Khoj x IAF are delighted to announce the start of a new series of Masterclasses on Object Making, Mark Making & Image Making which will be led by contemporary artists, along with valuable insights into collecting art, exclusively for the Young Collectors Program.
The series will commence on the 24th of September from 5:30pm -7:30pm with a session by architect and artist Martand Khosla. As an architect Khosla’s preoccupation with space and construction materials is inevitable. For the masterclass Khosla will draw from his architectural practice and will demonstrate sculptural techniques using brick dust collected from his construction sites. Participants will also work with the dust along with the artist to create their own sculptural pieces! For Martand, brick denotes a language of tension, allowing the material to pay tribute to both the temporary and the permanent, to construct and demolish.
More On The Artist
Martand Khosla’s (b.1975) art practice explores urban continuity and transformation, as both complement and counter to his experience building in contemporary India. Having founded and run an award- winning architecture studio for over twenty years (Romi Khosla Design Studios). Martand initially pursued art to explore how construction – fueled employment shapes identities and nostalgia. Situated as both participant and observer, he employed tools of the State, such as the ubiquitous rubber stamp, to render its imprint on lives within traditional definitions of power and dispossession. Brick dust collected from his construction sites became a language of tension, allowing the material to pay tribute to both the temporary and permanent, to construction and demolition.
An architect’s natural preoccupation with space inevitably emerges in his work, not as a challenge to ‘build’ – but rather to foreground an object’s intrinsic potentiality. His works traverse the lines between sculpture and object, movement and remnant, material and memory. Inspired by his studies of repetition and the human churning of industrialization, he replicates the micro-processes of macro-construction. And simultaneously, he moves from the lens of authoritarian power to its dispersion, exploring the transformations that lay in between.
Khosla has had solo exhibitions at Nature Morte, New Delhi (2022, 2019, 2016); Seven Art Gallery, New Delhi (2012) and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi (2012). His work was also a part of State of Architecture, curated by Rahul Mehrotra, Kaiwan Mehta, Ranjit Hoskote at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai (2016). Khosla, has shown works in several group exhibitions such as 10 Chairs, Gallery Espace, New Delhi (2019); 50 Years After 50 Years of the Bauhaus 1968, Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart (2018); This Night Bitten Dawn, presented by Devi Art Foundation, New Delhi and Gujral Foundation, New Delhi (2016); In Other Rooms, GALLERYSKE, Bangalore (2015) and Food, SESC, Sao Paulo (2014) amongst others.
On-Going Exhibitions by the Artist
ON THE BRINK
AUGUST 27-OCTOBER 1, 2022
NATURE MORTE, THE DHAN MILL, 287, 288, 100 FEET ROAD, CHHATARPUR HIILS, NEW DELHI, DELHI