About Exhibition :

According to the curator, the exhibition intends to explore dual and multiple selves that are created in both real life and the internet. Over recent years art has expanded its notion to move beyond formal canvases, sculptures or even installation-based art to include a slew of flash art, gaming inspired art, found footage, video art and art that comments on social networking sites.

However the one area that has remained uncommented upon, until now, is the online marketing of art. The earlier mistrust of looking at thumb-sized images of artworks on rather awkwardly designed websites has given way to the full-scale flash formatting of sites that give a viewer not just an experience of looking at the artworks but also virtually visiting a gallery. Slippages and disjuncture continue to exist between the real and the virtual and it is from within the trenches of this ravine that one begins a dialogue.

For opening night the gallery hosted a performance by artist Parag Sonarghare who reconstructed a barber shop in the second level of the gallery. His performance was a take on the effects of virtual reality that both isolates us from our immediate surroundings and from each other, yet gives birth to a new updated self. Parag was wrapped in plastic from head-to-toe while in the other chair, a regular barber attended to customers who had a haircut and shave. The point of presenting this duality was to bring home the two aspects of recreating the self while trying to find a ‘real’ skin to be comfortable in.