Lot 75: RAVINDER REDDY (B. 1956)

RAVINDER REDDY (B. 1956) UNTITLED (HEAD) Executed in 2003 Resin and fiberglass 44 by 24 by 42 in. (111.8 by 61 by 106.7 cm.)

Bose Pacia Gallery, New York, Ravinder Reddy: Select Sculpture, July - August, 2007

Acquired by the current owner from Sakshi Gallery, Mumbai, 2004

Painted in vivid colors with lustrous gold surfaces and elaborately coiled coiffures adorned with flowers, Ravinder Reddy's iconic heads exude a tactile, sensual quality. The red and gold tones are reminiscent of painted wooden images found in South Indian temples, while the pronounced curves of the form reference the rhythmic interplay of the convex and concave surfaces of the sculptures that adorn the stone walls.

The gargantuan face of the woman, with her painted red lips, kohl-rimmed eyes and ornate, shining hair accoutrements projects a raw, magnetic appeal transfixing and drawing the gaze of the viewer, while her dispassionate gaze creates an impersonal space around her. As artist Gieve Patel explains, "...the sensuality [of the Reddy heads] is serene. In most instances the sexual impulse does not speak of excitement, but of fulfillment." (ArtIndia, vol. II, issue II, 1996, p. 81).

Reddy's monumental heads are inspired by the forms of classical Indian sculpture, but their iconography is firmly rooted in the urban setting of contemporary India. "The figures walk straight out of their urban settings, on which Reddy imposes formal qualities, particularly of ancient yakshis (female fertility figures) from Mathura and Bharhut. Like the Bharhut figures, these are picked out in a bold, rhythmic silhouette. Like the Mathura figures, they are modeled to a degree of fullness, expressing frank sexuality not only in flesh but also in ornament ... Whereas the women in ancient Indian sculpture exude an ecstasy of life, the yakshis of our era reveal an excess of indulgence with color-metaphors provided by their lipstick and garish accoutrements.

"Ravinder Reddy's sculpture stands apart from all the shades of post-modern tropes – the ventriloquy of conflicting narratives in the Third World; the aggressive deconstruction of earlier artistic paradigms; the anti-aesthetic recovery of fragmented subjectivities; the over-celebration of the hybridity of cross-cultural transactions. In an era of 'happy anarchy' Reddy reintroduces the sensuous object of sculpture, proposing such terms in our post-modern sensibility as grace, poise and perhaps even beauty, that seem to sit uncomfortably within our current political discourse. [Reddy's] significance, then, is in the way he makes us examine a new hegemony emerging within the definition of 'national' art in the Third World." (Ibid., pp. 80-81).