Layered Meanings - Ten leading Contemporary Artists

 Beyond the dictionary definitions of 'Painting' and 'Sculpture', is something that the artists define themselves. They refuse to be tamed by the limitations of the mediums, and device their own sense-making strategies. From Collage to wall-mounted sculpture, they challenge the hegemony of 'oil on canvas'. This show enumerates 10 such artists and their works, diverse from each other but definitive in their own way.

Curiously, the chronologically first works in this show are oils on canvas! 

Sunil Gawde, back in the days when he was known as an abstract painter, sought the 'real' physical dimension of the paint he used. Eventually, it seems, he made the thick paint smile! Gawde's thick paint was a reminder that resulted from his action-oriented way to deal with his canvas. He first spread his paint on his canvas evenly, but was quick to unstable it with a large spatula. These works represent an important phase in the artist's career, before he took to conceptual works.

Santana Gohain, builds spaces within a given surface with many smaller surfaces. The space-defining role of colour is negated in her works. The works are as much about austerity of expression as about abundance of mark-making.

Perhaps Vanita Gupta explored the same path of subdued expression in her large drawings but here, her works with strands of torn paper ruminate on the very existence of mark-making, the senility of paper. No wonder that Vanita, who is also a poet, took to installation art only after these works.

Another artist who has passed his mid-career stage- H. G. Arunkumar, is here with his works that are now one of a kind: Arunkumar chose to do newspaper collages, but went on to draw over it and also added another layer of collaged images onto it, before treating these works for longevity.

Pooja Iranna's works are, if we may say- 'De-Collage', as they refer to one image painted on the jigsaw-like pieces. A mural-like quality is inherent in these works, after which Pooja turned to sculptures.

Himanshu Joshi explores every possibility of wall-mountable three-dimensional works, while using the element of light in his meticulously crafted paper-fold works. Recently, Himanshu has also turned to photo-collages with light. 

Puneet Kaushik is known for his choice of colour as much as his use of beads and elements of embroidery. His wall-mounted works radiate the richness of his material, and at a closer look, evoke a melancholic joy.

Abhijit Pathak treats pieces of cloth as his terrain and marks his mindscapes over them. The transparency he maintains is flawless. Pathak provides a viewer with maps to her/his dreams.

Nilesh Kinkale, on the other hand, celebrates the ground reality; literally. He chooses a unique surface for art-making: Asphalt, commonly used for our roads. Nilesh's practice for nearly two and half decades has been based on celebrating the everyday, as many artists from Mumbai (since Prabhakar Barwe) have done. Yet, Nilesh works on his own terms and takes ample liberty to go beyond drawing-and-painting the everyday object. These objects are now embedded in Asphalt.

Smita Kinkale reconciles the mundane material with fantasy landscapes. She bends, burns and blurs plastic sheets for her wall mounted works. The potential of her works to challenge the aesthetic notions is acknowledged internationally.

What binds these works is the quest for meanings. While these works may not send some explicit messages to a viewer who is eager to 'get it and go'; the artists have explored possibilities of their surfaces and materials to an extent that they know what it means to handle such a surface. The term 'layered meaning', is typically used in postmodern parlance to denote the diversity in decipherment. The artists, through their diverse approaches and choices, have all deciphered the strengths of their choice.

Abhijeet Tamhane

Mumbai. December 2023

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Layered Meanings - Ten leading Contemporary  Artists 

Gallery Beyond

Curated by Vibhuraj Kapoor

Abhijit Pathak / Arunkumar H.G / Himanshu Joshi / Pooja Iranna / Puneet Kaushik /

Nilesh Kinkale / Santana Gohain  / Smita Kinkale/ Sunil Gawde  / Vanita Gupta /

Date: 9th to 15 th  Jan 2024  Time: 11am to 7pm 

Venue: Jehangir art gallery

AC -2 , Kala Ghoda, Fort 400 001, Mumbai - India

www.gallerybeyond.in

#jehangirartgallery #vibhurajkappor #gallerybeyond #kalaghodamumbai #mumbaiartweekend

Layered Meaning - Curated by Vibhuraj Kapoor

 

"Layered Meaning "

