Two artists find new inspiration during residency programmes in foreign lands Cross-cultural exchange brings a fresh perspective in your art this can be seen in the works of two artists,Amitesh Verma and Andrew Connelly,whose exhibition,Crossing Over,is being held at the Shridharani Gallery at Triveni Kala Sangam till June 25. The works are the product of a residency programme that the artists had undertaken. Verma visited Marnay-Sur-Seine in France from November 2009 to January 2010,while Connelly came to the Sanskriti Foundation in New Delhi in March for four weeks. Verma,33,is known for his paintings of horses. His three-month residency in the French countryside reinvented his approach towards art and he made a drastic switch from horses to human beings. The exhibition reflects his new-found European sensibilities and his appreciation for the French. My Crush is a larger-than-life rendition of a woman he came across in his residency. Painting with oils during the French winter is very challenging with sub-zero temperature that arent favourable for oil painting, he says. Verma avoids typical portraits: I want to capture their essencethe blonde of a girls hair and the distant stare in her eyes. It is my attempt to explore human spirituality. Connelly,47,is a Professor of Art and Sculpture at the California State University,Sacramento ,and has been constructing installations and doing performance art since 1991. His Delhi trip taught him to adapt to the variety in materials available,and sometimes the lack of. Connellys work Gems among Us is an 18-piece installation where each work is individually raised on a 10 ft stand,the height lending it a position of glorified importance. In another work,Helm ,he comments on the lack of movement in bureaucracy. Eight recycled plastic water bottles with rice glued on their surface are evenly placed in a radial,in the form of the helm of a ship. However,with the inner radial being screwed to the wall,there is no movement,reiterating the lack of progress in the government. The objects are made of things Connelly has collected in Delhi steel,bamboo,concrete,glass bottles and fused with his art. He explores industrialisation and the absence of recycling glass in India in Identity . Glass bottles are no longer used in the US for aerated drinks in India,however,they are,and sent back to the manufacturers to be reused. My art may be termed as found object sculpture. The materials evoke an idea which I incorporate into my artwork, he says.
