Profile - Ashish Chawla

Born in New Delhi 1974

Exhibitions

1- Contemporary Indian Art Show at L’ INDE LE PALAIS, Bologna, Italy.

These images seem to flow from the subconscious mind and are layered with past memories and fantasies of a young boy who attended an 'Only Boys School’ alienated from the opposite sex and taught to perceive women as divine entities.

But life has no one colour- it is nuanced with various shades and tones. This pictorial journey is marked with the restlessness that comes with a recollection of ones dreams or nightmares. The raw and the revered, the earthy and the ethereal, the erotic and the pristine represent the female body and its endless mystique. The process of creating these visuals gave me a sense of déjà vu more often than once.

Alternately, male sexuality is shown as vulnerable, helpless, caught in the pain and pleasure of having and losing, or letting go!   
As visual impressions, these images though sparked by the subconscious are captured to evoke hazy, haunting and surreal tones, often blending and merging with their background. I enjoy the idea of painting with light, simulating effects of charcoal, pastel and luminosity of oil in its tonal brushwork…playing with the idea of de-materializing the materialized image…working almost in the way memory works!

Ashish Chawla 06-08
"Last night I fell asleep in a satellite dish. My dreams were showing up on televisions all over the world". - Steven Wright

Though not by the artist, these words closely resonate with his work. A photographer by profession Ashish has attempted to take photography beyond technique, thought beyond jargon, image beyond any fixed meaning to follow his memories, dreams and fantasies that have given this body of work an extremely personal touch.

The series of photographs make us, the viewers, traverse through the spectacular range of evocations, unraveling the fragility of human emotions. The sharpness of every hazy detail is by no means simplistic as Ashish uses his skills and experience to bring a certain special mood to every single image.

His first solo exhibition in India, Ashish is using photography aligned in some ways with Pictorialism, arriving at effects that are impressionistic and dreamy in nature but strangely alive, almost fierce in their power.