Overview

Chatterjee & Lal has hosted periodically the exhibition series ‘Simple Tales’ over the last fifteen years. Each iteration brings together objects from across timelines and mediums through a conviction that these encounters are necessarily rich and productive in nature. The series also recognises the fact that storytelling is key to the subcontinent’s art and design histories. Objects have been chosen not only for their aesthetic appeal but also for the tales they can tell.

‘Attend’ is an exhibition that argues for the continuing relevance of connoisseurship in the visual arts. Whilst in other cultural fields the discernment of quality is alive and well – think of sneaker-head culture for example – the same cannot be said of the visual arts, where connoisseurship has become a byword for elitism. There are signs of this changing, and it can be argued that ‘attending’ to individual artworks is, in fact, a radical act; one that pushes back against the superficial consumption of spectacle that seems to define so many of the art world’s most prized events.

A Video Walkthrough by Mort Chatterjee