Curated by Vibhuraj Kapoor

Ten leading Contemporary  Artists 

Abhijit Pathak

Arunkumar H.G

Himanshu Joshi

Pooja Iranna

Puneet Kaushik

Nilesh Kinkale

Santana Gohain 

Smita Kinkale

Sunil Gawde 

Vanita Gupta

Date: 9th to 15 th  Jan 2024  Time: 11am to 7pm 

Venue: Jehangir art gallery

AC -2 , Kala Ghoda, Fort 400 001, Mumbai - India

www.gallerybeyond.in

#jehangirartgallery #vibhurajkappor #gallerybeyond #kalaghodamumbai #mumbaiartweekend 

mumbaigalleryweekend

 

Yellow: Weekend

 

"Harmony in Hues” An Artful Journey An Exhibition of Paintings By well-known artist Deepak B. Patil

The exhibition "Harmony in Hues" by renowned artist Deepak Patil is being held at Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, from January 1 to 7, 2024. Deepak Patil has been practising realistic paintings for many years, gaining dominance in the field with his realistic depictions influenced by various mediums. Despite the challenges of using oil, acrylic and watercolours, Patil has excelled in captivating art enthusiasts with intricate details in his realistic artworks

This show will be inaugurated on 1st January 2024 at 5 pm by the Honorable Guest Shri. Yashwant Jadhav Shiv Sena Deputy Leader, Former BMC Standing Committee Chairman, South Mumbai and Shirdi Lok Sabha Sampark

Artist: Deepak B. Patil.

Pramukh, Mrs Yamini Yashwant Jadhav (MLA Byculla), Mrs Rimple Bhavesh Parekh Designated Partner Shaurya Arts LLP Notably, Deepak Patil's expertise extends beyond realistic paintings and nature art; he has successfully utilized mixed media and watercolours to depict the rich cultural life of Rajasthan. His unique approach to portraying the distinctiveness of the region within the realm of art has garnered widespread admiration. Patil's art transcends even in challenging mediums like oil, acrylic, and watercolours, he has left an indelible mark. His exceptionally detailed depictions of the Himalayan landscape, rich in nature and spirituality, showcase his mastery in watercolour and mixed medium. The unique use of colours in his paintings has resonated well with art connoisseurs, making this exhibition a display of unparalleled discovery. In addition to his prowess in traditional art, Deepak Patil has made notable contributions to the field of animation.From projects like "Hanuman" and"Sherlock Holmes" to studios such as"Silvertune," "Crest," and "Illusion" in Mumbai, as well as working on serials like "King" through "Escortoon" in Delhi, Patil has left an imprint in the animation industry.

Focusing solely on the canvas, Patil's art became a symphony of colours, captivating art lovers globally, In 2019, at the 'Olympia Art' International Competition, India, led by Patil, secured first place and a gold medal in'Composition and Landscape, triumphing over Russia.Since 2007, Patil has dedicated his full time to the world of art. He is an active member of the Sanskar Bharati organization. He has participated in the spot landscape study tour organized by Art Society of India under the guidance of Shri Vasudeo Kamath and Vijay Aachrekar(eminent artists). Deepak Patil has earned accolades in national and international competitions.

Recent work by Deepak B. Patil

 From: 1^st to 7^th January 2024

"Harmony in Hues”

An Artful Journey

An Exhibition of Paintings

By well-known artist Deepak B. Patil

 

VENUE:

Jehangir Art Gallery

Hirji Gallery

M.G. Road, Kala Ghoda,

Mumbai 40 00001

Timing: 11am to 7pm

Contact: +91 98926 99037

 

A Conception of reality - Suraj Kamble

Humans first set foot on the moon in 1969, conveying the sensation of human reality to space and from space, the nature of our own reality was seen and many concepts emerged. Creation, need and reality are considered the pillars of every era and fulfilling these pillars requires constant effort and skill. Meeting these three pillars is the need of the artist and individual in the field of literature. In every age, every practitioner of art follows these three pillars honestly. Suraj Dilip Kamble is one such emerging contemporary artist who consciously practices slow art and fulfils these three pillars.

