by Suman Gupta
In the aggressively marketed world of contemporary art today perhaps one of the greatest living legends and most reclusive of artists has finally been cajoled into coming out with a grand solo show. After years of shying away from the market space and the media, Prabhakar Kolte is ready to present his tremendous show, “Re-Unveiling Kolte” starting from 9th of March onwards at the Nine Fish gallery in association with Dot Line Space.
About ‘Prabhakar Kolte’:Like his reclusive and silent life, his deep abstract works delve into the silences of space and non-space, of attempts at closing the distances between being and non-being, existence and non-existence, the complex relationships between sound and form, space and representation. His works explore the very meaning of art and its materiality, and begin to close the distance between his own life and his canvases. To look at the recent works of this master is to be exposed to the unending questions of the purpose and expression of art itself and the paths it has traversed in the last few decades and perhaps the trajectories down which it will take us as viewers and more importantly as humans.
To stand with a required reverence before his canvases is to be exposed to the delicate, perhaps elusive, spaces where art and life meet in silent profundity. Kolte personifies this both through his life and his art. His privately lived, varied complex life, has been layered like his canvases, that of the personal, the academic, the social worker, and the role which is most important for him – that of the teacher. And so are his canvases, spaces – covered and hidden – then created again, then covered again, turned into other spaces, into non-spaces, eradicated or forgotten, and then created again, or older spaces struggling through the attempts to dissolve them . . . each with an existence of its own.
“Re-Unveiling Kolte” chronicles the last decades of Kolte’s deep evolution and that of art. The show starts on the 9th of March in an equally and historically layered space, the Nine Fish gallery. Over the period of the show are related events, like talks, discussions, etc. relating to Dr Kolte’s art and evolution and the history of abstraction in India.
