Rounding up Asian Contemporary Art Week in New York City, Asia Society Museum Director Melissa Chiu talks to Atul Dodiya, artist; Arani Bose, Bose Pacia Gallery and Hugo Weihe, Christie's to examine current issues, emerging trends, and new directions in India's contemporary art scene- Asia Society
Bio
Arani Bose
Arani Bose was born in Calcutta and spent his youth in India and the United States. He was educated at Stanford University where he studied philosophy, religion, and chemistry. He received his medical training at Yale University. He is an interventional neuroradiologist and clinical neurologist.
Dr. Bose has held faculty positions at Yale University and New York University School of Medicine. He is currently Director of Stroke Research at Lenox Hill Hospital, New York. Dr Bose’s research interests are in the development of novel, minimally invasive devices for the treatment and prevention of stroke. He was Founder and Chairman of Smart Therapeutics, a start up medical device company that developed the first intra-cranial stent for the treatment of aneurysms and subsequently the first stent designed for the prevention of ischemic stroke. In 2002, Smart Therapeutics merged with Boston Scientific Corporation. He is currently Founder and Chairman of Penumbra Inc., a startup medical device company focused on the emergent treatment of acute ischemic stroke.
In 1994 Dr. Bose co-founded Bose Pacia Gallery in New York with Ms. Shumita Bose and Dr. Steven Pacia.
Bose Pacia was the first gallery in the West specializing in contemporary art from South Asia. During the past decade Bose Pacia has held over 50 exhibitions and is internationally regarded as one of the preeminent galleries promoting the South Asian avant-garde.
Visual artists from South Asia work within a wholly unique space - one that is informed by a multitude of cultures, races and religions and shaped by a complex past and dynamic present. Bose Pacia strives to foster an active discourse between these artists and the international art community by featuring exhibitions that contextualize contemporary art from the region within its rich artistic traditions and current social tensions.
Melissa Chiu
Melissa Chiu is the Director of the Museum and Curator for Contemporary Asian and Asian American Art. Ms. Chiu has had a long involvement with Asian contemporary art and is recognized as a leading authority in the field. Prior to the Asia Society, she was the founding Director of the Asia-Australia Arts Centre in Sydney, a non-profit contemporary art center devoted to promoting dialogue in the Asia-Pacific region among artists, writers, curators and filmmakers. Additionally, Ms. Chiu has curated over thirty exhibitions with artists from Malaysia, Vietnam, China, Thailand and Japan, among others.
Melissa Chiu received her B.A. from the University of Western Sydney and her M.A. from the College of Fine Arts, University of South Wales. She has completed her Ph.D. from the University of Western Sydney, for her work on contemporary Chinese artists.
An author of artist monographs and conference papers, she has published widely in journals, magazines and for exhibition catalogues. She was recently awarded a Getty Curatorial Research Fellowship for her work on an upcoming exhibition on the art of the Cultural Revolution and its contemporary legacy. Ms. Chiu was asked by Oxford University Press to edit The Grove Dictionary of Art edition on Asian contemporary art and has been a faculty member of the Rhode Island School of Design where she taught Asian contemporary art and design. She has served on a number of boards and grant panels, including the New York State Council on the Arts, Museums Grant Committee and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
Atul Dodiya
Atul Dodiya was born in 1959 in Mumbai and received his diploma from the Sir J.J. School f Art in 1982. Apart from several solo shows in India he has exhibited at Gallery Apunto, Amsterdam in 1993. He has participated in 'The Richness of the Spirit' Kuwait and Rome in 1986-89, 'India - Contemporary Art' World Trade Center, Amsterdam 1989, 'Exposition Collective' Cite Intemationale Des Arts, Paris 1992. He has also exhibited at 'Reflections and Images' Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi and Mumbai, 1993 and 'Trends and Images' CIMA, Calcutta, 1993. He was given the Sanskriti Award, New Delhi in 1995.
Dodiya's strongly realistic works are subtly nuanced to provide a reflective medium to middle class homes, family life and his own biography. Thin layers of painting deftly painted strokes, mirror suggestive situations. In his latest works he freely quotes his artistic peers like Hockney and Bhupen Khakhar to reflect on the act of painting itself.
Dodiya lives and works in Mumbai.
Hugo Weihe
Dr. Hugo Weihe, who leads the cross-departmental business getting team for Asian art, is also responsible for the Indian & Southeast Asian Art Department based in New York.
Under Dr. Weihe's leadership, the department set numerous record breaking prices, including $1,127,500 for a Khmer sandstone figure of Uma, 11th century, a new world auction record for any work of art in the field (2004); and $724,300 for a bronze figure of Shiva as the Lord of Music, setting a world auction record for a Chola bronze (2003). In the fast growing field of Modern & Contemporary Indian art, Dr. Weihe was the auctioneer to sell Tyeb Mehta's Mahisasura for $1,548,000, a world auction record for any contemporary Indian painting (September 2005).
Dr. Weihe received a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Zürich where he also lectured on various subjects related to Asian art. His book, Die Ware Kunst (Art as Commodity), was published in 1989. In the early 1990s, he was the publisher of Artibus Asiae, one of the most important scholarly journals in the field of Asian art, based at the Museum Rietberg Zürich, in collaboration with the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington, D.C.
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