Contours of Modernity was an exhibition of contemporay Indian Art held at the Founder’s Hall of SOKA University in Aliso Viejo, CA. from Feb.1- April 1 2005. The catalog features fine prints of the 39 paintings exhibited.These paintings are representative of works from the 1970’s to the present by twenty leading artists from India and of Indian origin. The exhibition, the first of its kind in Southern California, displayed works by major contemporary Indian artists including celebrated founders of modern Indian art such as M.F. Husian, S.H. Raza, F.N. Souza, Ram Kumar, Ganesh Pyne, Ramananda Bandyopadhyay and G.R. Santosh, younger leading contemporaries such as Rameshwar Broota, T. Vaikuntham, Anjolie Ela Menon, Vasundhara Tewari, Surender Kaur, Bikash Bhattacharjee, Sohan Qadri, Anjan Chakrabarty,Biswarup Datta and Paresh Maity and diasporic artists such as Allan DeSouza, Sudha Achar and Amrita Banerji. The catalog carries an excellent histrorical oveview and contextualization of contemporary Indian art by the curator and biographical sketches of the artists.
The text brings out the intent of the curator to promote an international dialog with modernity, with its critical dimensions of displacement of culture, technological alientation, commercialism, mass conditioning, globalization and future possibilities; and the prints stimulate an intellectual and visual experience with a sense of socio-cultural affirmation, syncretic spontaneity for life, hope and regeneration and provide approaches towards understanding new ways of being modern in a global world.
