BHUPESH KAVADIA
bougain villaea contemporary art gallery
( a unit of the banyan tree)
” There is in India a tree whose property it is to plant itself. It spreads out mighty arms to the earth, where in the space of a single year the arms take root and put forth anew.” ( Pliny ( A.D.70)
Called “The Many –Footed” after the aerial roots striding from its trunk to form a small forest, the canopy of a single banyan tree has been known to extend two thousand feet.
Three thousand years before Pliny described it to the Roman Empire this mighty shade tree struck awe in the Aryan nomads sweeping across India. The banyan tree is used as an assembly hall in rural India, not only merchants ( banias, after whom the British named the tree), but by village elders in council or by priests celebrating religious occasions; it is the shaded piazza, where men and women gather for discussions in the evenings and where schoolchildren are taught by day, and where farmers herd their animals to escape the searing summer sun. Remedies from the tree are used by India’ villagers, raised to know its healing properties, and by Ayurvedic doctors preparing medicines for their patients in the cities.
The force and symbolism of the banyan tree is what the Indian sculptor Bhupesh Kavadia incorporated in his project ” the banyan tree”, he started creating in 2002.
A little outside Udaipur in the beautiful, peaceful, hilly landscape, Bhupesh – with the help of the nearby village people – began realising, what will appear as an artists village with studios to sleep and work in. The red stone, the black stone has been used to create walls, rising from the earth – the landscape has several natural created scenes, where performances etc. can take place. All is built from the surrounding raw material. Here Bhupesh has his own studio and his dream is to make symposiums and invite artists from all over the world to come and work.
In 2004 the banyan tree had a “sister”: bougain villaea contemporary art gallery
Bhupesh calls it an art shop. The plant, bougain villaea, grows without anything – almost. It flowers all year round in Udaipur and in this symbolism lies the choice of name.
A place where around 30 artists from Rajasthan got the possibility to show their work. This initiative developed into showing the artists work in the “magenta monsoon show” 2004, “Tranquil and Turbulent” in 2005 and “Rejuvenation” 2006 in a huge space at hotel Oberoi UdaiVilas, Udaipur – an outlet that gave the artists a possibility to meet guests from all over the world. The timing of these initiatives was parallel with the increasing interest in Indian Contemporary Art the past 4 years. So Bhupesh’s dream, when he was a young, struggling artist, to show his work and live from his work has come through. ´
Medio December 2008 he will open a huge bougain villaea contemporary art gallery – Udaipurs answer to the Danish museum Louisiana. Constructed in his characteristic
style: curved walls, red and black local stone, water basins and huge white walls – so far in 2 gigantic modern levels – a third one will appear later. Situated at one of Udaipurs many lakes: Fateh Sagar. The aim with this gallery is to create a cultural forum, where many art forms can meet. The plan is to show films and there will be an art café as well.
“It is admitted that in Indian art the Persian element found no obstacles and there are signs of various other alien influences. China & Japan have no hesitation in acknowledging their debt to India in their artistic & spiritual growth of life. Fortunately for our civilizations, all such intermingling happened when professional art critics were not rampant and artists were never tiresomely reminded of the OBVIOUS Fact that they were Indians and in consequence they had the freedom to be naturally Indian in spite of all the borrowing that they indulged in.” Rabindranath Tagore – from a lecture in Dacca 1926)
Bhupesh is a “natural Indian” and as such it is natural that you cannot rely on only one man to provide growth to such a huge country, as Gandhi put it. Bhupesh has contributed to growth within the art world in his own personal way.
We must not forget the most important, because first and foremost Bhupesh Kavadia is a sculptor and a very fine sensitive sculptor.
He is a visionary – a pathfinder – who’ s own artistic work bear titles as ” homage to the fading sensitivities”, “with whispers & promises of life and death” – ” maa – which way out of the labyrinth.” He asks us, provoke us in his own special, silent, thinking way: What do you think – YOU ?” – a philosophical inquiry on the nature of human frailty, of desire and aspirations
Bhupesh wants to find the inner core – to reveal what is within the outer shell.
He works in stone, which he juxtaposes with other materials like metal or wood.
The surface of the stone is sometime printed with silkscreen print, and the total sculpture becomes a fragmented story, that talks about the character of our modern society. The smooth is often united with the rough surface within the same piece. A face is often visible – a face like a half moon – a closed or bended face – a pensive face – we find fragments of the inside of a body and the actual parts of the “outside” body sometime spread in different direction. The nostalgic is fused with the eternal, the sadness with hope.
In this moment Bhupesh is working on constructing a huge life size elephant in white marble, which will welcome us, when we visit the bougain villae contemporary art gallery in Udaipur. We wish him all the best.