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Lot Essay
His women, while commanding in scale and demeanor, have less-than-idealized features, closer to folk than to fine art. And while he titles some pieces for the Great Goddess, Devi, others are given ordinary Indian names, often ones popular in rural India. The result is a hybrid, with roots in the past but also in the pop cultural present. A heroic art with a common touch: kitsch for the ages.
H. Cotter, ‘Art in Review: Ravinder Reddy’, The New York Times, 12 October 2001
Exploring the co-existence of the traditional and the contemporary, Ravinder Reddy's brightly hued and outsized depictions of women are ruminations on sexual, religious and cultural identity. Reddy's visual cues emanate from the exquisite idols of Hindu and Buddhist temples in Nepal, while the wide-eyed expressions are influenced by the enamelled eyes of cultic images in Nathdwara and Mathura. The artist, however, is equally comfortable referencing global contemporary art practices, including the work of artists like Fernando Botero and Jeff Koons. Reddy's choice of media also reflects the dichotomies that characterise his practice, combining traditional elements like clay, plaster and gold leaf with more contemporary materials like fibreglass and automotive paint.
Bringing together the ancient and the contemporary, and linking temple, kitsch and Pop art, Reddy's larger than life sculptures command attention from the viewer and challenge traditional notions of beauty, femininity, and domesticity. With their particular focus on ornamentation, they draw attention to the widespread societal pressure to conform to particular norms of beauty, and the reverence for and adherence to age-old notions of femininity.
Reddy was one of the first contemporary Indian artists to draw critical attention in the United States following solo exhibitions in 2001 at Deitch Projects in New York, the Sackler Gallery in Washington DC, and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. His works have also been shown in the seminal survey India Moderna (Institut Valencia d'Art Modern, 2009), at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers (2002), the House of World Cultures, Berlin (2005), the Daimler Chrysler Contemporary Museum, Berlin (2007), the Smart Museum of Art, Chicago (2011) and the Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen (2012).
H. Cotter, ‘Art in Review: Ravinder Reddy’, The New York Times, 12 October 2001
Exploring the co-existence of the traditional and the contemporary, Ravinder Reddy's brightly hued and outsized depictions of women are ruminations on sexual, religious and cultural identity. Reddy's visual cues emanate from the exquisite idols of Hindu and Buddhist temples in Nepal, while the wide-eyed expressions are influenced by the enamelled eyes of cultic images in Nathdwara and Mathura. The artist, however, is equally comfortable referencing global contemporary art practices, including the work of artists like Fernando Botero and Jeff Koons. Reddy's choice of media also reflects the dichotomies that characterise his practice, combining traditional elements like clay, plaster and gold leaf with more contemporary materials like fibreglass and automotive paint.
Bringing together the ancient and the contemporary, and linking temple, kitsch and Pop art, Reddy's larger than life sculptures command attention from the viewer and challenge traditional notions of beauty, femininity, and domesticity. With their particular focus on ornamentation, they draw attention to the widespread societal pressure to conform to particular norms of beauty, and the reverence for and adherence to age-old notions of femininity.
Reddy was one of the first contemporary Indian artists to draw critical attention in the United States following solo exhibitions in 2001 at Deitch Projects in New York, the Sackler Gallery in Washington DC, and the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. His works have also been shown in the seminal survey India Moderna (Institut Valencia d'Art Modern, 2009), at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers (2002), the House of World Cultures, Berlin (2005), the Daimler Chrysler Contemporary Museum, Berlin (2007), the Smart Museum of Art, Chicago (2011) and the Arken Museum of Modern Art, Copenhagen (2012).