Artist: Suraj Kamble

Suraj's paintings revolve around the facts and brutal realities of the world. These facts and realities are deeply buried in the heaps of socialism, the successes and privileges of the contemporary world, and in the elite. Digging deep inside these rubbles, we find the remains painted by Suraj. This deep layer is like the remains buried in our society for years. It is the neglected section of society, which helps to sustain our society but is ignored and classified under socio-economic inequality or caste, creed and widespread prejudice. He has endowed the wages earned by working all day through both physical work and painting. The hard work of working was not even, to the wages he received at the end of the day. He understood that life is in the same way as the fruits that come with hard work. With that sensitivity and effect, this has become the emotional world of Suraj's picture. The effectiveness of this sensory awareness has become the ethos of Suraj’s painting.

Smita Kinakle  and Suraj Kamble with Saffronart CEO Dinesh Vazirani 

Suraj's series of works, ‘Black Hole’, is on the one hand a mirror depicting the brutal lives of sanitation workers in the city, with all the facilities available against the least convenient equipment and through which they are completing their tasks. The same paradox of the song is presented to the world in its own style. Suraj's picture is a presented symbolization of human forms with their lean, hard-working bodies.

The entire structure of the paintings appears as monotypic. It's a series highlighting these voiceless people, their canvases are the stories of these people, and every stroke of brush is the face of their pain, struggle and humiliation. These are some of the cruel truths of human life that can be seen with the naked eye, which are experienced and felt once in a lifetime. This is not the idea of any poet or writer. It's not just for the beautification process, it's a pure reality. Art, in its myriad forms, has the power to cross borders, connect different hearts, and reveal a path to a more compassionate and just world. As an artist, Suraj uses the practical form of the landscape in his creation, as a catalyst for social introspection and change, and through this current narrative of change, one will have a powerful experience that is visible to the human eye in the real world.

- Smita Kinkale

Artist / Teacher / Writer 

T: The Sleep M: Acrylic on canvas, S: 42x42 in

अभिकाल्पणिक वास्तव 

मानवाने 1969 मध्ये चंद्रावर पहिले पाऊल ठेऊन अंतराळाला मानवीय वास्तवाची संवेदना पोहोचवली अंतराळातून आपल्याच वास्तवाचं स्वरूप न्याहाळलं आणि अनेक गर्भित संकल्पनांचा उदय झाला .

भौतिकजीवनाच्या कक्षा विस्तीर्ण होण्याचा वेग वाढला  या वेगवान  बदलत चाललेल्या समाजाच्या मानसिक आणि भावनिक गरजा पूर्ण करण्यासाठी चित्र , नाट्य ,साहित्याच्या निर्मितीलाहि  वेग आला .

निर्मिती, गरज आणि वास्तव हे प्रत्येक युगाचे आधारस्तंभ मानले जातात आणि हे स्तंभ पूर्ण करण्यासाठी सतत प्रयत्न आणि कौशल्य आवश्यक असते . या तीन स्तंभांची पूर्तता करणे ही सर्वच  क्षेत्रातील कलाकार आणि व्यक्तीची जबाबदारी  आहे. प्रत्येक युगातील  कला साधना करणारा प्रत्येक व्यक्ती या तीन स्तंभांचे प्रामाणिकपणे पालन करतो.

सूरज दिलीप कांबळे  हा असाच एक उदयोन्मुख समकालीन चित्रकार आहे   जो जाणीवपूर्वक हळुवार रेषां रंगलेपणातून चित्रनिर्मितीचा सराव करतो आणि हे तीन स्तंभ पूर्ण करतो.

सुरजची चित्रे  जगातील तथ्ये आणि क्रूर वास्तवांभोवती विहरत  आहे. समाजिकतेच्या ढिगार्‍यांमध्ये, समकालीन जगाचे यश आणि विशेषाधिकार आणि प्रतिष्ठित वर्गात खोलवर दडलेली वस्तुस्थिती आणि वास्तव आहेत. या ढिगाऱ्यांच्या आत खोलवर खोदल्यावर आपल्याला सूरजने चित्रित केलेले अवशेष सापडतात. हा खोल थर आपल्या समाजात वर्षानुवर्षे गाडलेल्या अवशेषांसारखा आहे, हा समाजाचा उपेक्षित वर्ग आहे, जो आपल्या समाजाला टिकवून ठेवण्यास मदत करतो परंतु सामाजिक-आर्थिक विषमता किंवा जाती, पंथ, व्यापक, पूर्वग्रहांखाली दुर्लक्षित आणि वर्गीकृत केले जाते.दिवसभर राबणाऱ्या मजुरांच्या जीवनाबद्दलची निरीक्षण आणि परिणाम याचा अभ्यास केला . दिवसभर राबवून मिळणाऱ्या मजुरीचा आनंद त्याने प्रत्यक्ष कृती आणि चित्रकृती दोन्हीतून घेतला आहे . राबताना होणाऱ्या कष्टांचा मागमूसही दिवसाच्या शेवटी मिळालेल्या मजुरीनंतर नसायचा. जगणं हे असंच कष्टानंतर मिळणाऱ्या फळात आहे हे समजून घेतलं. हि संवेदनिय जाणीवेची परिणामकारकता  सुरजच्या चित्राचे भावविश्व ठरले आहे.

