Ranbir Kaleka: Reading Man    May 14 - Jun 27, 2009

May 2009 New York – Bose Pacia presents Ranbir Kaleka’s Reading Man May 14 – June 27, 2009. The gallery is located at 508 West 26th Street on the 11th Floor, in the Chelsea district of New York City. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday from 11 to 6 pm and Saturday 12 to 6. The artist will be in attendance at the opening reception on Thursday, May 14th from 6 to 8 pm. The public is invited.

This exhibition marks Kaleka’s much-anticipated return to gestalt painting. The artist has continued his vocabulary of figurative painting which crosses from realism into whimsical and fantastical narratives. By marrying realistic figures and passages with intense coloration and uncanny juxtapositions of objects the artist creates contemporary tableaux of subconscious visions and fanciful dreamscapes.

In recent years Kaleka’s works have created space, tactility, and temporality through a combination of painting and video objects. In this most recent body of paintings several of the works employ large-scale sculptural installation components such as mirrors, window panels, found and fabricated objects, and metal armatures. While the video works clearly point to Kaleka’s interest in cinema presenting hyperrealistic installations where canvases become animated, the new paintings point to this cinematic undercurrent through the fabrication of absorptive mise-en-scène installations.

The largest work in the exhibition is a multi-canvas installation entitled Reading Man. The three canvases are stacked one in front of the other creating a maze-like landscape. Extending from the canvases are several sculptural components such as a clock, jacket, table, and wire figures. The result is the suggestion of a stage set that is incomplete and open to further expansion and development. The other major works present similarly open-ended narrative scenes giving the exhibition space the essence of a collection of fairytales.

Ranbir Kaleka was born in 1953, raised in the Punjabi city of Patiala and studied at the College of Art in Chandigarh (1970-75) and received a Masters Degree in Painting from the Royal College of Art in London in 1987. Reading Man is Kaleka’s third solo exhibition with Bose Pacia (2005, 2007). The preview of this exhibition marks his second solo with Nature Morte in New Delhi (1995). The artist’s works have been included in most of the museum exhibition of Indian contemporary art that have been mounted around the world in the past decade, including: Chalo! India at the Mori Museum in Tokyo (2008); India Moderna at the Institute of Modern Art in Valencia, Spain (2008); New Narratives at the Chicago Cultural Center (2007); HORN PLEASE at the Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland (2007); Urban Manners at Hangar Bicocca, Milan (2007); Hungry God: Indian Contemporary Art at Busan Museum of Modern Art, South Korea (2006); Art Video Lounge at Art Basel Miami Beach, Miami (2006); Edge of Desire at the Asia Society in New York (2005); iCon: India Contemporary at the Venice Biennale (2005); Culturgest-Lison, Lison (2004); Zoom! Art in Contemporary India, Lisbon (2004); and subTerrain: Indian Contemporary Art at the House of World Cultures, Berlin (2003). In 2007 he was commissioned to create a permanent video installation for the new Spertus Museum in Chicago and in 2008 his work was included in the Sydney Biennale. Ranbir Kaleka lives and works in New Delhi.