Revolution through the lens

Visuals have always been a better way to elucidate one’s feelings as well as reach out to people and connect with much ease and sincerity and so what can be better than photography exhibition, where images speak for themselves.

Keeping that thought in mind, ‘Habitat Photosphere,’ a photography festival will hold its first ever international workshop titled ‘The World Upside Down: Modes of Representation in The East and the West’ by French artist Pascal Monteil at the Experimental Art Gallery, India Habitat Centre on Saturday. 

Monteil will take the participants of the workshop, from Rome to Tokyo, through Ispahan, Lahore and Fatehpur Sikri, onto a visual journey through world art histories and their modes of representation. He will be discussing specific paintings as well as his personal journey as an artist taking inspiration from various traditions.

Monteil’s works are done using a particular technique called digital painting. “Each one of my work is done minutely with thousands of photographic elements either designed or painted; they are adjusted, superimposed, revised and lit-up on computer. Thanks to digital technique, using these fragments just as a painter would do with his colors and paintbrushes; I wish to achieve pictures with a photographic depiction combined with the very special power of painting to sublime the real and its emotional precision,” said Monteil. Monteil’s work is an exploration and a re-interpretation of Persian and Indian miniature traditions. 

Dr Alka Pande, curator and art consultant, Visual Arts Gallery, IHC said, “Pascal Monteil is an artist of the world. An international cosmopolitanism, bordering on the exotic and the unknown, characterises his suite of ‘paintings’. He is an artist, who combines the traditional art of painting with contemporary digital photography and makes compelling landscapes which cross boundaries of geographies and cultures. These phantasmagorical imagined landscapes emerge from his experiences and his training as a painter. A peripatetic traveler, his paintings are replete with historical and cultural references. An incredible storyteller, Pascal is a bard, who through his lyrical renditions tells stories about his travels. From the city of love, philosophy and artistic effulgence Paris, he travels to India, to Persia to Japan, reading the landscapes of these ancient civilisations, creating arresting juxtapositions on the canvas.” 

Pascal Monteil is a visual artist who lives and works between Paris and various cities in Asia. Beside his artistic practice, Pascal has also been teaching art and architecture for the past fifteen years. 

The fee for participation in the workshop is Rs 400 for India Habitat Centre members; Rs 500 for non-members and Rs 200 Rs for students. 

As a part of Habitat Photosphere’s aim of taking art photography into the public space, Monteil’s works will also be exhibited at the Jor Bagh metro station from December 2015 till March 2016.