T: Esteem and Thought process  M:Acrylic and charcoal on canvas  S: 48x108 inch Year: 2022

सूरजच्या  चित्रांची मालिका "ब्लॅक होल" व अन्य ही एकीकडे शहरांतील सफाई कामगारांच्या दाहकश्रमिक   जीवनाचे चित्रण करणारा आरसा आहे, ज्यात अल्प उपकरण  उपलब्ध आहेत मुंबईतील सफाई कामगारांच्या क्रूर जीवनाचे चित्रण करणारा आरसा आहे, ज्यात कमीत कमी सोयीस्कर उपकरणांच्या विरूद्ध सर्व सुविधा उपलब्ध आहेत आणि त्याद्वारे ते त्यांची कामे पूर्ण करत आहेत. जगण्यातला हाच विरोधाभास जगासमोर स्वतःच्या शैलीतून मांडला आहे. सुरजची चित्र ही रूपकात्मक पातळीवर मानवी रूपांचे त्यांच्यादुबळ्या, कष्टमय शरीरासह

प्रस्तुतिकरण करत आहेत. चित्रांची संपूर्ण रचना एकरुपक म्हणून प्रकट होतात. मानवी असुरक्षितता आणि सामर्थ्य याबद्दल तीव्रतेने मांडतात.या आवाजहीन लोकांवर प्रकाश टाकणारी ही एक मालिका आहे, त्याचे कॅनव्हास या लोकांच्या कथा आहेत आणि ब्रशचे प्रत्येक स्ट्रोक म्हणजे त्यांच्या वेदना, संघर्ष आणि अपमानाचा चेहरा आणि काहीसे निस्तेज पण ऊर्जेच्या प्रतीक्षेतील रंगसंवाद आहेत असे भासते .

मानवी जीवनातील काही क्रूर सत्ये आहेत जी आयुष्यात अनुभवली जातात, भावली जातात. तसेच  ती कवीची किंवा लेखकाची कल्पना नाही. केवळ सुशोभीकरण प्रक्रियेसाठी तर नाहीच  ते  एक शुद्ध वास्तव आहे.

सुरजची चित्रे हि परिणामांना  असंख्य स्वरूपात सीमा ओलांडण्याची,भिन्न हृदयांना जोडण्याची आणि अधिक दयाळू तसेच न्याय्य जगाकडे जाण्याचा मार्ग प्रकाशित करण्याची शक्ती बाळगतात . एक कलाकार म्हणून, सुरज सामाजिक आत्मनिरीक्षण आणि परिवर्तनासाठी उत्प्रेरक म्हणून त्याच्या निर्मितीत भूलोकीचं व्यवहारात दिसणारे रूप याचा वापर करून बदलाच्या या चालू कथनाद्वारे वास्तव सृष्टीतले मानवी चक्षूंना दिसणारा असा समर्थ अनुभव आपणास नक्कीच देतो .

 

स्मिता किंकळे.

