8thOctober – Bangalore
Gallery DTALE ARCHIST is an exhibition space for contemporary Art, Design and Technology from India and across the world. Envisioned as an eclectic site for exploring, learning and nurturing the imagination, Gallery DTALE ARCHIST is a 3000 sq ft white cube, contemporary minimalist space. Acclaimed artist and curator Bose Krishnamachari is the founding Artistic Director of the Gallery.
ARCHIST believes in the freedom to accept and engage with urgent new inventions. We celebrate artists, architects, scientists, designers and practitioners who like to converse with our times more earnestly. We trust in the ability of our creative industries and with the artisans of past and futures. We invite you to play with a plethora of perspectives and forge new paths amidst our communities – new ways of seeing and being. We wish to celebrate sustainability and a fluidity of space that enables enlightened viewing, learning and an awareness of life!
DTALE was founded in Kerala by Sreejith in the 2000s
About the Inaugural Exhibition (ARCHISTS I)
DTALE ARCHIST I: OCT 4, 2024 – NOV 16, 2024
Preview on OCT 4, 2024: 6 PM- 10 PM
The selection of the participants in ARCHISTS I is not based on any overarching curatorial theme or premise. All participating artists, designers and architects share an intuitive and interdisciplinary approach to making art and represent diverse creative viewpoints.
Participating Artists, Designers and Architects:
Astha Butail
Harisha Chennangod
Pooja Iranna
Prajakta Potnis
Samira Rathod
Shailesh B R
Sudarshan Shetty
Sunil Padwal
Tania & Sandeep Khosla
Tony Joseph
Artists Biographies
Astha Butail (lives and works in Delhi, India)
The practice of Indian artist Astha Butail moves between painting, installation, brass, glass, textile and paper. Butail draws upon references from literature, philosophy, nature, spirituality, history and orality. She was the recipient of the 2017 BMW Discoveries Art Journey Award and Scholarship for the project In the absence of writing. Butail has had solo exhibitions at Kewenig Pied a Terre Berlin (2023), Gujral Foundation India (2019), among others. Some of her group exhibitions include PEAC Museum Germany (2024) Kunst Meran Merano Italy (2024), JSW Foundation India (2023),Tristan Hoare London (2023) and KNMA museum India (2023) among others.
Prajakta Potnis (lives and works in Mumbai, India)
Prajakta Potnis’ work digs deeper into the nexus between the fragility of the human body and greed of the capitalist state. Through the process of paintings, radiology, video and time-based installations she examines the overburdened female body that has been incessantly exposed to varied forms of toxicity. Her work has been shown in a number of solo exhibitions, including A Body Without Organs and When the wind blows, Project 88, Mumbai (2020, 2016); The Kitchen Debate, Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin (2014); Time Lapse, The Guild, Mumbai (2012); Porous walls, The Guild, Mumbai (2008) and Membranes and Margins, EM Gallery, Seoul (2008). Potnis has extensively shown her works both nationally and internationally, her most recent project was a part of Thinking Historically in the Present, conceived by the late Okwui Enwezor and curated by Hoor Al Qasimi for the 15th Sharjah Biennale (2023). Among her group exhibitions are Imaged Documents curated by Ravi Agarwal at the 2022 Rencontres d’Arles, Arles (2022); the slow burn at The New Media Art Space, Baruch College, CUNY, New York (2021); Towards Mysterious Realities, TKG Foundation and Cube Project Space, Taipei (2017); OK. PANGAN, OK.Video – Indonesia Media Arts Festival, Jakarta (2017); The Eighth Climate (What Does Art Do)?, Gwangju Biennale (2016); After Midnight, Queens Museum, New York (2015); Whorled Explorations, Kochi-MuzirisBiennale (2014); Shamans and Dissent, TZ Hanart Gallery, Hong Kong (2013); L’exigence de la saudade, Kadist Art Foundation, Paris (2013) and WE HAVE ARRIVED NOWHERE, 2nd Transnational Pavilion, Venice Biennale (2013).
