Sprawling chawls with their line-up of Diwali lanterns, garbage dumps along the Gorai seashore, a garish pink sofa juxtaposed against an old television set, dominated her canvas. Prajakta Palav’s images were extremely life-like, like photographs.

Androgynous images…earthy colours... minimalist lines.... Deepali Nandwani takes a close look at the multi-hued creations that dominated the art scene

VERVE CLOSE-UP

Abir Karmakar: From My Photo Album

Museum Gallery

Talented Sikkim boy, Abir Karmakar, painted his own self as an androgynous double for his debut show, curated and presented by Ranjana Steinruecke. Sharp and edgy in its content, the photo realist images seemed to reach out of the confines of the canvas, to grab viewer attention.

Now Baroda-based, he paints himself both as a woman and a man. But predominantly, the imagery is of a man in drag, placed in a bourgeois world of fashion and high life. Consequently, you see the ‘man-woman’ lolling on the bed, sprawled out on a decadent velvet sofa or getting ready for a fantasy filled fashion show. The detailed setting is urbane, upper class European, with just a hint of India peeping in, through the embroidered wall hanging.

Brinda Chudasama Miller: Solstice and the Equinox

Museum Gallery

Brinda Chudasama Miller returned after a gap of two-and-a-half years with an abstract bunch of paintings inspired by an astronomical phenomena of the various positions of the sun in relation with the celestial equator. It is the weather and its impact on human life that was the source of inspiration behind this work. But her latest paintings also formed narrative takes on almost every ancient culture’s obsession with the universe, the position of the sun and the stars and the celestial stories that mark our subconscious.

Contemporary in sensibility and form, Miller broke away from everything that’s very trendy or fashionable (read, figurative work) to bring a series of layered paintings dominated by warm blues, greens and other metallic colours, along with her favourites: earthy reds and rust. She showed a range of large to medium sized work on paper and canvas. Her medium sized paper works had chequered strips of painted paper, interwoven with each other.

What’s interesting in her canvases was not just the subject, but her use of textured, handmade paper and thick, dried paint to layer a work. Though never really figurative in essence, Miller’s work has evolved to an extent where the figures are either in the background or not discernible at all.

VERVE VANTAGE VIEW

Curators of group shows tend to put together a disparate mix of artists and works, some old and others new, sometimes with no connection to each other either in theme or in styles. This art season, however, a couple of group shows stood out for their intelligent and well thought out mix of art works. Among the best was Bose Krishnamachari’s Double Enders at Jehangir Art Gallery, where he assembled over 69 Malayali artists, living and working within and outside Kerala. The art expedition that will travel to Delhi, Singapore and Kochi, explored migration and the Malyali mindset through a series of paintings, video art and sculptures. Photo-realists, like Shibu Natesan and Riyas Komu, shared gallery space with K. G. Subramanayam’s evocative sculpture. Given that the beautiful state is devoid of any visual culture, the show was a comment on how far artists from Kerala have travelled.

Jaideep Mehrotra

Verve Forthcoming

Puja Kshatriya brings her solo show to the Museum Gallery, later this year (December 5 to 11). A series of human heads painted on canvas, the images have a larger than life presence. In her almost sculptural works, Kshatriya deals with the multi-dimensional aspect of relationships, with oneself and the world outside. The same male form emerges and re-emerges, to associate past with present, reality with metaphor.

Shadow Play: The Art House, Singapore. Jaideep Mehrotra, famous for his figurative work, exhibited his surrealistic and evocative abstracts for the first time
ever. Singapore’s The Art House played host to a series of the artist’s abstract works. His first international solo show, Shadow Play, was a fascinating exploration of an idea to see ‘things in a silhouette’.

Shibu Natesan	Baiju Parthan	Prajakta Palav
Manisha Gera Baswani	Sheettal Gattani	Jitish Kallat
	Chittrovanu Mazumdar