अध्यापिका क्युरेटर चित्रकार

Jehangir Art Gallery-2024

Preview: Tuesday 26th December 2023, 6PM Onwards

Inauguration by: Dinesh Vazirani (Co-founder &CEO Saffron Art India/ Co-founder Art Mumbai)

Exhibition Dates: 26th December2023 to 1st January- 2024

Venue: Jahangir Art Gallery 161B, Mahatma Gandhi Road, Kala Ghoda, Fort, Mumbai

@smitakinkale @mr.suraj_kamble

I would be honored by your presence at the inauguration and the preview event to witness the unveiling of my art exhibition.- Suraj Kamble - Artist, Mumbai

#jehangirartgallery #saffronart #surajkamble #smitakinkale #artblogazine

 

 

History Lab and the Elegy of Visceral Incantations | T. V. Santhosh @ Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum

Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in collaboration with The Guild presents History Lab and the Elegy of Visceral Incantations by T. V. Santhosh. This body of work, distinct from his earlier mode but forming a continuity with his artistic preoccupations, offers the viewer a look into the artist’s careful approach to historical and present conflicts, their continuities and ironies. History Lab incorporates the artist’s attention to detail into his keen consciousness of contemporary events, drawing inspiration from world events, his own early roots in art, activism and historical reference to create a compelling and cogent body of work. The exhibition will run from 14 December 2023 to 11 February, 2024, at the Special Projects Space, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai. 

Artist: T V Santosh

The exhibition will run from 14 December 2023 to 11 February, 2024, at the Special Projects Space, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum in Mumbai.

Recent work by T. V. Santhosh

“One of the sculptures in this show, titled History Lab IV, is about a process of understanding history from the point of view of progress as defined by industrial and technological advancement, and how these high points of advancement in turn become yardsticks to measure the extent of damage caused by man against its own kind. The history of war could be read as a parallel phenomenon to the development of weapons technology. History has its multiple complex narratives…” – T. V. Santhosh

About the Artist T. V. Santhosh, born in Kerala, India, 1968, obtained his graduate degree in painting from Kalabhavan, Santiniketan and his master’s degree in Sculpture from the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. His art cites histories of violence, injustices, war, terrorism and media propaganda. His art practice has stood as a strong commentary on the current social and political crisis of our lives. Santhosh’s works have been shown widely in museums and biennales. Some of his museum shows include Lokame Tharavadu (The World is One Family), curated by Bose Krishnamachari, Kochi Biennale Foundation, 2021; forming in the pupil of an eye, curated by Sudarshan Shetty, Kochi-Muziris Biennale, 2016; The Great Game, curated by Marco Meneguzzo and Mazdak Faiznia, National Pavilion of Iran, 56th Venice Biennale, 2015; Making History, Colombo Art Biennale, 2014; Heritage Transport Museum, New Delhi, 2013; WAR ZONE – Indian Contemporary Art, Artemons Contemporary, Das Kunstmuseum, Austria, 2012; Critical Mass: Contemporary Art from India, curated by Tami Katz-Freiman and Rotem Ruff, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Israel, 2012; 11th Havana Biennial, 2012; ÍNDIA- LADO A LADO, curated by Tereza de Arruda, SESC, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2012. Santhosh’s select solo shows include Common Wall, Grosvenor Vadehra, London, 2014; The Land, Nature Morte, Berlin, 2011; Burning Flags, Aicon Gallery, London, 2010; Blood and Spit, Jack Shainman Gallery, 2009; Living with a Wound, Grosvenor Vadehra, London, 2009; A Room to Pray at Avanthay Contemporary, Zurich, 2008; Countdown, Nature Morte, Delhi, 2008: all in collaboration with The Guild; Countdown, The Guild, Mumbai, 2008. Many of his works are in important institutions and private collections. His art practice has been widely written about, including in two books, T. V. Santhosh: Unresolved Stories (The Guild Art Gallery, 2008) and Blood and Spit: Living with a Wound (The Guild and Jack Shainman Gallery, 2009). Other catalogues with solo shows include One Hand Clapping/Siren, Living with a Wound, and False Promises. 

Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum ( image google)

About Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum The Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum is Mumbai’s first museum, established in 1857, and is the erstwhile Victoria and Albert Museum, Bombay. The Museum building and collections underwent a comprehensive, UNESCO-Award winning restoration, spearheaded by the Mumbai Chapter of the Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), and supported by the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai and the Jamnalal Bajaj Foundation. The project involved an institutional overhaul and training an all new staff. Since it opened to the public in 2008, the Museum has pioneered contemporary art which is presented in the extraordinary 19th-century building, one of the finest in India, in an attempt to rethink the cannon and challenge colonial and Enlightenment precepts. The Museum was built to showcase the city’s contemporary art and craftsmanship through a rare collection of fine and decorative arts of India. The Museum’s robust exhibition and outreach programme invites artists to engage with these collections and archives and interrogate its founding principles. Over 85 exhibitions have been presented, which include collaborations with both local and international institutions and organisations. Past exhibitions have showcased contemporary creative practices in design, crafts and textiles, architecture, urbanism, and film and video art. To mark its 150th anniversary in 2022, the Museum brought out a book titled ‘Mumbai: A City Through Objects, 101 Stories from the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum’, edited by the Director, Tasneem Zakaria Mehta. The book was co-published with Harper Design, Harper Collins’ new design imprint, and has won several awards. For more information about the Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Mumbai City Museum, please visit www.bdlmuseum.org Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bdlmuseum/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/BDLMuseum Twitter: https://twitter.com/BDLMuseum Contact: +91 22 23741234 The exhibition is on view at: Special Projects Space, Museum Plaza, Dr. Bhau Daji Lad Museum, 91-A, Veermata Jijabai Bhonsale Udyan (Rani Bagh), Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Road, Byculla (E), Mumbai – 400027 For press enquiries, please contact: Ruta Waghmare Baptista: rwaghmare@bdlmuseum.org Kindly note that the main Museum building is currently closed due to essential repairs.

 About The Guild The Guild was established in 1997 with an aim to function as a semi-institutional space within the bustling art-hub of Mumbai, India. Since its inception, it has been providing a platform for discursive practices, innovation and experimentation in contemporary art. The Guild represents artists of diverse generations who have brought in robust dialogue within and across their disciplines. The gallery has held major retrospectives of K. P. Reji, Sudhir Patwardhan, Navjot Altaf and G. R. Iranna in collaboration with premier national art centres, and published a number of books with essays by preeminent critics and curators on contemporary Indian artists, such as Sudhir Patwardhan, Navjot Altaf, Jyoti Bhatt, K.G. Subramanyan, A. Ramachandran and T. V. Santhosh, amongst others. 

For any further queries, please contact us at: 

theguildart@gmail.com, 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theguildartgallery/

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What Is Underneath?

Five artists create mesmerizing, dreamlike world in What is Underneath?, the five artist group known as Urge exhibiting at Nippon Art Gallery through December 12th; refer to things that exist underneath of nature which cannot be explained by conventional means. Each of the artists Santa Rakshit, Shekhar Bhattacharjee, Namrata Sneha, Sumedh Kumar and Jigna Gaudana create a representational world that has been twisted and turned in dreamlike scenes that fill one either with anxiety or sunlit peace. The artists are in uncharacteristic harmony with one another. For starters, they all embrace a saturated palette. Their works representational strangeness, which evokes the unconscious through deliciously skewed illustrations of concepts of things seen and unseen, relates them to Surrealist dream like images.

Recent artworks Shekhar Bhattacharjee

Shekhar Bhattacharjee paintings conjure the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson in small figures within a lusciously abstracted, paranormal forest in the style of Paul Klee. Borrowing Klee’s language of abstraction, a charming and intense offshoot of his painterly vocabulary Shekhar turns Klee’s forms inside out in a spiritual landscape saturated with color and form, made with oil paste and ink on paper, unlocks a vision of a new landscape of dense forest that divides up the canvas vertically using trees outlined in a cerulean blue with the boldness of spray-painted orange and yellow. The painted forest is deep, dark and impenetrable. The mysterious forest is a mass of fantastically messy yellow, green and orange spray paint that defines a canopy held up by trees outlined in a luminous periwinkle moon; the work centers on a tree whose bark is a fauve masterpiece, with tiny flecks in a myriad of colors surrounded by the most intense ultramarine blue. His bold abstraction is overlaid with marks and images that have a graphic sensibility and presence; the drawings make one think he is tagging his own work. One can only imagine what narrative is at play here. That sense of being a privileged, silent observer in nature has to be one of the defining human experiences. As a teenager, he used to wander in the miles of pinewood behind his parents’ house, from the beginning the svelte and songful shepherds and nymphs don’t have a lot in common with actual agricultural workers they’re obviously projections of the poets into a fantasy of beneficent nature. Maybe what you’re up to is to insist on that powerful felt relationship between man and nature, whatever we may mean by that at a given moment without pretending that all is well and the genre can continue to operate in denial.