Harisha Chennangod
Harisha Chennangod is a contemporary artist hailing from Kerala. His work weaves profound narratives through his minimalist abstract artworks, embodying a philosophy of intentional simplicity and mindfulness. He was born in 1984 amidst the lush environs of Kasargod, Kerala, and currently working and settled in Vadodara. Educationally grounded with an MA in Museology from The MS University of Baroda and a BFA in Painting from CAVA College Mysore, Chennangod has exhibited extensively across prominent galleries worldwide. Noteworthy showcases include Iterations at Vida Hyderi Contemporary, Pune, Contextual Cosmologies at Trivandrum Fine Arts Gallery, and international exhibitions in Stuttgart, Germany. Chennangod’s artistic trajectory is also enriched by residencies and camps such as the Kochi Muziris Biennale’s “Graffiti” residency, 1 Shanthiroad Bangalore and the “Niracharrthu” artist camp in Trissur, Kerala.
Pooja Iranna
Through her work, Pooja Iranna presents manmade structures, which talk of human beings, their presence, expressions, experiences, mind and emotions without their physical existence. Pooja has been talking of these structures ever since she started her practice almost three decades back. She has been working in many mediums that include videos, photographical work, drawing, painting and staple pin sculptures to explore her buildings and spaces outside and inside. She also has selected published writings on her art practice of fellow artists to her credit. Pooja’s selected shows in the last few years have been: Silently continuing… (2023), a solo exhibition at AICON Gallery, NY : In the dusky path of a dream, curated by Meena Vari at Rizq Art Initiative, Abu Dhabi, Rhizome: Tracing ecocultural identities, curated by Jesal Thacker at The Museum ,CSMVS, Mumbai, Silently (2020), a solo exhibition curated by Priya Pall for AICON Gallery, NY and presented at Bikaner House, New Delhi,Contemplating the urban (2019), curated by Sandeep Biswas, a solo project for VASA, online center for media studies, Karachi Biennale, inPakistan, Silent conflicts (2019), curated by Ashna Singh, at Gallery Studio Art and Voiceover, curated by Meena Vari, for Gallery Ragini, New Delhi; ‘The Urban Re-imagined (2018), curated by Ravi Agarwal for Serendipity Arts Festival in Goa; Negotiation in constructed space, the Guild, Mumbai and Art Heritage, New Delhi. 2017- 7TH Bharat Bhawan Biennial of contemporary art Bhopal, India.(2015-2016)- The eye and the mind: new interventions in contemporary art at the Guangdong museum of art, Gaungzhou and NGMA, New Delhi; Working space around memory and perception, KNMA, New Delhi. Ratina-Rome video art festival, at Macro, Contemporary art museum, Rome, The C(H)hroma show (2014), SKE projects, Bangalore, Nothing, no thing, Art Stage Singapore, Imaging the past, envisioning the future (2013), Transport museum ,Maneser, India.
Samira Rathod
Working from the maximum city, Mumbai, India, Samira Rathod is an architect, teacher, writer, and editor. She is the principal architect and founder of Samira Rathod Design Atelier (SRDA). Established in 2000 with an uncompromising sense of ethics and passion for design, SRDA has built an enviable portfolio of a variety of architecture, interior projects, furniture designs and art installations across the country and overseas. Rathod earned a Bachelor of Architecture from Sir J. J. College of Architecture, an affiliate of the University of Mumbai, in 1986, and she accrued a Master Degree of Architecture from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Samira Rathod founded the SPADE India Foundation – a non-profit, discussion forum for architects, designers, photographers, authors, and editors interested in gathering and disseminating unfiltered viewpoints from within the practice of architecture through their critical publication SPADE India of which Rathod serves as an editor. Having designed over 500 pieces of furniture products already, Samira revisits her early love for furniture designing through Big Piano, a studio that designs and crafts hand-made, whimsical furniture.
