spirit of humanity against the daunting blizzard of polarization, the excesses of fundamentalism and demagoguery.

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Machine is anthropomorphised to articulate freedom and happiness. Indian mudras of Shakti valorise the divine female, despite much paradoxical evidence to the contrary. It also vindicates women’s tenacity to do the Sisyphean act irrespective of the gravitational pull of misogyny. Vijay turns culture inside out at multiple levels of conceptualisation and production through the language of self-reflexivity, hybridization and multi-media.

Memory is an immersive space to unlock the realms of imagination and history. Be it Berlin or India, Vijay’s compositional flow captures a web of images, rural and urban, historical and contingent, and its physical and metaphysical signifiers.

The juxtaposed detail shots, intermediary montages and vignettes conflate the subject with subjectivity. The mapping of memory in the spatio-temporal relationships brings out the passage of time where perceptual senses intermingle. Among imagistic stimuli, the lone metaphor of a tree not only uncovers rampant urbanisation and the spawning trans-local space but also the ecological consciousness and its downward drift, superseded by the consumerist frenzy of self-indulgence. Vijay’s search for disintegrating social spaces in the wake of displacement and de-territorialisation provokes a pressing need to preserve the moribund organic spaces and confront the shrinking space of the marginalised in the metropole.

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Straddling the spaces of the past and the present, Vijay’s works anticipate the future space of control, communication and continuum. A lurking, insidious sense of vulnerability, evident in his abstract works, foresees the nemesis of techno-centric hubris in a post-humanist world. The futuristic space implies a searching probe into the ideological couplings between trans-humanism and ethics, the mind and the machine. This introspective space raises foundational questions on the synergy between experience and essence, emulation and conscience. The collective intelligence of Vijay’s works creates a prodigious reach into a synecdochic narrative keen on forging the other, unheard narratives. The etymology of space, ruptured and redeemed, awaits the viewers and scholars seeking it.

Sudeep Ghosh Sudeep Ghosh is an art critic, poet and translator. He lives and works in Hyderabad (India) sudeepmailsu@gmail.com +91 8978892697

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techno avatar | digital Art, epson inkjet print on canson photo art pro canvas, 52x31� inches. 2018 Š vijayaraghavan.s

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remaining converse photography, polytypic, epson inkjet print on epson fine art paper, 24x16� inches, 2018, Š vijayaraghavan.s

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in-between converse - 1 | photography, tetraptych , epson inkjet print on epson fine art paper, 24x16� inches, 2018 Š vijayaraghavan.s

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remembrance | photography, diptych, epson inkjet print on epson fine art paper, 24x16� inches, 2018 Š vijayaraghavan.s

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in-between converse - 2 | photography, epson nkjet print on epson fine art paper, 12”x18” inches, 2018 © vijayaraghavan.S

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Meeting Point – 1 | photo-montage with graphic, Epson inkjet print on Breathing colour allure metal, 8.27”×11.69” inches, 2018 © Vijayaraghavan.S

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redemption of past memories | photography, QR Bar codes, water colour, acrylic paint with mixed media on paper, 60.96 x 167.64 cm, 2018 Š Vijayaraghavan.S

details:

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in-between Converse - 3 | photography, diptych, epson inkjet print on epson fine art paper, 24x16� inches, 2018 Š Vijayaraghavan.S

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wansee to pasedagplatz | QR Bars and mixed media on digital art printed on hahnemuhle photo rag paper, Size: 241cm x 25cm, 2016, Š Vijayaraghavan.S

details:

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In-between converse — 4 | photography, epson inkjet print on epson fine art paper, 12x18” inches, 2018 , © Vijayaraghavan.S

In-between converse - 5 | photography, epson inkjet print on epson fine art paper, 12x18” inches, 2018 © Vijayaraghavan.S

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signage to abstraction photo-montage, epson inkjet print on epson fine art paper, 20x22� inches, 2018 Š Vijayaraghavan.S

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melting abstraction | water colour, acrylic, rice paper and mixed media with epson inkjet print on epson fine art paper, 18x24� inches, 2018 Š Vijayaraghavan.S

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diagonal converse - 1 | Photograph, epson inkjet print on breathing colour fine art paper, 24x16� Inches, 2018 Š Vijayaraghavan.S

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diagonal converse –2 | photograph, epson inkjet print on breathing colour fine art paper, 12x18 inches, 2018 © Vijayaraghavan.S

diagonal converse – 3 | photograph, epson inkjet print on breathing colour fine art paper, 12x18 inches, 2018 © Vijayaraghavan.S

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contrast | photograph, diptych, epson inkjet print on breathing colour fine art paper, 42x18� inches 2018 Š Vijayaraghavan.S

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inhale exhale | photograph, diptych, epson inkjet print on breathing Colour fine art paper each size: 29.7 x 42.0cm, 2018 ,Š Vijayaraghavan.S

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all alone | photography epson inkjet print on epson fine art paper, 24x16� inches, 2018 Š Vijayaraghavan.S

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fusion | 19 x 23 inches, epson inkjet print on Ink press metallic gloss paper, 2018 ,Š Vijayaraghavan.S

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traversing nostalgia | photography, diptych, epson inkjet print on epson fine art paper, 34x16� inches, 2018 Š Vijayaraghavan.S

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linear converse –1 | photograph, epson inkjet print on breathing colour fine art paper, 12x18 inches, 2018 © Vijayaraghavan.S

linear converse –2 | photograph, epson inkjet print on breathing colour fine art paper,12x18 inches, 2018 © Vijayaraghavan.S