Recent artworks Namrata Sneha

In Namrata Snehas’ painting, twisted and playful compositional elements show her intense relationship to Pop Art and such representational artist as David Hockney. Spring is yet to come is a large and wonderful landscape of an abstracted form that has been distorted by the artist. Made up of nine small canvases measuring one foot by one foot, the wiggly line therefore is the beginning and essence of the painting: a trajectory through space and time. As if this were not enough, Namrata’s paint and color are rich and saturated reds, greens, and yellows as well as blues. It’s an expression of excitement in the discovery of new place and a fresh way of painting and depicting space that is so powerful and engaging. One of the largest paintings in the show, it anchors the canvas with an expansive spring-acid green, punctuated by dots that seem to have been made by placing the mouths of multicolor tubes of paint directly into the negative space of the composition, effectively kissing the canvas. These painterly passages are invented to palpably ground the auras she creates in her canvases. They mix optically over a cracked and milky surface to create a hovering presence in the center of the canvas. It’s the kind of mystical in terms of its formal transformation epiphany that Namrata anticipates throughout her canvas. She employs a wide array of paint applications. In this instance, such a painterly mixed bag helps to phenomenally ground her tree/subjects, and creates equilibrium with the explicit, sometimes illustrative pictorialism of their branching figures. As in her aforementioned dotting technique, Namrata actively embellishes different shifts of focus in her paintings with thick scumbling, translucent washes and dry brush of kaleidoscopic chroma, and dabbing and dripping of thinned oil paints. The assuredness with which she weaves these disparate approaches together into coherent visionary images is impressive. Accordingly, one gets the chance both to witness her transformative visions and to participate in the rituals of their making. Her work deploys a more generalized and perhaps more sober template of twining vegetal daemons similar, though much more brut, to those seen in decorative friezes in classical ornament. This interweaving syntax lends these paintings a compositional unity that can easily support the tension between pictorial symbol and painterly substance that seems to be the artist’s métier.

Recent artworks Santa Rakshit

Santa Rakshits’ Postcards from Post Box, oil on canvas, series is a lot more abstract than her: thickly painted black lines, outlined in white, dance around the canvas in an enchanting array of drips and dabs of various sizes and viscosities that hint at landscape. Representing the landscape feels urgent now because it’s under threat. According to Santa she used to attend these visualization meditations where one would be led through imaginary landscapes, actively using our minds to conjure what was being described by the trusted leader. One evening a few years ago she had a particularly vivid sense that the concept of landscape was her own skin, and there were roots and tubers growing beneath it, swelling and bursting through the surface. In her vision the earth bled and screamed. ‘I am in mourning, as a lot of us are, for damaged ecosystems and disappearing animal species.’ As with the paintings, where her toxic acrylics performed a kind of transubstantiation her forests are indexical floriations: sinuous strokes are branches; spills can be glitters of leaves; spray paint, fog; protruding paint-licks, thorns, ticks or mosquitoes. Santas’ experimental approach to mark-making thick or thin, macro or micro, tight or loose, brushed, sprayed or sponged goes for both forests and figures. The precisionist symbolism echo in Santas’ crisp ferns and fluorescent lepidoptera, scintillating against a nocturne of blue, yellow, red and black. Santa points out all the ways in which the land is both interpreted and shaped by the human mind. She talks about the Dutch origin of the word landscape and how wishful thinking has been embedded in it all along. The word first appeared in the late sixteenth century, and it meant painting or drawing a view of natural scenery. If landscape is a framing and representing of nature, it cements the idea that nature is an invention of the psyche, an illusion of tame and wild, leisure and threat, life and death. Yet rogue textures icky drips and thorny bumps interpreting the most beautiful passages of Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali reminding us that nature, just like art, is a messy and dangerous concoction.

