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Artist Uday Shanbhag (1972) 

Title Orgie in Bagdad 

Year 2006 

Material Acrylic and oil on canvas 

About the work 

You see several elements on this bright pink canvas that are not immediately recognisable. Three icy blue planes hover over two flesh-coloured figures – people perhaps? – against a background of pink paint stripes, which seem to have solidified as they dripped down. This gives the painting a spatial quality. But what kind of space that might be is as uncertain as the identity of the figures. Moreover, one of the figures seems to be crawling into the image with great difficulty, making it all a bit unpleasant. How does this reality relate to the unambiguous title Orgie in Bagdad?  

About the artist

Uday Shanbhag trained as an electrician in his native town of Siri in South-West India. He decided at a young age to move to the metropolis of Bangalore to become a painter. In his paintings, he uses bright colours and dripping paint to depict his concerns on various topics, from nuclear power to political corruption, genetic engineering and technological warfare. He also incorporates elements from Hindu culture such as the lotus flower (a symbol of purity and fertility), Brahma (the god of creation) and the cow, which is considered to be a mother figure. He studied painting at the Ken School of Arts in Bangalore and Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. From 1999 to 2001, he was an artist-in-residence at De Ateliers in Amsterdam. 

In the collection

Acquired in 2006. Shanbhag’s work Great Indian Rope Magic was acquired in 2005. De Nederlandsche Bank hosted a solo exhibition with the same title in 2006. This exhibition then travelled to Mumbai. De Nederlandsche Bank has purchased several works by artists-in- residence at De Ateliers since it was founded in 1963 (at the time: Ateliers '63). For example: Marlene Dumas, Tanja Ritterbex and Simon van Til. 

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