Wendt Gallery is Proud to Host a Major Exhibition Benefiting the Salaam Baalak Trust

Manhattan, NY, August 21, 2010 --(PR.com)-- Wendt Gallery is pleased to announce the opening of their new exhibition Vanishing Spirits on view from September 8th thru September 17th, 2010. The exhibition will be open for public viewing Tuesday thru Saturday from 10 am to 6 pm. Vanishing Spirits will be curated by Priyanka Mathew of Sotheby’s, and the exhibition will be directed by Karen Talwar. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Salaam Baalak Trust, founded by philanthropist and filmmaker Mira Nair.

A private reception will be hosted by Joseph and Serina Manqueros of Wendt Gallery on Wednesday, September 8th, from 6 pm to 8 pm. Cocktails and hors d’oevres will be served. If you would like to attend or would like more information, please phone 212-838-8818, or email info@wendtgallery.com. Please RSVP if you wish to attend. To view the exhibition online, please visit their website at - www.wendtgallery.com.

India has long been known to be a land of complexity and ultimate paradoxes that inspires passionate artistic inquiry. Photographers documenting India have had a particularly rich and pedigreed past. Prabir Purkayastha has spent almost two decades traveling through preciously disappearing areas of India, whether the wilderness of Ladakh or Pushkar or exploring marginal communities in Bengal and Assam. Vanishing Spirits presents a subset of rare images that captures some of these remote and magical places.

Pablo Bartholomew comes from Indian photography blue blood. His father Richard Bartholomew was an art critic and a photographer who captured some of the most amazing pictorials around the most celebrated community of Indian artists in time shortly after independence. Influenced by his father’s work, Bartholomew’s photographs pulsate with the energy of the urban in India. Mumbai is a particular muse to Bartholomew and continuing in this effort to explore transforming spaces, the exhibition presents a set of his photographs that provides a lens into a fading community of Parsis in Mumbai who at one time were a vital part of milieu of the city. Amita Talwar’s photographs allow us the opportunity to take a step back for a broader brushstroke. They give us an expansive canvas of images across the country of quiet and spiritual places.

Prabir Purkayastha’s “Looking Upward”, 24 X 34, spirits the values of traditional India. Purkayastha dims the background, spotlighting the figure in the heart of the picture. A man stands in the center of the photograph with his hands stretched outward reaching for the radiant light that descends down on him. He is not only embraced by this overwhelming presence of a higher being but in fact longs for it. One can only surmise this scene depicts prayer embodying the spirit of the ancient Indian ways.

One notable work by Amita Talwar, “Woman at the Door”, size 24 X 34, will be featured in this exhibition. Inanimate objects, such as a door and window meld with colors and patterns in the subject’s dress, crafting a union between the usual with the unusual, the old with the new, the ancient with the modern, seemingly strewn together to co-exist cohesively in an uncertain state of human transition. Though her use of symbolism, she demonstrates to the viewer how civilization imprints its DNA for generations to come.

Pablo Bartholomew’s feature piece, “Rag Pickers” size 34 X 44 demonstrates the clash of a transitioning culture in some of India’s major developing Meccas. Revealing the conflict between the past and present colliding into one another as they transition and evolve into their own version of modern society; the artist captures a nomadic-supposed family walking towards the metropolis.

Vanishing Spirits concludes its survey with additional works by these artists which include landscapes, figures, and urban scenes. Desolate landscapes, urban scenes focusing on cities like Bombay, and quiet, introspective figurative scenes capturing daily life help round out the collection. Pictures by each one of these photographers inspire the viewer to delve more deeply into this remarkable place called India and its people, and to witness it as it presses forward towards an era of transformation.

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