Devajyoti Ray is the new face of contemporary Indian Art. In a recession-hit Indian art market, there is a need for a new star who can pull the galleries out of ther liquidity crunch. Artists like Husain and Sunil Das and Jogen Choudhury who had held the reign of the market till very recently are now not selling at all. Their paintings are over-priced, too many in number and their later day works are simply bad.
The new generation artists like Subodh Gupta and Atul Dodiya who were touted as new age phenomena are also showing clear signs of decline. They had earlier to come to prominenc piggybacking the cash hungry media that published anything and everything they did. They came to even more bad repute after their support for a fraud art magazine called “Take (on art) “ was exposed. The Magazine launched by New Delhi based curator of dubious reputation Bhavna Kakar. But artists like Subodh Gupta, GR Iranna, Chintan Upadhyay all stood by Ms Kakar at the launch of the mgazine, only to be exposed later that the magazine was not even printed. Only the front and back covers were printed and were put for show.
Without verifying the contents of the magazine these artists stood by Ms Kakar and thereby proved that they would stand by names and not by substance. The move was infact taken to give Ms Kakar a boost of image which was supposed to help Ms Kakar to offload the artworks which she had earlier acquired from such artists. But the move backfired after the media expose and now the art lovers in India are simply not buying these names.
Everybody is now asking for something good, something that has quality. But art market has seldom worked only on quality. Sooner or later, the market once again finds a new name to sail out of previous crisis. the search fot this new name is yet not over, but a few names are already making the rounds in the art circles. One such name is that of Devajyoti Ray.
He is undoubtedly the new face of Indian art. He is immensely popular in Middle East with Hilton Chain of hotels, Ramee International Hotels solidly backing him. He is also immensely popular in the academic circles who often have hailed him as the father of Pseudorealism, a fantastic new genre of art that approaches reality via abstraction.
Devajyoti Ray's Pseudorealistic Painting
Devajyoti Ray has selectively exhibited his works in Arizona’s Walsh Academy, at Havana Museum of Fine Arts, at Cinnamon Art House in Dubai and in certain other places. But overall Ray works slow and remains out of media, which kept him all these days quite aloof of the Indian art buying people. The commercial galleries have also been carefully avoided by Ray, which is another reason for his relative seclusion from the market. He is more in the league of Sushanta Mandal, whose works were aquired by Guggenheim Museum, but no art media covered the spectacular achievement, or Anish Kapoor, who has come to the knowledge of Indian public only recently though Kapoor had atained stardom in UK many years previously.
But now is the time for Ray. the cash starved Indian art market is baiting for Ray and is hoping for Ray to now show the way. Ray’s new exhibition at Mumbai’s Museum Gallery is in this matter significant. The show is on from 15th to 21st February. Venue: Museum Gallery, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai.
