Press Release

Rajesh P Kargutkar

common space

December 5, 2013 – December 22, 2013Hours: 11am – 7pm

Preview
Thursday 5th December, 2013
7 to 9pm

Venue
The Luxe Art Museum, 6 Handy Road #02-01, Singapore, Tel: +65 6338 2234

ABOUT THE ARTIST
In a short span of time, Rajesh Kargutkar has become one of the most dynamic and critically acclaimed emerging artists on the Mumbai art scene. Born in 1983, Rajesh earned his BFA and MFA by achieving first rank with distinction from the JJ School of Art in Mumbai. Since graduating from art school, his works have been displayed at Kunst Zeug Haus Museum (Switzerland), Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke (Mumbai), Singapore Art Fair and at Bodhi Art Gallery (Mumbai), among many other group shows. Rajesh’s inimitable panache for experimentation and his command over the craft of painting has earned him a solid reputation and a range of awards. He is recipient of Lalibai Dharmdas Bhambani Scholarship awarded to young artists, the Bombay Art Society State Award, the Shri Bhim B Purohit Memorial Bombay Art Society Award, the National Scholarship (visual arts) given by the Indian Ministry of Culture, the Bendre Foundation Award, and the Indo-Swiss Student Award from the Consulate General of Switzerland. He lives and works in Mumbai, India.

COMMON SPACE
He now travels to Singapore with Common Space, an exhibition in which he takes on the grit and grime of claustrophobic city life. In Rajesh’s dynamic canvas, the mundane achieves a meditative edge. For instance, a series of photographs shot in the most banal non-places within a college campus document how the subconscious charts its own narrative using objects that surround it. In yet another series, and one that proves yet again Rajesh’s daring stroke of brilliance, he has used the 16 X 10 ft tenement in which he has spent his entire life with his parents in Lalbaug, Mumbai as a canvas-in-progress to depict how chaos and control are not two sides of a coin – in the crammed urban world that Rajesh’s canvas depicts chaos and control are varying dialects of a language called contemporary Indian art.