Shailesh B R
Shailesh BR received his BFA in painting from CAVA, Mysore, followed by a PG Diploma in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, MSU, Baroda (India). His practice is deeply rooted in philosophy and seeks to explore the fundamental aspects of our world, such as existing knowledge, systems, traditions, rituals, metaphysics, and philosophy itself. He accomplishes this through methods of science, technology, and artistic interventions. Shailesh has been a part of numerous national and international exhibitions, fairs, and art residencies, namely; Art & Science residency at the ISTA (Vienna, Austria), Art & Technology Residency at ACC, (Gwangju, South Korea), Embassy of Foreign Artist Geneva, among others. Shailesh’s works have been shown at the Daejeon Museum of Art, South Korea in 2024, the Sea Art Festival in 2023, Frieze Seoul in 2023, SAVVY Contemporary in 2022, Asian Cultural Centre, Gwangju in 2022, and Colomboscope, Sri Lanka in 2022. Shailesh BR’s practice has been generously supported by FICA (India), Pro Helvetia, Villa Arson (Nice), Warehouse421 (Abu Dhabi), Vadehra Art Gallery(India), and Khoj. Shailesh is currently based in Delhi NCR and will soon be joining for an upcoming opportunity at the prestigious Dual-Residency program at CERN, Geneva, 2024.
Sudarshan Shetty
Sudarshan Shetty is trained as a painter at the Sir JJ School of Art in Mumbai, moved early on to sculpture and installation and more recently into film. He is well known for enigmatic, large-scale installations in which physical objects, composed and brought together in familiar and unfamiliar ways, become the media for contemplating loss, absence, death, emptiness and regeneration. His work rigorously explores dualisms and polarities as they are articulated through the binary oppositions of human being and object being, life and death, absence and presence, seeking and revealing their immanence in all forms of being. In his recent work, Sudarshan has actively engaged with other artistic forms, including poetry and writing, music, cinema and architecture to consider the distinctions between action on-screen and off-screen, the real and the imagined, tradition and the contemporary. An artist who came of age in India before the liberalization of its economy and the internationalization of its art world, Sudarshan’s career highlights a struggle with approaches that are conditioned by another’s vision and with global canons of art history. In this spirit, his work is rooted in the knowledge that remains tacit and taken for granted in his own experience of traditions of music, poetry and story telling in Indian idioms but refuses to be positioned as elucidating a foreign worldview or a specific point of view on empirical reality, instead creating experiences that can be shared by viewers everywhere, drawing on their own resources.
In a career spanning nearly four decades, Sudarshan has exhibited widely, at some of the most prominent and prestigious international and Indian venues. His recent shows include solo – ‘One life Many’ at IF. Be, Mumbai, ‘Only Life Myriad Places’ at the Ishara Foundation, Dubai‘ShoonyaGhar – Empty Is This House’, NGMA, New Delhi, and the 20th Sydney Biennale, ‘Mimic Momento’, Galerie Daniel Templon, Brussels, 2015,‘Constructs Constructions’, curated by Roobina Karode, Kiran Nadar Museum of Art, New Delhi, 2015, ‘A Passage to India’ Staatliche Museum, Schwerin, Germany, 2015 ‘every broken moment, piece by piece’, GALLERYSKE, New Delhi, 2014, ‘The pieces earth took away’, Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna, 2012, ‘Critical Mass’, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, 2012, ‘Indian Highway’, Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, Beijing, 2012, ‘The Matters Within: New Contemporary Art of India’, curated by Betti-Sue Hertz, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2011, ‘Paris-Delhi-Bombay’, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 2011, ‘Sympathy for the Devil’, curated by Walter Vanhaerents and Pierre-Olivier Rollin, Vanhaerents Art Collection, Brussels, 2011, ‘India Inclusive’, World Economic Forum, Davos, 2011, ‘Contemplating the Void’, curated by Nancy Spector, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, 2010, Vancouver Biennale, Vancouver, 2009, and several others. Sudarshan Shetty was also a participating artist in the inaugural edition of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale curated by Bose Krishnamachari and Riyas Komu in 2012 and Curated the Kochi Muziris Biennale in 2016 and the visual art section at the Serendipity Arts Festival in 2019 and 2022
Sunil Padwal
Sunil Padwal’s art practice reflects on the unsettling nature of contemporary urban life through a series of complex drawings. The artist suggests that not only are we unable to escape from the grip of our everyday reality, we have also become passive observers, unable to question our experiences. The drawings layer abstract lines and forms with simplified architectural imagery. Placed in rescued frames, Padwal’s drawings replace the original, photographic contented of the frames. This multiple layering recreates an environment under construction, partly built and partly destroyed where both the past and the future are equally struggling to emerge. Padwal’s work of drawing, photography and the intervention of the purely visual into the tactile universe of objects is part of a long-standing exploration into his personal and emotional experience of the urban environments that frame his life journey. His layering of different categories, textures, images, words, materials begins and continues the journey of creating a vocabulary and a language with which to format the visible and its resonances with our emotional lives. Padwal’s recent exhibitions include his solo show at GALLERYSKE, Bangalore and New Delhi; and participations in ‘No Place like the Present’ curated by Ranjit Hoskote, at Akara Art, Mumbai (2019), Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2016 curated by Sudarshan Shetty.
