KEWENIG and GALLERYSKE are delighted to present Room #9 with two recent installations by Indian artist Sudarshan Shetty. The presentation is part of KEWENIG’s exhibition format 12 Rooms, a monthly rotating artist programme in the enclosed room between the gallery and the adjacent building.

Sudarshan Shetty has made a name for himself with his bewildering sculptural installations and multi-media works. The choice of materials and their inherent qualities is crucial to Shetty’s artistic process. In his 2018 series of untitled vases he substitutes missing parts of broken Chinese ceramics with pieces of teak wood. This wood typical of India is collected by the artist on markets and mostly stems from torn down houses in Mumbai. Thus, these works silently continue to carry the stories that these buildings witnessed. Through the juxtaposition of natural and artificial materials, Shetty explores ideas of real and fake, old and new, function and meaning. In his recent wall work As far as the Forest is (2019) he complements the missing horns of wooden trophies of Indian cattle with transparent acrylic, as if to return lost honour to India’s holy animal, whose protection has become a political issue in the country.

Sudarshan Shetty’s (b. 1961 in Mangalore, India) lives and works in Mumbai. His work has been widely exhibited in India and become increasingly visible worldwide, for example at the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, Mumbai (2017), the Rolls-Royce Art Programme, Maker Maxity, Mumbai (2016), the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi (2016), and GALLERYSKE, Bangalore and New Delhi (2014 and 2015). Shetty’s work has featured in major group exhibitions including the Palestinian Museum (2017), the Yinchuan Biennale, Museum of contemporary Art, Yinchuan (2016), the 20^th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney (2016), at the Staatliches Museum Schwerin, Schwerin (2015), the Kochi-Muziris Biennale (2012), the Centre Pompidou, Paris (2011), and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2010). In 2012, Shetty unveiled The Flying Bus, a public art work at Maker Maxity, Mumbai. In 2016, Shetty was curator of the Kochi-Muziris Biennale.

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Press release courtesy KEWENIG.