A painter and installation artist, Joshi’s simultaneously sinister and comical creations reflect a sensitivity to urban alienation and cultural displacement. In his installations, Joshi uses beamed light to project a juxtaposition of strange, sculpted ceramic objects and dissected, dismembered toys onto the wall of an imagined space. In this way, the artist’s fictive hybrid man-toy-animals are transformed back into two silhouetted dimensions that simulate a traditional picture plane. Joshi also creates mini-dioramas using packing materials like thermocol, crates and boxes. He throws light off of these staged “backdrops,” casting shadows from which ideas for his paintings and drawings often arise. With studio practices and mediated imagery often the initial trigger for concepts and forms, Joshi’s painting and drawing practices are symbiotic with his installation projects.
Joshi’s work interplays spectacle with the dark violence that arises from a mundane acceptance of everyday urban life. With his hybrid creates,, the artist continues to lure us seductively into dramatic theatres of public and private protest.
Born in1969 in Nagpur ,India,Anant. Joshi studied from J.J.school of Art between 1989 and 1996 and had his first solo at Mumbai in 1999. Resident artist in 2002 and 2003 at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam. Selected participations include Chalo! India: A New Era of Indian Art – Essl Museum (2009), Mori Art Museum, Tokyo (2008), Under the Surface, Krinzinger Project Vienna, Wien (2009), Indian Highwa, Astrup Fearnley Museet for Moderne Kunst, Oslo (2009), Mutant Beauty, curated by Gayatri Sinha, Anant Art Gallery,Delhi (2009), ‘Thermocline of Art’ New Asian Waves, Wonil Rhee, Peter Weibel , Gregor Jansen, ZKM Centre for Arts and Media, Karlsruhe, Germany(2008).
