A simulacrum of sorts!

A group show by 10 eminent artists, The Art of Drawing uses art as a tool of exploration and as a mode of expression, to give the viewers a sense of variety in drawing. Curated by Sudhir Patwardhan, the show exhibits works by artists Dilip Ranade, Gieve Patel, Himmat Shah, Jyothi Basu, K.G. Subramanyan, Krishen Khanna, Parag Tandel, Sudhir Patwardhan, Tushar Joag and Vilas Shinde.

The purpose of this exhibition is to bring together some of the different kinds of drawing done by Indian artists today. “Drawing may have lost its position as the foundation of all art, but it is still widely practiced, even passionately pursued,” says curator Patwardhan, who has been working with photographic images for long now. “The question of how a drawing made from a photograph may differ from a drawing made from direct observation of nature has intrigued me always.”

Drawing from the photographs he has taken, Patwardhan, in this show, has negotiated between the tonal abstraction of the photograph and the memory of the real image. “I seek to set up a play between the photograph as memory and the photograph as an autonomous image source. I want the viewer to experience the potency of the drawn line in its different avatars, and also experience the key position drawing can occupy in the creative process of different artists,” he adds.