VIKRAM KAPUR
"Mountain Madness. 108 Meditations"
Paintings Exhibition and Book Launch - 24th October 2024 - 18:00hs
Khotachiwadi Club - MUMBAI - India
The exhibition will remain open until October 26th
Sikkim Himalaya from Jame Pokhri ridge, 2022 - 16 x 21 cm. - Mixed Media on board
MONDO GALERIA pesents “Mountain Madness. 108 Meditations”
A solo show by Vikram Kapur (Agra, 1955).
This exhibition of paintings curated by design duo Diego & Alexeja also serves as the launch for his book of the same name.
It will take place in the picturesque neighbourhood of Khotachiwadi, Girgaum, South Mumbai, on October 24th 2024.
108 mountainscapes, including some of the most emblematic peaks of the Great Himalaya, as seen by the painter in his yearly ascensions to remote areas between Ladakh and Arunachal Pradesh.
His paintings continue a lineage started by artists Nicolái Roerich and Earl Brewster, but with a more personal approach in terms of palette and contrast; very “Indian”, even psychedelic.
The colours in Kapur’s paintings do not necessarily or always reflect objectively the topography of the heights, but more the sensations that the artist experienced in the solitude of the wilderness where the light plays an important role in conflating the state of day dream, reality and space travel.
“There is something so special about being in those regions; the incessantly buzzing mind slows down, the worries of the world are left behind and one is plunged into a purely existential frisson with the vast unknown.” Vikram Kapur
Guest artist Maneesha Chawala has had a love affair with film ever since her mother, the daughter of the iconic artist M.F Husain, took her out of school to watch Luis Buñuel movies. She has accompanied Vikram Kapur on numerous forays to the mountains. Her work expresses through image and sound a fresh view that complements the strength of the paintings.
The exhibition can be visited until October 26th 2024, daily from 11hs till 21hs.
Vikram Kapur is a unique artist who paints and lives in the South Indian Nilgiris hills. An autodidact, Vikram has developed a unique style that ranges freely between genres including land-scapes, portraits, abstracts, collage narratives and nudes.
Diego & Alexeja are a creative tandem, exploring the limits of art curation, interior design and architecture. Their work can be seen around the world, from Ibiza where their studio known as ChAI ShOP is based, to Marrakech in Morocco or St. Moritz in Switzerland. Their nomadic curatorial expertise has a particular approach to engage on different exhibitions and with different artist focused mainly on their intuition and on the relevance of the projects for their spiritual, cultural and intellectual search.
MONDO GALERIA is an art gallery that was born in Madrid in 2010 and represents artists from around the globe. It has collaborated with international institutions, foundations and embassies in Europe, America and Asia. Participated in La Biennale di Venezia (Venice Biennale) in 2019. Has been part of India Art Fair 2016, 2017 and 2018. And it has presented in Mumbai exhibitions as Man Ray “Views of the spirit”(2017) and Salvador Dalí (2018).
Ladakh Himalaya from Changthang Plateau, 2021 - 14 x 19 cm. - Mixed Media on board
"Flux"
On Vikram Kapur´s work by Diego Alonso
Somewhere hidden in The Nilgiris Vikram Kapur paints compulsively. A self made artist full of knowledge and studies in his backpack, with travels and stories to narrate from life’s personal encounters on a vast range that touches on peaks from Jiddu Krishnamurti to M.F. Husain. An artist from another time, when being an artist was not a job and university careers to enter the art world were not needed. It was more about feel, observe, perceive - learning through inner knowledge how to render these sensations onto canvas, paper, sculpture or any media that the manifested oeuvre asked for.
One appreciates the energy and perseverance with which an artist works. It’s exemplary to observe how an adult wades late in his life into Art, making him a young artist with wise experience. This is the case with Vikram Kapur; it’s notable how he keeps up with his quasi-maniac practice.
Retired from the frantic world of the cities, he can observe society from a sharp peep hole and find refuge from it on the mountains. Those adored Himalayas where he spent an important part of his life during his boarding school days. As a magnet, the hills call him once a year to breathe their pure air at ease, trekking through the high peaks and absorbing the presence of this immense geological majesty - the immaculate sky, the clouds, the colours as nowhere else on the entire planet. This madness of creation is what the artist brings back in his mind to his studio; to indulge, pouring on board or canvas colours that he chooses from the deep depths of his unconscious without thinking. To dance with his brushes in a meditative state until one is over and another and another and another... until these 108 pieces create a prayer, a tribute to the highest of worldly paradises.
