Corporate India buys into the idea of art

Religare’s arts.i gallery marks the debut of India Inc.

They buy art, they come for openings, some even associate or promote it, but India Inc has remained divorced from its business potential, save for an art fund or two or three. Therefore, when it opens next week in New Delhi with a show by 16 artists, Religare Arts Initiative will be corporate India’s largest outing in this domain.

The arts.i, first floor, Connaught Place gallery, art store, art café and resource centre hopes to become a dynamic space for artists, collectors, investors and others closely or peripherally linked with programmes that run the gamut from shows to workshops, interventions, discussions, symposia, residencies or simply a great place to grab a sandwich while surrounded by canvases, sculpture, photographs or installations.

Idyllic? Perhaps yes, but Amit Sarup, director, Religare Arts Initiative, insists this is the company’s way of providing a “360-degree platform” and “synergies built around transparency” as a port of call for artists and collectors on the one hand, and an alternative investment platform on the other for asset management.

Religare closed a small, tightly-held art fund for Rs 11.5 crore in January this year. Its new initiative has “cost a few crores”, which it hopes to recover over three years, with Sarup insisting Ranbaxy is in it as a long-term player. With a monthly rent of Rs 25 lakh for the 12,000 sq ft space where it has begun operations, it certainly seems to be in for the long haul.

Heading the creative end is the excitable Mukesh Panika, restless as he shows off the galleries and other spaces to artists and other gallerists, to collectors and to hacks. “It’s like a white cube that’s neutral,” he says of the immense possibilities of the space. But really, isn’t it just another gallery with a corporate house backing it? Panika is horrified at the suggestion: this, in central Delhi, is his idea of creative nirvana. “We want to nurture artists,” he points out, “to promote artists” with some out-of-the-box flexibility when it comes to advising and helping collectors.

The kick-off show on October 1, aptly titled Outer Circle, springs from that thinking, with arts.i promoting “some talented artists who haven’t arrived yet”, people co-curator and impresario Alka Pande says are likely to be “tomorrow’s masters, the hip, the happening and the trendy”. Most shows will extend for a month, and the galleries will open from 10 am to 11 pm, seven days a week.

“We want people to come for the aesthetics, not just for the investment,” says Pande, though Sapru might not wholly agree. “We want to do this thing right,” says the director, “over time, the money will flow.”

Panika, off on another tour of the handsomely appointed galleries with more artists who’ve walked in for a dekho, adds: “We have to balance forces between the market and ideology.”

Oh, and Mumbai is next.