At a moment when the world is under terrible threat from human activity and when the enormity of the challenge can leave one feeling mournful and overwhelmed, this exhibition offers a sense of solace, an occasion to remember how great our capacity to collaborate with nature actually is. In their different ways, each of the nine artists in“The Winter Show” — Ashok Namdeo Hinge, Pramod Apet, Rupesh Pawar, Santoshkumar Patil, Pravin Utge, Gunjan Shrivastava, Amit Bankar, Kranti Bankar, Prasanna Musale reach out to the natural environment for subject matter, for materials, for guidance. In the textured works of Ashok Hinge, for instance, the sheets of layered and folded. Prasanna Musale’s unique color and naturally occurring variation determines the palette and interplay of forms. The textures also play an important role in the work of Rupesh Pawar, but with distinctly different techniques andeffects. Preferring frottage to folding, Pawar lays his sheets and by rubbing inkstick and acrylic paint onto the traditional handmade paper he is able to create vigorous striated marks that he organizes into dense patterns that flood his works.
Amit Bankar’s mountainous forms on paper outnumber the naturally occurring but the overall structures, which can expand in profligate fashion like brambles, testify to the artist’s feeling for nature. Although the paintings by Kranti Bankar don’t feature any natural stone their effect rely on execution of charcoal on canvas, her subject matter clearly involves our relationship to the natural world. But a paean to nature isn’t the only thing on offer in “The Winter Show.” There is so much to be learned by looking at how the works of artist couples overlap and diverge.
The connection to organic growth and the interdependence of humans and animals in Santoshkumar’s work, as well as the sensitive attention to surfaces throughout, has a cumulative effect of slowing down your thoughts, heightening your senses, gently sweeping away the anxiety that increasingly permeates our thoughts. Perhaps this soothing effect has something to do with the handmade tactility of the work and the absence of all things electronic. All you need to make something worthy of attention, these artists remind us, is a rescued fragment of the natural world and a pair of hands.
Gunjan Shrivastava employs an abstract language that draws on natural phenomenon, but their differences are just as evident as she composes in planes and pursues translucency, and favors linear motifs and dramatic value shifts. Pervading her work is a conflation of the abstract and the everyday: her folded planar shards evoke the geometry of crystal formations, while her titles frequently allude to quotidian events and basic human relationships.
Pravin Utge explains that the essence of his work is to celebrate and sublimate the ordinary and noble life of Indian women. There are also some nice echoes between the two couples and the women he paints. Pramod Apet paints old cherished world and childhood memories which are now in the process of vanishing little by little. Also noticeable is the way in which Utge and Apet sometimes use very wide formats to envelope their viewers in a sublime expanse.
Over the last year there have been numerous exhibitions at Nippon but we still have some catching up to do when it comes to this group of artists. Among its other virtues, “The Winter Show” is a welcome opportunity to discover the work of 9 Indian artists whose work deserves to be better known. As you make your way through this exhibition, which offers a wonderfully generous selection of work, it’s also great to see more of the gradually emerging oeuvres of Artist which makes the botanical dimension of the show fascinating.
by
Moumita Sarkar
Artist/ Curator / Writer
Kolkata
The WINTER ART SHOW
Live : 15 to 31 December - 2020
Online Group show
Ashok Hinge I Pramod Apet I Santoshkumar R. Patil
Gunjan Shrivastava I Amit Bankar I Pravin Utge
Prasanna Musale I Rupesh Pawar I Kranti Bankar
Venue : www.nippongallery.com