Gallery Nature Morte Berlin presents ASIANART-SUSTAIN Exhibition

Written by Dewey Sussman Thursday, 08 September 2011 23:42

BERLIN, GERMANY - Gallery Nature Morte Berlin presents ASIANART-SUSTAIN, an exhibition curated by Tereza de Arruda in the framework of the 8th Asia-Pacific Weeks, a bi-annual forum for political, economical, educational, and cultural exchange between Germany and the Asian-Pacific region. The focus of this year’s Asia-Pacific Weeks are Water, Food, and Health, issues which determined the selection of the artists from China, India and Japan.

Working in various media, the artists Sheba Chhachhi, Wang Chengyun, Liu Ding, Song Dong, Takafumi Hara, Takeshi Makishima and Rosilene Luduvico, Vivan Sundaram, Thukral & Tagra, Yukihiro Taguchi, Miao Xiaochun and Xiong Yu address the necessity of living sustainably. They playfully convey our dependence on water, food and health, without which humans could not exist. In many parts of the world, the distribution of these three elements is determined and manipulated by nationality, religion, politics or economics.

The artists in this exhibition are known for their continuous dedication to their environment. New Delhi born Vivan Sundaram’s video “Flotage: River Yamuma” documents a project in which the artist hired city trash collectors to construct a raft out of 8000 discarded bottles. Using the bottle-raft, Sundaram then ferried passengers across the river, whose once clean waters now figure among the most polluted in the world.

Also shown in the exhibition is “The Beautiful Game,” an interactive pool table installation by Thukral & Tagra. The game invites viewers to hole a billiard ball, while teaching how to put on a condom. The playful gesture and the surrounding wall installation avoid any sense of prudishness, allowing the artist-duo to address sexuality in a stress-free way and heighten awareness of diseases such as HIV.The aim of this exhibition is a return to nature, a demand for nature’s sustainability, and a consciousness of the value of one’s own life.

Founded in New York's East Village in 1982 and closed in 1988, Peter Nagy revived Nature Morte in New Delhi in 1997 as an itinerant gallery and a curatorial experiment. Since then, Nature Morte has become synonymous in India with challenging and experimental forms of art; championing conceptual, photographic, and installation genres within a commercial market that remains fixated on painting. Concentrating primarily on the works of Indian artists, Nature Morte has also organized projects and exhibitions with international artists coming to India and combining their works with those of Indian artists to foster cross-cultural communications. In 2007 and in collaboration with the Bose Pacia Gallery of New York, Nature Morte opened a gallery space in central Calcutta, christened Bose Pacia Kolkata. In addition, Nature Morte has been the first gallery from India to be included in the most important international art fairs, namely Art Basel (since 2006), Art Basel Miami Beach (since 2007), The Armory Show in New York (since 2005) and FIAC in Paris (since 2006). In November 2008 Nature Morte Berlin opened to exhibit both Indian and international contemporary art. Visit : http://www.naturemorte.com/

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