TRASH VIVAN SUNDARAM 9.17.08-11.08.08

SEPIA is pleased to announce an exhibition of new photographs by Vivan Sundaram.  Entitled Trash, the exhibition spans two floors and will include fifteen large-scale photographs made over the last two years; 12 Bed Ward, a large-scale installation; and video.  This will be the artist's second solo exhibition at SEPIA since 2006.

Developing a theme that has engaged him since 1997, the Trash series explores the social implications and aesthetics of urban waste and second-hand goods.  Vivan Sundaram's deployment of urban detritus, the result of the frenzy of global consumption, recalls modernity's fascination with recycled objects and the modernist procedure of bricolage.

Constructing a huge and fantastical cityscape in his New Delhi studio entirely with garbage, the resulting composite photographs re-imagine the dreams and aspirations of the architect as grand city planner while simultaneously poking fun at the folly of such utopian misadventures.  The color and texture of industrial waste, dirty toothbrushes, plastic toys, tin cans, and a sea of empty yogurt containers create panoramas both astonishing and absurd.  Among the photographs, there is Master Plan, an immense aerial view of the garbage-city.  A set of photographs entitled Barricade disorient the viewer by the deceptive scale of the objects depicted:  beer can skyscrapers both frail and monumental, never-ending stretches of miniature landfill, and mattress-spring landscapes.

I suggest that the urban middle and upper class, rather than turn away from the garbage they generate, must face the reality of the urbanscape and the people, outside of their gated colonies.  In these very large photographs there are dense urban conglomerations, with uneasy prospects and unsettling perspectives.  The scale of the spatial is not easily defined and these fragile structures are exposed to the constant possibility of being demolished.
                                                                                --Vivan Sundaram

Vivan Sundaram was born in Shimla, India in 1943 and now lives and works in New Delhi.  He studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University of Baroda, Vodadara, and at Slade School of Fine Art, London, in the 1960s.  In 1970, he returned to India to continue painting.  Since 1990 he began making artworks utilizing sculpture, installation, photography, and video.  His work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions and international biennials including Shanghai, Johannesburg, Kwangju, as well as in institutions such as the Queens Museum of Art (New York), Fukuoka Asian Art Museum (Japan), National Gallery of Modern Art (New Delhi), and the Tate Modern (London).  In 2008 his work was shown in “Archive Fever: Uses of the Document in Contemporary Art,” at the International Center of Photography, New York.

Accompanying the exhibition is Vivan Sundaram: Trash, a full-color 124 page catalogue (Chemould Prescott Road, Photoink, Project 88, Sepia International, Walsh Gallery, 2008) with text by Chaitanya Sambrani.

< back to exhibition