The mountain has forever been in the human imagination. Either real or mythical, it has occupied the interests of almost all civilisations. Think of Mount Meru, Mount Mashu in the older eras of eastern culture or more recent examples, such as The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann or even The Holy Mountain from Alejandro Jodorowsky. Since the so called Renaissance the mountains enter again into admiration by humans; somewhere in between by occidental culture they were considered obstacles in human perception of the earth.
Nowadays the top of the Himalayas - apart from its constant flow of devotees, pilgrims and athletes trying to reach Everest - is still a unique place to connect with the bliss of life. It’s a place to escape from daily routine and to touch, if possible, the breath of God. Nobody remains indifferent to the magnitude of these mountain ranges.
Let’s leave all the other mountains (real or imaginary) behind.
Far from the allegorical drama of Caspar David Friedrich, the small format mountain paintings of Vikram Kapur depict an introspective world oscillating between realism and hallucination, with spasms of colour that seem to be taken from Robert Rauschenberg or Andy Warhol’s pop screens but are actually seen in the heights of the mountains at certain hours of dusk or dawn. When he uses unreal\surreal colouring this instead helps him to transmit in a better way the actual feeling that he holds in his memory about that specific moment. It’s a play that builds up, and we are not in front of a simple mind but an elevated, peaceful and mature, overall free spirited one, comparable only with a library or an emotional encyclopaedia. The track walked is long, what he carries is light, but what he leaves for us in this series of paintings is profound and joyful.
Kumaon Himalaya, Panchachuli 1 & 2 from Munsyari 2022 - 16 x 90 cm. - Mixed Media on board
“Where can one have such joy as when the sun is upon the Himalayas,
when the blue is more intense than sapphires,
when from the far distance, the glaciers glitter as incomparable gems”
NICHOLAS ROERICH
BUY "Mountain Madness. 108 Meditations" BOOK HERE
"MY WINDOW"
Beny Steiner
15th December 2023 untill 15th September 2024
SCUOL - SWITZERLAND
MONDO GALERIA presents “MY WINDOW” an exhibition of limited edition photographs from the latest production by photographer Beny Steiner.
Her art career started as international model (one of the first ones travelling the world over and posing for the likes of Salvador Dalí in Barcelona). She travelled to Kabul opening her curiosity to new cultures and new experiences. Then she moved to New York in the ´80s as stylist for photographer Raymond Meier. There she met her now lifetime friend: artist Not Vital. Finally, she worked as a fashion/life style photographer herself, with a very define and personal style, publishing with the best magazines and agencies around the world.
Today, together with her cats Mr. Gucci and Prada, she lives and works in Scuol, in the Engadine valley, in Switzerland where she has her residence and her “Four Seasons Studio”.
Unfortunately, an eye sickness is deteriorating her macula since some years, consequently losing gradually her vision. Life as a photographer has become harder for her, as well as daily activities. As John Milton or Jorge Luis Borges she created her own method to cope with this reality by organising herself around a precise order in her home space to be able to navigate through it. A new way of looking at life with a focus on light and contrast, movement and stillness came together with this new reality.
These fresh experiences give her a new eye on nature, on permanency and migration, on immanence and transcendence. Her space is one, with her camera. The presence of the Piz Pisoc (the mountain in front of her house) is her way of measuring her daily existence against the passing of seasons and the mutations of Flora and Fauna. And she is ready to capture it, again and again. The appearances and disappearances in front of her delicate sight of what life has to offer, day by day, minute by minute.
In this exhibition we can see a selection of more than 50 of her photographs. Finely printed in cotton rug photo paper, opening for us a small window into her reality, a poetical vision of a particular place in a particular time, where birds become acrobats and clouds their arena.
curated by Diego Alonso y Alexeja Pozzoni (DiegoandAlexeja).
Exhibition will be open from Thursday to Sunday 12h to 19h until 15th September 2024
Beny Steiner / "Piz Pisoc 05/04/2023" - Pigment Print on Cotton Rug Paper - 60 x 40 cm
Agil Immensity by Diego Alonso
The Piz Pisoc was quiet. The curtains were of soft beautiful linen, with some elegantly exaggerated repairs. A Kafkian fly was hanging from the rod, massaging her front legs in that manner that flies do. It flew from the window to the tip of her nose. She opened slowly her eye, fluttering her lashes slowly, as if the morning light entering through the glass was burning her washed damaged iris. The other side of her childlike face was lost inside the soft warm pillow. She stood up and looked at the blue sky covered by some passing snow white clouds.
- They are back!- she thought to herself with happiness, as she photographed the rapidly playful Dohles.
The taxonomy of a routinely play between light and shadow, of a contrasted frame of an imaginary reality converted into a spatial two dimensional vortex.
