Make Them Love You Pr

Casa Blanca 2 | New No. 16 | Main Street | Chennai, Tamil Nadu | INDIA +91 90 0325 8086 | +91 90 0834 0110 | [email protected]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 29 April, 2009

Make Them Love You Exhibition dates: 18 May - 13 June, 2009 Opening: Saturday,16 May, 2009, 6:30-9:30pm

For more information contact: SHANNON SPANHAKE & PIERRE CONTI +91 90 0325 8086 [email protected]

Casa Blanca 2 presents Make Them Love You, a series of handpainted signs exhibited throughout the city of Chennai that explore the negotiation between interior desires and exterior space.

For us, the sign clusters that punctuate Chennai’s landscape seem to turn the city inside-out - masking the container (the building) while revealing its contents (the businesses inside). The signs, in a constant state of becoming, compete for attention to fill the negative space of the city’s built environment with unregulated explosions of internal desires.

Cocktails & Talk / Opening: Art World Gallery 12,Ganeshpuram 3rd Street, (Off Cenotaph Rd.) Teynampet, Chennai 044 2431 5371

Make Them Love You uses the sign clusters as an exhibition space to display the artwork of ten participants who were asked to design a sign advertising a personal interior/exterior dialectic exploring notions of celebrity, sacrifice, development, and narcissism. “We Intend to be Happy” by artists Roberto Freddi & Jason Moore, presents the artists themselves dressed in camouflage in front of the British flag. This self-portrait is a nod to their heroic overcoming of the

strenuous administrative process, enabling them to enjoy a cup of tea while living together, as a couple, in London. The camouflage and dog tags evoke the larger debate of homosexuality and the military while also playing with the material function of camouflage. They transform the composition of flat shapes without foreground or background (camouflage’s primary function: to absorb one into the background) into a mechanism to project them and their story into the foreground by exploiting its use within popular culture. The Kollywood film actress and director Revathy presents an actual-size autograph of ‘Asha Kelunni’, her real name. And Bangalore-based artist, Prayas Abhinav’s, piece states “Now Food is Within Your Reach”, is a promotion of his current work on urban gardening while also presenting a possibility of how art can address the needs of his country.

S.A.V painting “We Intend to be Happy” by Roberto Freddi & Jason Moore

Participating artists: Prayas Abhinav (Bangalore) Artist

Sarath Babu (Chennai) Food King CEO

The Banyan (Chennai) NGO

Roxanne Borujerdi (Paris) Artist

Casa Blanca 2 AKA Teddy Cruz (Chennai) Art gallery

Roberto Freddi & Jason Moore (London) Artists

Jessica Wallack (Chennai) Researcher

Postmasters Gallery (New York) Art gallery

Revathy (Chennai) Film actress and Director

S.A.V Elanchezian (Chennai) Artist

The participants were asked to design a signboard exploring an interior/exterior dialectic and the designs were then hand-painted by a team of Chennai-based sign painters offering an additional layer of interpretation between the artist, the environment, and the exhibition. Artist/architect Teddy Cruz confirmed his participation in the exhibition but didn’t produce a piece - so we made one for him. The artist is seen imposed on the landscape in view of the sign painter. A virtual playback of an interior desire held by the gallery projected through the perspective of the sign painter himself. The poor quality photo taken with a mobile phone camera while eating lunch in San Diego is reinterpreted, shifting both the quality and the context of what is familiar and what is foreign. Artists Roxanne Borujerdi and Postmasters Gallery explore the ambiguity between two-dimensional and three-dimensional spaces as an impression of worlds within-worlds. And the work of Jessica Wallack and Sarath Babu, points to the transition from private to public and back again, playing with the external as both nemesis and ally. While, the piece made by residents and staff of The Banyan present handwritten statements and images of embroidery, interweaving the physical and the psychological into blindspots of perception. Chennai-based artist and sign painter, S.A.V Elanchezian, will not disclose details of his sign at this moment, saying, “It’s my problem, if I just want to just put one letter, I’ll do it”. Hanging the artworks within sign clusters around Chennai is an effort to evoke the relationship between place and self. Make Them Love You recognizes that desire is externalized in the very formation of place and that place itself is lived as much internally as externally. The artwork will be on display at Art World Gallery on the 15 & 16 May before we hang them amngst the sign clusters on Narasingapuram street (off Anna Salai, maps provided at the opening). ----------------

Casa Blanca 2: New No. 16 is an art gallery based in the city of Chennai, India. We have no physical space of our own, but rather we borrow public space for exhibitions. This effort is to raise a dialogue about access and agency to view and make art, while charging the ordinary proximity between people and place. For more information contact Shannon Spanhake +91 90 0325 8086.

Sponsor of Make Them Love You: CSO Partners | www.csopartners.org.in