ARTIX, the three-day art hotel fair (August 25-27), billed as the first such fair in a hotel in India, is an experience of how to walk through an exhibition in tight spaces. That, however, has its own charm. Spread across a floor of the Taj Palace Hotel, Chanakyapuri, 45 suites shape-shifted and turned into rooms of art exhibiting private collections, precious jewellery, paintings, photographs, and sculptures—where works of famous and emerging artists of India hang without hierarchy.
“We have artists in the hotel sleeping in roller beds. Room service in the morning, and by 9 am, the room becomes a gallery,” says Payal Kapoor, founder, Arushi Arts Gallery, Delhi, one of the three organizers of ARTIX, who was inspired by the concept of a hotel fair where original art could be exhibited by collectors in a space “where art meets luxury”.
She and her co-organisers are planning to take it to Hyderabad next April. Poonam Sood, a collector, who walked in at the event in Taj Palace, says the concept works because of the intimate setting.
“This way you can imagine how they will look in your room.”
Two artists from America, Chris Trueman, who draws on OP Art and Abstract Expressionism, and Lindsey Noble, inspired by surrealism, are participating in the event. Most of the 300-plus exhibits at ARTIX are for sale.
Lalu Prasad Shaw’s Biwi at the Dhoominal Art Centre, Suraj Kumar Kashi’s surrealistic work at Arushi Gallery, Prarthana Modi’s moody black-and-white photographs of shadows cast by trees and that of a balcony on which the sun has set; a cashmere embroidered blanket and a stole with a Mexican touch by Janavi, and a super-sized fibre-glass cactus, titled Desert’s Lullaby, by Surbhi Modi grab my eyes. Not everything is for sale though-- some works such as Lekha Poddar’s three silk saris with pietra dura and Ottoman embroidery are not.
The exhibition appeals to various tastes. Rahul Kumar, who is taking visitors on a curated walkthrough of certain galleries, or would stop before a particular work out of that list, either “because an artist had deviated from his usual practice” or that he found a particular collection exhibited by a gallery interesting.
Uday Jain, director of one of Delhi’s oldest galleries, Dhoomimal, for instance, highlights his Husain series on metal foil and talks of the Souza work titled Chemical Alterations. “Using chemicals he would wash away the background of newspapers and pornographic magazines and paint over them,” he says of one of the artist’s ‘late’ styles that many have found gimmicky, to get away from making a full-fledged artwork.
Delhi is not new to art fairs. ARTIX is a buzzy-busy little affair that I hope stays ‘small’. In little rooms down just a long corridor.