2017

 
 
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Parallel Wings by Rini Dhumal

Spanning a wide spectrum of creative constructs emerging from varied ideations and genres, Rini Dhumal’s art is rooted in India’s culture and myth, coupled with her international exposure and imaginative spirit.

A flexibility of approach adds an organic energy and innate beauty to Rini’s art. With its focus on the inner feminine psyche, it explores the potential and challenges offered by different media, from two or three-dimensional work in clay or bronze, relief or graphic art. In a fine assimilation of abstraction, myth, landscape and conceptualisation, her art is threaded with the face, form and figuration of the ‘goddess’ in various incarnations of Rini’s own design. Her work also makes imaginative use of traditional Indian iconography – birds, animals and floral motifs – all reminiscent of religious art, but re-purposed to create a new vocabulary of form and meaning.

Rini’s enduring art and aesthetics, with their distinct feel and flow, speak for a unique assimilation of the personal and universal. This book “Parallel Wings -The Art of Rini Dhumal” is an attempt to understand and appreciate the dramatis persona, review her creative journey and take the reader through the various stages of her life and work until the present, with its focus on an exceptionally impressive and extensively varied repertorire.

(10 – 30 November 2017 )

 

Reflections in Mercury by Jaideep Mehrotra

‘There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.’ –  Pablo Picasso

Art is a “reflection” of its surrounding culture. A face of modern culture where the shiny new objects that reflect life around it, epitomising the industrial culture of gadgets and instant gratification. Metallics reflect everything surrounding them and deflect any allusions to the Artist’s interior.

Creating a work of art that will be physically different for every person looking at it?

There are no “laws of beauty” involved. One is prompted to think about the nature of art, of looking at art, of humanity, of our times, of ourselves.

I think we owe every work of art as much thoughtful and empathic attention as we can afford to give it. Hasty dismissal deprives us of aesthetic experiences.

The immense reflective surface are like minds, in the sense that the mind observes the universe, and models it. We approach art not for worship, but for catharsis; not to see something else, but to see ourselves.

These paintings return to us the world as visualised by our childlike selves: mutable, sparking with potential, fluid in form.

– Jaideep Mehrotra

(24 September – 27 October 2017

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The Eye Within - Various Artists

(15 June – 07 July 2017)

 

Silent Spectacle - 17th Anniversary Show

The Silence isn’t Silent.

It is a thousand thoughts rising around with a multitude of tendrils moving towards me. It is the simultaneous multi-tasking of thinking, feeling, analysing, comparing – all in a heartbeat of seemingly prolonged quiet.

The mind is a web that has many different interconnected paths. Our silences inspect these paths and let our souls run up and down each one, trying to decide the best path for us. The silence is like the tremor felt below a calm surface; the silence is the peace before a storm – deceiving and complex. Each path leads to another in what seems like a maze of all possible human deliberations, desires, feelings and fears.

The next time I sit in silence, know that my silence is a deception. I am a thousand people in that moment, doing a variety of possible things, carrying out scores of tasks and deciding how to feel at the end of it all. Oh, what a wonder the human mind is!

The silence isn’t silent, it is anything but.

– Sanjana Shah

(1 – 31 March 2017)

 

Sheer Layers Uncover The Truth by Arunanshu Chowdhury


Arunanshu Chowdhury works his images to have multiple connotations, drawing upon history, myths and literature each narrative creates a rhetoric of the transition between time and reality, depicted with an honesty that is obvious to the eye. Morphed images transform reality into a playground of storytelling, reinstating the artist’s conscious preoccupation with the representation of truth in the most ingenuous form, through an expanding visual oeuvre. This cross grafting of the perception and the actual identity of a character creates a new story. 

In his ‘Library’ series, the large works depict art books, books on science, politics, philosophy, and religion, with Bengali and English literature sharing space with characters from novels, which come alive and continue their voyage of exploration on the canvas amid a stack of books beckoning the viewer to be a part of a journey. There is a harmony created via the mélange of various elements, which in totality generate a flux of energy, making the work endearing as well as contemplative. 

(10 – 31 January 2017)