G. Ravinder Reddy

Deitch Projects, New York

New York, Queens Museum of Art, Out of India: Contemporary Art of the South Asian Diaspora, 8 December 1997 - 22 March 1998

Pittsburgh, The Andy Warhol Museum, Ravinder Reddy, 10 June - 2 September 2001

New York, Deitch Projects, Ravinder Reddy, 8 September - 27 September 2001

Chicago, Walsh Gallery, Ravinder Reddy, 2 May - 11 July 2003

Out of India: Contemporary Art of the South Asian Diaspora, Queens Museum of Art, New York, 1997, p. 45 illus.

Slight variations in blue pigments overall. Areas of previous inpainting visible primarily on the yellow base, other small chips throughout. The cushion under the father appears to have been overpainted in a slightly darker red than original. Recent conservation has been done to address and secure a three inch Y-shaped crack in the father's head as well as some minor cracks occuring primarily at the wrist and foot of the child and thigh and shoulder of the mother. Light flaking along these lines is mostly secure. The work has also been lightly cleaned.
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Ravinder Reddy's works draw upon classical Indian sculptural prototypes but he places these traditional forms within a contemporary urban context. Family produced by Reddy in 1997, is in essence a modern day adaptation of these Chola style depictions of Shiva, Parvati and Skanda (Somaskanda). The Somaskanda theme became popularized during the ancient Chola period. These early bronze sculptures were objects of devotion in Shaivite shrines and would have been ritually anointed with sandal paste and vermilion, clothed and garlanded.

Painted in vivid blue colours also associated with Krishna imagery, Reddy's sculptures have a sensual and tactile quality. The colours are reminiscent of the painted wood images seen in South Indian temples. As the artist Gieve Patel says of Reddy’s works, "their sensuality is serene, in most instances the sexual impulse does not speak of excitement, but of fulfillment." (ART India Magazine, Vol. II, Issue II, 1996, p. 81).

Reddy's hybrid sculptures combine the contemporary and the traditional, the secular and the religious, raising questions of desire and worship. His representation of the human body highlights issues of social, sexual, religious and cultural identity. These works can be seen as a comment on the dilution of Indian culture through globalisation. 'Suspended between the urban and the rural Reddy's sculpture is a cultural hybrid. This interplay between societies has been of interest to Reddy; combining the stimulus of the old and the new he turns an iconic object into one of satirical social commentary - the classical form of Indian sculpture overlaid with the visual ethic of popular culture, becomes voluptuous, and accessible.' (DaimlerChrysler Contemporary, Private/Corporate IV: Works from the Lekha and Anupam Poddar, New Delhi, and DaimlerChrysler Collections: A Dialogue, Berlin, 2007, p. 52).