 

Recent artworks Jigan Gaudana

These new paintings by Jigna Gaudana, like her previous bodies of work, arrive in a headlong rush of invention festooned upon a canny theme, in this case the female body in nature about the feminist reckoning with that moribund tradition as well as the post-feminist inversion of that reckoning the figures themselves can be all but incidental in Jignas’ overgrown miasmas of cactus, wildflowers, whiskery stalks and impenetrable leafage. A more occult art history comes to mind in these unkempt, unruly wildernesses, one which begins where the babes-in-the-woods tradition itself, after giving birth to modernism, withers away. Jignas’ everyday ecstatic includes luminous beings, spirits of the self whose spare, archaic profiles float among the flowers. Faces, flowers, birds and weeds are painted with a kind of folk-art zeal while the cerulean forest behind, solidly modeled then dematerialized by dancing layers of sprayed pigment, is appealingly contrary in color, scale and attack. In Grieving Woman, a lone woman in a classical pose is incised in white against the mottled background like a fading figure. Jigna, however, putting the brakes on such skillful seduction according to her restless temperament, encloses this exquisite scene in a dark, seething knot of numerous cactus plants that branches out of her body as brut as the figures are delicate. One of the most interesting things about pastoral poetry is that it is the fantasy of urban poets so fantasies of nature are a counterpoint to a more urban experience. There is a sense of nostalgia around that; and as you say, the characters and settings are poetic projections. The utopian nature experience exits the grasp of the poets’ minds just as it turns into words. The Stories Within in many of Jigna’s compositions is centripetally directed, often with a diminution of form, towards the center of the canvas, which has the effect of a vortex of maternal origin: a cosmic matrix of regenerative power. Such a symbolically loaded destination might be read as cliché if it were not for the artist’s ability to keep the association subliminal, as she does.

Recent artworks by Sumedh Kumar

Sumedh Kumar’s Blue Smoke Series, drawings in pastel on handmade paper, are self- portraits that have run amuck into abstraction. His paintings express a different kind of cross between figuration and abstraction, more related to the body. Although the forms that fill his paintings are not figures, they have an anatomical presence that calls up the Surrealists. When he is painting he is trying to build up irritating problems in layers of color and texture. He spills, puddles and scumbles to make atmospheres that range from tarry to luminous while being as emphatic as he can about the radiance and light sources that don’t follow any logic aside from the logic of paint and the rules the painting produces within itself. He feels like he is digging for the scenes, isolating forms to make figures, forms, and a sense of both encrusted surface and receding space. He knows vaguely what he wants to find, but he is teasing it out, searching for a story like a diviner reading tea leaves. Gestures become people; they are part of the swamp of marks that veer into the realm of things. Mess coheres into specificity and leaks back into mess. He knows when the painting is done when he thinks it might be breathing. A visual split in half with an intense blue silhouette of a smoker’s thought and pain his body feels due to atrocities. A man standing in a parallelogram of blue brushstrokes with legs tied to the pole, creating a tension that is further complicated by marks that delineate an architectural space on the painting a tonsured head of a man and a woman head or a torso not fully articulated by the rounded forms that fill out the composition. His forms evoke monsters within the body, as in Medusa, whose snake-like path also reads as a colon. It’s a scene you might see in pain. The risk of consuming the smoke is parallel to viewing Sumedh’s art; he creates works that don’t feel safe.

The inventiveness of these five artists’ works, in which they envisage their respective worlds on a small scale, is mesmerizing as they intentionally evoke such symbolism, yet captivating the viewer primarily in muscular, painterly compositions that flex their energies ecstatically outward toward the audience. A description can have the power to prospectively modify experience. To describe or name a previously unacknowledged beauty can amplify its possibility in the future for others; it can dilate the horizon of beauty and hopefully of the imaginable. To assume that experience is shaped by the evolution of our ingenious and unlikely metaphors is also helpful to these artists; it can enhance our motivation and cultivate enabling operational fictions, like freedom and power. We are provided another reason to thicken the dark privacy of feeling into art with What is Underneath?

 

Abhijeet Gondkar

November 2023, Mumbai

 

Their works representational strangeness,

which evokes the unconscious through deliciously

skewed illustrations of concepts of things seen

and unseen, relates them to Surrealist dream like images

- Abhijeet Gondkar

Show: What Is Underneath?

by

Group artist

Shekhar Bhattacharjee

Santa Rakshit

Jigna Gaudana

Sumedh Kumar

Namrata Sneha

Preview: 12th Dec 2023

Time 6pm to 8.30pm

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Date: 12th to 18th Dec 2023

Time: 3to7pm / at Nippon

RSVP: Santa Rakshit M: +91 78742 14449

Flora Fountain, Fort,Kala Ghoda

30/32, 2nd Floor, Deval Chambers, Nana bhai Lane,

Flora Fountain, Fort, Mumbai – 400 00, India.

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