"Indian Highway" Exhibition Of Contemporary Art Wends Its Way Into Lyon France

Written by Margherita Stancati Thursday, 25 August 2011 19:40

Lyon, France (Wall Street Journal).- It took over two years for the exhibition “Indian Highway” to reach Lyon from London, where it started – and it may take even longer than that before it gets to Delhi, its final destination. But this exhibition of contemporary Indian art does more than just travel, it takes a new spin with every stop it takes.  “Indian Highway IV,” will be hosted by the Lyon Museum of Contemporary Art, until the end of July. The exhibition brings together the work of around 30 contemporary Indian artists–including Nikhil Chopra, Bharti Kher and Subodh Gupta – and the theme, modern and contemporary art representative of a whole subcontinent, is reinterpreted each time to fit changing venues, make room for new works and satisfy curatorial whims.The show found its first home in December 2008 in a crammed Serpentine Gallery in London before unwinding in Oslo, then in the Danish city of Herning, and now in Lyon, France.

One of Indian Highway IV’s highlights is Subodh Gupta’s “Take Off Your Shoes and Wash Your Hands” (2007), a 25-meter long stainless steel installation featuring cooking utensils stacked on shelves. This is a reference to the everyday life of India’s middle class, a recurring theme in Mr. Gupta’s work.

Jitish Kallat’s “prehistoric” vehicles are unlikely to go unnoticed either. One of them, the “Autosaurus Tripous” (2007), is a skeleton model of an auto-rickshaw, the green-and-yellow three-wheeler that is ubiquitous in urban India.

Other works on show include Dayanita Singh’s new cityscape photographs, and Bose Krishnamachari’s “Ghost/Transmemoir” (2008), an installation made of used tiffins, LCD monitors and bundled cables.

The Lyon show has a special focus on Studio Mumbai Architects, who were awarded a special jury prize at last year’s architecture Biennale in Venice and who are known for the social dimension of their work. They have an exhibition within the exhibition.

The traveling show’s Very Big Picture is a good way to give people–and potential buyers–a first introduction to Indian art. An art critic who reviewed the London show, for instance, openly admitted that before then he had never even heard of either Mr. Gupta, the star of India’s contemporary art scene, nor of M.F. Husain, the Modernist painter who is widely considered the country’s greatest living artist. The chances are this is the case for most other visitors too.




But the show’s range is problematic as well. It is probably a good thing that Mr. Husain’s work is no longer part of the exhibition. Leaving aside the controversy that surrounds some of his work, it is difficult to see what his figurative paintings have to with Ms. Kher’s fiberglass, heart-shaped sculpture (“An Absence of Assignable Cause,” 2007). The only thing that seems to links them is that both artists have Indian origins. Is that enough?

Similar questions can be raised about the concept of country-specific shows in general. Sure, knowing an artist’s background can help viewers place the work in context, but it can also be misleading.Does someone like Bharti Kher, who was born in London, necessarily have more in common with other Indian artists than she does with Damien Hirst?

There’s another risk involved in an India-only show: that the “Indianness” of the work (think bindis, rickshaws and tiffins) may overshadow–and sometimes take precedence–over artistic merit. Some argued this was the case when “Indian Highway” opened at the Serpentine Gallery, suggesting the works selected for the show engaged overtly with their Indian identity to make the show more palatable to a Western audience.

Still, the exhibition as it stands today, in Lyon, seems more coherent than it was when it first started: not only is the art on show strictly contemporary but the focus on themes like urbanization give it a sharper edge. Perhaps by the time “Indian Highway” reaches Delhi, it will be an even better show.




This is unlikely to be any time before 2013, though fixed dates are yet to be set. Around September the show will move from Lyon to Rome’s MAXXI contemporary art museums, one of starchitect’s Zaha Hadid’s latest projects. It will then head east to Moscow, then further east to Singapore and Hong Kong before leaping over the Pacific to Brazil’s São Paolo.

The show runs at MAC Lyon, the city’s contemporary art museum, until July 31. Situated within Lyon’s Cité Internationale, by the banks of the Rhone and near the Tete d’Or park , the Musée d’Art Contemporain is in the heart of Lyon's most scenic and pleasant area. In 1984, when the museum was located within the Musée des Beaux Arts de Lyon, a desire to support new artists in the production of new art works began. These works, whether new projects for the artist or continuation of an earlier concept, were produced in the museum and for the museum, in direct collaboration with the artist and became a part of the museum’s permanent collection. This gave an opportunity for artists to experiment with form, idea and dimension, and to create work in harmony with the final display space itself.

MAC collects works created by living artists. Consequently, they are largely focused on current artistic practices, but without ignoring historic trends that have contributed to those of today. When the museum was established in 1984, it set itself the objective of completing the contemporary art collection that the Musée des Beaux Arts lacked. To achieve this, it developed a politic of production of works of art in parallel with an exhibition programme of current trends and practices. In addition to "Indian Highway IV",  the MAC is also exhibiting a collection of works by the Cameroon born artist Pascale Marthine Tayou (until May 15th 2011). Visit the museum's website at ... http://www.mac-lyon.com

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