Tania & Sandeep Khosla
Architect Sandeep Khosla and Graphic Designer Tania Singh Khosla daw on their acclaimed individual practices and varied design experiences to create an eclectic universe of products. A play in form, colour, and tactility, their design is conceptually driven and embedded with cultural memory. Tania and Sandeep’s work lies at the intersection of design & art, beauty & functionality, the machined & the hand-crafted. Their products have been in the Dezeen Longlist (2021) and won an EDIDA award (2023 and 2011). Tania Singh Khosla is the Founder and Creative Director of TSK Design, an award-winning graphic design firm. Her practice focuses on balancing Indian and global aesthetics, as well as traditional and modern influences for lifestyle, arts, hospitality, corporate, and education brands. The firm’s work has been showcased globally at the V&A (London), Wallpaper’s GlobalEdit (Milan), and Experimenter (Lisbon). Tania has spoken at major events such as ICA (London), Kyoorius Design Yatra (India), India Design ID, and TEDx. She has also served as a jurist at prestigious design awards including D&AD (London) and ADC (New York). Tania holds a BA in Studio Art from Mount Holyoke College and an MFA in Graphic Design from Yale University.
Sandeep Khosla is the Founder and Principal of Khosla & Anand (formerly Khosla Associates), a leading architecture and interior design firm. The firm is known for context-driven work, spanning residences, offices, hospitality, and educational institutions. They have been honoured with several awards, including The ‘Education’ Category winner at WAF/INSIDE Festival 2013 (Singapore), Winner of WAN ‘House of the Year 2017’ (London), and ‘JK Architect of the Year’ award 2024, and have been listed among the most influential designers by Architectural Digest for 11 consecutive years (2014-2024). Sandeep has been a speaker at several international design conferences like 361 Degrees and India Design ID, ICA (London) and Archmarathon (Milan), and a judge at WAF (Singapore). Sandeep graduated in Architecture from Pratt Institute, New York.
Tony Joseph
Tony Joseph is the Principal Architect at Stapati. Stapati, established in 1989, has steadily grown into a multi-disciplinary practice emphasizing values of integrity, sustainability and innovation. Stapati’s architecture emerges from a sensitive understanding of the context; one where the evolution of design is firmly rooted in the region’s traditional narratives, while interpreting the elements in a modern context. There is an underlying acuity in the design approach, which responds to the site uniquely, rendering it relevant and timeless. Tony is also the Founder Chairman of Avani Institute of Design, a Center of Excellence in Architecture and Design education located in Calicut, promoting a holistic approach to design education to develop well-rounded professionals equipped with the sensitivity, empathy, social and technical skill sets to address the ever-evolving concerns of our environment.
Notes to Editors
Bose Krishnamachari says:
We are two drops of ambition and passion, creating a site for the fluid creative thinkers and practitioners. We are hopping to build hope from the soft power industry.
Sreejith says: What could an organic blend of art, design and culture be named, brought us to the space-Gallery DTALE Archist. A culturally committed duo with a belief of Oneness across the globe through Art, we focus to discover and rediscover the intensified sense of creatively