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radial converse | photography, tetraptych , epson inkjet print on epson fine art paper, 24x16� inches, 2018 Š Vijayaraghavan.S

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meeting point –2 | photography, epson inkjet print on epson fine art paper, 24x16” inches, 2018 © Vijayaraghavan.S

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crossing | photography, epson inkjet print on epson fine art paper, 24x16� inches, 2018 Š Vijayaraghavan.S

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evolution of future | photography, epson inkjet print on epson fine art paper, 12x18” inches, 2018 © Vijayaraghavan.S

urban root Photography, epson inkjet print on epson fine art paper, 12x18” inches 2018 © Vijayaraghavan.S

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video art project

Techno avatar - 1 | animated single channel video projection. Duration: 00:28:00 seconds, 2016 Š Vijayaraghavan.S

Link: https://vimeo.com/202266381

Towards the end of the Second World War, Enrico Piaggio was driven by the idea of offering the widest possible market a low-cost product. With this idea in mind, the factory at Biella produced a motor-scooter. I found in the body of LML Vespa a strong connection with my nativity and popular image across the globe. I integrated multiple hand gestures with signs and symbols of Indian idols into a single channel animated video. The movement and repeated action explore how the commodification of industrialised world and human actions impact mundane life. It displays how we are commodified, tortured in mindless conflicts against violation, political intolerance, sexual impulse in urban modernity and the pains of urban development perpetually.

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Bio: VIJAYARAGHAVAN Visual artist, painter, video artist and photographer, (born Madurai, India 1981) holds an MFA – Painting from the College of Art in New Delhi. He did an advanced studio art program at Berlin Art Institute, Berlin.

He is determined to exploit the potential of socio-political, personal and emotional expressions raised over self-ideology and consciousness through his artworks. His artworks evolve around variety, complexity, beauty and expression juxtaposing the realms of new media technologies which bring abbreviation to an artistic expression dealing with the reality of mundane human life experiences. He tries to articulate these experiences in a more implicit, allegorical and symbolical way. He explores the possibilities of new media art that facilitate to carry forward static painted images transforming them into visual animation. The notion of these activities and varied interrelated images and objects assist him to develop a language of binary terms through the dichotomy of rhetoric: purity and kitsch, noise and melody etc.

Vijay has had major exhibitions and participated various shows and biennials nationally and internationally. The notably LILY AGIUS GALLERY, MALTA, CCA Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow, UK, Casablanca International Video Art Festival, Casablanca – Morocco, GALERIE TOOLBOX, Berlin, Germany, Leyden Gallery, London, Festival VideoBabel – 2017, Spain, Miami New Media Festival 2017, Florida, USA, Miranda Kuo Gallery, NY, USA, LASALLE College of the Arts, Singapore, Gallery Aferro, NJ, USA, le Dame Art Gallery, London, 28th and 25th Nomadic Festival Les Instants Vidéo, France, 10th Berlin International Directors Lounge, Berlin, Espaco de Art’es Multimedia Performance and Alliance Franchise de Coimbra in Portugal, SARAI READER 09” Curated by Raqs Media Collective and collaboration between Devi Art Foundation and Sarai – CSDS and supported by Norwegian Embassy, New Delhi. Fugitive Video Project represents: Solus @ Filmbase, Dublin, Ireland, and Banff Center Banff, Canada. BLIND SPOT – DIE FABRIKANTEN, Austria. Free waves Presents “Too much freedom” 10th Biennale Film, Video & New Media Festival, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, U.S.A. Currently the artist lives and works in India S. Vijayaraghavan | vijay.svhavan@gmail.com | +91-9176780708

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Acknowledgment Ms. Githa Hariharan, eminent writer and founder member of the Indian Writers Forum (commonwealth awardee in 1993 for her first novel, The Thousand Faces of Night) Ms. Merlin Ebhenzer, Visual Artist/Sculptor (Director of Indus Art Collective, New Delhi) Mr. Sudeep Ghosh, Art critic, poet and translator, Hyderabad (India) Mr. Ralf Schmitt, Founder & co-director, Berlin Art Institute, Berlin Ms. Stephanie JĂźnemann, Founder & co-director, Berlin Art Institute, Berlin Imprima Studio, Hyderabad, Mr. Ismail Sharif, Wild Life Photographer, Ms. Amita Desai, Director, Goethe-Zentrum, Hyderabad, India Ms.J yothi, Program Coordinator, Goethe Zentrum, Hyderbad, India SRI. G.V Manimaran, General Secretary, CBOA, India Dr.Salim A.L. Bhatia, Director of Academies, The Aga Khan Academies Dr Graham Ranger as Academic Director for the Aga Khan Academies.

Dr.Geoffery Fisher, Head of Academy, The Aga Khan Academy Hyderabad Mr.Aaron Jacob, Senior School Principal, The Aga Khan Academy Hyderabad Ms. Neeraja Nibhanupudi , Dean of Studies, The Aga Khan Academy Hyderabad Ms.Meenakshi Joshi, HOD, Creative Arts/MYP coordinator, The Aga Khan Academy Hyderabad Mr. Ali Asger, Royal Frames, Hyderabad Mr.Badrinath, Composer/Sound Designer

This art exhibition was presented at: Hamburg Hall, Goethe-Zentrum Hyderbad 20, Journalist Colony, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad, India http://hyderabad.german.in/

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All fine art prints printed at

critic note © sudeep ghosh photographs, video & digital art © vijayaraghavan.s design © vijayaraghavan.s fine art prints © imprima, hyderabad catalog printed © r square design 35 studio