Delhi, India
Atul Dodiya: The Gatecrasher
Sometimes it’s just about being there. Staying present. Living in the moment. Mumbai born-and-based Atul Dodiya’s upcoming solo exhibition foregrounds the experience of engaging with art – a theme easily traced through his career spanning over four decades. In 2014 at his exhibition at Mumbai’s Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, 7000 Museums: A Project For The Republic Of India, Dodiya staged cabinets filled with grouped objects referencing art history and pop culture amidst the museum’s own vitrines, speaking to the acts of collection and display that produce values and narratives. Dodiya’s upcoming The Gatecrasher continues the rumination on gallery spaces and being inside them. Of the 12 new paintings that will be on view, Always Looking (2025), for example, pictures from behind a man beholding a Matisse; he’s sandwiched between the painting and his own backheld hands, which appear to be turning into a pair clipped from Picasso’s Guernica (1937). Meanwhile the title and a barcode are painted over the scene, allowing the viewer’s process of looking to become part of that economy of layered gazes.
