Hema Upadhyay Yours Sincerely
December 6, 2008

GALLERY NATURE MORTE
A1 NEETI BAGH, NEW DELHI 110 049 INDIA
OFFICE: (91) 11- 2956-1596 GALLERY: (91) 11-4174-0215
info@naturemorte.com / www.naturemorte.com


Press Release

"Yours Sincerely": new paintings and sculpture by HEMA UPADHYAY
December 6, 2008 to January 3, 2009

Nature Morte is pleased to present new works by the Mumbai-based artist Hema Upadhyay. The exhibition is entitled "Yours Sincerely," as are all of the works, and the artist's approach seems to incorporate both honesty and sarcasm. Continuing with her trademark style of inserting photographic self-portraits into painted backgrounds, Hema pictures herself in multiple forms, moving through a densely decorative field that may signify traditional Indian culture or the megalopolis of Mumbai. Portents of doom intrude onto these beautiful scenographies in the forms of disfigured mannequins (often in piles) and dark clouds which stain and disfigure the pleasing colors. All the while, the artist is present as silent observer, puppeteer, helpless victim, or omnipotent seer.

The centerpiece of the exhibition, in our downstairs gallery, is a large sculptural model of a decidedly down-market urban scenario. Hema's metropolitan tableaux is both innocent and ominous, playful and threatening. Through the materials she uses she equates consumerist waste with urban planning (or lack thereof) and manipulates scale to imply a psychological tension as well as a personal detachment from life.

Hema Upadhyay was born in Baroda, Gujarat in 1972 and studied both painting and printmaking in the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University there. She has held solo exhibitions of her work at Mumbai's Chemould Gallery, the Tyler Print Institute and Bodhi Art in Singapore, Grosvernor Vadhera Gallery in London, Art Space in Sydney and the Instiute of Modern Art in Brisbane. She has been in most of the international museum exhibitions of Indian contemporary art that have been organized in the past decade and her work is currently included in "Chalo! India" at the Mori Museum in Tokyo and the major survey of one hundred years of Indian art at the IVAM in Valencia, Spain.


For more information or press reproductions, please contact Geeta Bajaj at (011) 4174-0215. Nature Morte is open Monday through Saturday, from 10am to 6pm and is closed on Sundays.
The gallery will be closed on Christmas Day (December 25th) and New Year's Day (January 1st).

Go Back