Architectural Digest India: Delhi: Vadehra Art Gallery's upcoming show unravels the different dimensions of love
'Call Me By Your Name', a new show opening on 21 July—featuring a line-up that includes Atul and Anju Dodiya, Sudhir Patwardhan and Shilpa Gupta among others—hopes to answer that time-tested question: Can love complete us?
By Shaikh Ayaz
Photography by Vadehra Art Gallery
20 July 2021
Artist: Shilpa Gupta. Title: Untitled – B. Medium: Pigmented inkjet prints in split frames. Size: 14x41in. Year: 2014
Set in a sunny Italian countryside, Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name (2017) is the intense but short-lived tale of its teenage protagonist Elio's (Timothée Chalamet) summer of love. Elio's affair with the spunky Oliver (Armie Hammer) plays out like a classic coming-of-age tale. For the young Elio, a life-altering romance, passion and loss in quick succession are reminders of the transformative nature of love. Due to open on 21 July, Vadehra Art Gallery's upcoming group exhibition is inspired by Guadagnino's acclaimed film. Also titled 'Call Me By Your Name', it has been conceptualized by art collector Udit Bhambri and explores, as he puts it, "aspects of how a relationship has the possibility to complete us. This could be a relationship of any kind, with another or with oneself." Once the idea was finalized, the New Delhi–based gallery and Bhambri invited several artists, including familiar names like Anju and Atul Dodiya, Sudhir Patwardhan, Shilpa Gupta, Arpita Singh, Sunil Gupta, N.S. Harsha and Gieve Patel, to reflect on love and its multiple connotations.
Artist: Shilpa Gupta. Title: Untitled – G. Medium: Pigmented inkjet prints in split frames. Size: 14x41in. Year: 2014
Although the resulting works are different in terms of tone and content, thematically they spark a conversation about love, togetherness and identity in the Covid era. Bhambri, however, is quick to clarify that "the show or what the artists represent is not a response to the film, but to the title and message of how love completes us". In the last two years, the pandemic has turned our focus back on family, friends and the essential bonds that connect us—not to forget, a bit of self-love, as 'Call Me By Your Name' demonstrates.
Time for Self-love
"What would we do without the feeling of love in the pandemic?" Bhambri asks, before elaborating, "Whether it is [through] self-indulgence such as cooking banana bread at home or reviving a latent hobby, the feeling of being one with nature, or the proximity with a spouse—hopefully, in most cases, for the better—the pandemic made us realize the power of love. Like most things we tend to take for granted, the pandemic has taught us to be grateful for the love that completes us too." Although the show will welcome patrons at Vadehra's Defence Colony gallery space under strict Covid protocol, director Roshini Vadehra tells AD India, "The idea initially started with a virtual exhibition (given the lockdown in the past few months) with existing works from the gallery and artists’ studios. However, when we approached the artists, we were fortunate to receive a terrific response from them, with many excited to produce new work for us. It was also incredible how each artist broached the theme in their unique style with their own personal commentary and insight on the theme." For instance, the Mumbai-based Sudhir Patwardhan's response was in the form of Forest, one of his latest works from 2021. At the centre of this painting is a couple locked in a tempestuous embrace, probably inspired by the Chola and Khajuraho sculptures, while the radiant palette and simplified forms attest to an Henri Matisse influence.
[…]
'Call Me By Your Name' opens at the Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi on 21 July and will remain on view until 13 August 2021.
To read the full article access www.architecturaldigest.in.