I am painting Nature and man again, but this time they have come together with a different balance. The human form is there in its primal purity

[Satish Gupta]

GALLERY GOER’S GUIDE

Zen and the Art of Satish Gupta

Satish Gupta’s followers probably loved the essentially Zen ambience – chattai, fragrant incense, soft chants – of Transformation, Gupta’s latest exhibition which marked a rather noticeable shift in the oeuvre of the New Delhi-based artist-sculptor-poet. The mixed media canvases and smaller drawings recently exhibited at Zazen, New Delhi and Jehangir Art Gallery, Mumbai, were vintage Gupta, captivating and seductive in their polished perfection. The artist says: "A decade back I was painting the void, my work was minimal, the empty circle, almost white on white. I am painting Nature and man again, but this time they have come together with a different balance.

The human form is there in its primal purity. The frescoes of Ladakh and Bhutan are there, more subdued than the vibrant walls of Shekhawati. I am back to the pristine desert of Ladakh from the warm embrace of the Thar. The present works are about the transformation of the self, through the spiral of Time/Space." Shorn of extraneous explanations, the toned limbs and almond eyes of the man-woman pair that coiled their way sinuously through Gupta’s latest canvases were certainly alluring. On the surface they spoke about Maya, and, in passing, about a little more.

Spellbound: Shibu Natesan and Baiju Parthan

Shibu Natesan and Baiju Parthan are amongst India’s hottest selling artists. To get both under one roof must have taken some doing, if not upfront lucre. Whatever it took, the show at Art Musings, Mumbai, was a virtual windfall. Viewers got a chance to see small format watercolours by Natesan and equally small mixed media paintings by Parthan. Baroda-based Natesan, who looks up to German painter, Fredrich Casper, uses the Post-Modernist’s device and quotes liberally from imagery culled from cultures and civilisations, over centuries, and recast using the language of the photo-realist. In contrast, Parthan’s vocabulary, replete with symbols, draws from archaic, even ceremonial imagery. His paintings recreate luminous worlds where the artist reigns as shaman healer. The spell cast by both bodies of work was potent.