Visions Art Presents Works by Antonio Puri

Mumbai, India, April 07, 2008 --(PR.com)-- "Is there still life in abstract painting, and if so what kind and quality of life? These are the questions that are raised by Antonio Puri's abstract paintings. They're inevitable after a century of abstraction--a century since Kandinsky's gestural abstraction and Malevich's geometrical abstraction emerged. In 1935 Alfred Barr declared them the be-all and end-all of avant-garde creativity. But a lot has happened since then, especially the academicization and conventionalization of avant-garde art, and with that of high abstraction, whatever its expressive form.

So the question is to what use Puri puts gestural abstraction. Does he breathe fresh life into it--fresh spiritual life, to recall Kandinsky's view, stated in 1912, that abstract art alone keeps spiritual consciousness alive in materialistic modern times, and Motherwell's assertion, in 1951, that abstract art is a form of mysticism? Is this still the case at the end of the 20th century? Can gestural painting still have spiritual import? Puri's New Millennium paintings suggest that it can. But with an important difference: Puri's abstractions are rooted in Buddhist rather than Christian spirituality, as Kandinsky's and Motherwell¹s were, however different their forms. Kandinsky is explicit about his Christian sources, Motherwell less so, although his Spanish Elegies have been understood to be crucifixions in all but name. Malevich's Suprematist paintings have been said to be Russian Orthodox icons in abstract disguise, or rather to have made their innate abstractness explicit.

In other words, Christianity no longer seems to be the spiritual point, at least for Western artists. No doubt this has something to do with the convergence of East and West through globalization, and with that the attempt to reconcile their spiritual differences. These are not merely exotic differences: spiritual otherness is an obstacle to practical harmony. But the decreasing importance of Christian spirituality to abstract artists also has to do with the fact that the Buddhist attitude of compassionate detachment seems a better way of surviving emotionally in the modern secular world than the Christian emphasis on salvation through suffering. Newman¹s Stations of the Cross are perhaps the climactic expression of Christian spirituality in abstract art, and with that the theory that suffering is the exclusive way to otherworldly transcendence."

Donald Kuspit - on Works of Antonio Puri

Please visit www.visionsarts.com to view his works.

Visions Art Gallery was established in 2004 as an online art gallery, and in 2005 opened with an exhibition space in Mumbai.

From the outset, the goal has been to exhibit and promote art of the highest international caliber. This commitment to such a high standard continues to be the salient feature of Visions Art today.

Visions Art Gallery offers contemporary and modern Indian Contemporary Art, with main focus on its influence in the vast art arena.

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