Daily interaction with nature is what brings to us a flare of existence, of a particular reality. Breaking that barrier it's what unites us to our universe. A photograph becomes a prayer to universal Truth. A mirror onto the void. A symbol of a particular moment in a particular space. It connects the presence of the artist with the cosmic glance of collective subconsciousness.
A peaceful revolution through the impossible reality of the senses. The mountain, still, static, permanent as the body. And the migrating birds as lively agitated Thought, as dreaming, as inspiration.
The patient order of Cunningham's still-lifes, the spark of Ray, the composition of Avedon, shaken on a dice cup and thrown, randomly as possible, over the table to offer even destiny itself a choice of direction. Beny Steiner´s art becomes a device for us to enter her extraordinary world of magic: of beauty composed with whatever surrounds her and can take a role in her subtle storytelling.
It is in that moment, when the birds that probably inspired Alfred Hitchcock pose for her, that she enters a state of bliss. All her memories vanish for an instant. There they go, her modelling career, her posing for Salvador Dalí in Barcelona, living with Not Vital in New York, her Afghan adventures, her stylist profession, Vals and Zumthor, all that baggage that makes her vision today disappear into an eternal present for us to enjoy now finely printed on cotton rug paper and delicately framed in black wood.
As her physical vision deteriorates due to eye sickness, her spiritual visualization of the world becomes more accurate, guided by light, shadow and movement, not that of the birds but that of her soul, connected more and more to the wide spectrum of nature.
Beny Steiner / "View Room nº2 14/11/2022" - Pigment Print on Cotton Rug Paper - 60 x 40 cm
“The Space in Between“
Exhibition from 26th until 29th February 2020
Opening 28th February 2020 - 19hs
MONDO GALERIA presents for the first time in Spain "The Space in Between" an individual exhibition by Margherita Chiarva, an artist who closes with her work and career an evolutionary circle opened towards the end of the 19th century by British pioneer Anna Atkins.
The idea in her work stems from the interaction with materials and creative research. It is not a process of imitation but a process of generating a new reality embodied in silver salts. The magic of shades and textures born with the impact of light on the photosensitive material. Sometimes an image looks like one thing, other times, forms appear from the shadows or well interact with remains of reality stolen from a negative discard. But always, the unknown emerges, brings to surface a new invented reality in which who wants to see will find.
The exhibition curated by AD Studio is completed by the soundscape "Call Thou Upon My Name Unto Eternity, And It Shall Never Fail" created by Toni Castells to accompany the imagery created by Margherita Chiarva, and to elevate the space of the gallery into a sacred-spiritual escape for visitors to dive into an immersive experience.
Read more …"The Space in Between" Margherita Chiarva featuring Toni Castells
TRIBUTE TO DAVID BOWIE and 1970s ROCK LEGENDS
Gijsbert Hanekroot
From 8th June to 31st August 2019
OPENING Saturday 8th June 19.30 hs
PGA CATALUNYA RESORT - HOTEL EL CAMIRAL
"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there would be peace.." John Lennon
MONDO GALERIA in collaboration with Amante Collection present at PGA CATALUNYA RESORTS - Hotel Camiral a selection of photographs by Gijsbert Hanekroot as a tribute to David Bowie and other legends of the 1970s like Mick Jagger, John & Yoko, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, Debbie Harry or Frank Zappa.
20 original photographs by Gijsbert Hanekroot arrive for the first time to Barcelona to depict a decade of changes and revolution through music. A time when sex, drugs and rock´n´roll were the mainstream while the post-war economic boom was coming to an end. A pivotal change in culture. The “Me” culture, as quoted by Tom Wolfe, was the beginning of a self-centred society, based on the importance of the individual as contrary to the community. It was the birth of the self-created personality, and this collection of photographs portray some of the best influencers of the 70s. in this art.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono (1971) © Gijsbert Hanekroot
Read more …TRIBUTE TO DAVID BOWIE and 1970s ROCK LEGENDS
RUSSKAYA AMERIKA
Andrea Santolaya
from 2nd to 30th JUNIE 2018
OPENING Saturday 2nd June from 12 to 22 hs
"They began a journey that continues through generations. They remain faithful to their tradition" Andrea Santolaya
MONDO GALERIA presents the latest unpublished work by Madrid born photographer Andrea Santolaya. "Russkaya Amerika", a trip to the far extremes of Alaska where she meets the last settlement of the Old Beleivers (sect separated from the Russian Orthodox Church in 1966). Emigrated from Russia finally settled in this corner of the world after fleeing the persecution for years through three continents (Siberia, China, Brazil, Oregon and finally Alaska)
Read more …"RUSSKAYA AMERIKA" Andrea Santolaya
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