On view at the Asian Art Museum in the Phantoms of Asia exhibition, CLOSING SOON.

New Delhi-based artist Jagannath Panda lives in the burgeoning city of Gurgaon, which is one of India’s major outsourcing hubs and bases of operation for global corporations. His works illustrate the city’s tensions, as overdevelopment threatens natural habitats and infrastructures collapse before they are completed. Panda’s mix of mythology and realism points to the evolving nature of Indian identity and experience today. His snake sculpture, The Cult of Survival, is an expression of the danger in becoming addicted to the cycle of production and consumption in a rapidly changing world.

Can you guess what this sculpture is made out of?

Beautiful soy sauce dog paintings. Brainy mischievous artists. Low rider pigs feet. Custom made cigarette packs. Printed tortillas. Karaoke. Portraits on the spot. And breaking news: an upside down A sculpture by Imin Yeh because she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

SpaceBi has cooked up quite a feast for tomorrow night’s MATCHA event. Have you RSVP’d yet? http://on.fb.me/MqRVvo

(shoyu dogs by Tina Takemoto; low rider pigs feet by Pablo Cristi; cigarette packs by Kevin Chen)

(Source: spacebi.org)

You really need to see this in person in our Phantoms of Asia exhibition to fully appreciate and get the full effect. Here is a detail from a large, textured, and intense work by Raqib Shaw; it’s as beautiful as it is horrific, depicting what I can only quickly sum up personally as an orgy of mutilation and pleasure. This painting is called Absence of God VII, made in 2008 with acrylic, glitter, enamel and rhinestones on board.

The London Telegraph calls Raqib Shaw “a vibrant artist destined for greatness.” Born in Calcutta, Shaw grew up in Kashmir, where he was influenced by the distinctive amalgamation of Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Christian cultures. Since 1998, Shaw has lived and worked in London, where his profound love for the visual and poetic cultures of East and West continues to influence his art. Taking themes from Milton’s Paradise Lost, Shaw summons a world of cultural contradictions, and draws from personal experience, self-knowledge, and dream psychology. Of his own process, he says it is “suggestive of shamanic practices where people dance wildly or use channeling to establish contact with the other side.” Dense in information and heavily populated with fantastical creatures, his work, with its intricate detail, rich color, and jewel-like surfaces, provides contrast to the intensely violent and sexual nature of its imagery.

Absence of God VII (detail), 2008, by Raqib Shaw (India). Acrylic, glitter, enamel and rhinestones on board. © Raqib Shaw. Courtesy of White Cube, London. Photo: Todd-White Art Photography.