VERVE CLOSE-UP
Sacred Feminine
Art Musings, Mumbai
Last month marked the return of the Burmans - Jayasri Burman unveiled her recent work just a few days prior to the Pundole Art Gallery-Apparao Galleries show of paintings by her Paris-based uncle - reputed lithographer and painter, Sakti Burman, known for his fantasy-laden imagery and rich colours. Expectedly, his was a sell-out show even before it opened...but credit goes to the junior Burman that it was the same in her case. No doubt the market for art is booming...but that's not the only reason why Jayasri's work was snapped up. Using an idiom born out of Indian folklore wedded to an inherently colourful imagination, she paints in watercolours on board the birds, beasts, deities and humans that her childhood mind once conjured up and places them in contexts at once historical and contemporary. The artist excels in sepia tones, but is equally proficient in the use of brilliant blues.

Visionary Antiquities
Nature Morte, Delhi; Galerie
Mirchandani + Steinruecke, Mumbai
Jyothi Basu still retains traces of his native Kerala in the vibrant colours of foliage and flora that manifest themselves on the sometimes reassuring, sometimes menacing - but almost always futuristic - pictures he creates in his fantasy landscapes. Besides natural elements, his work displays evidence of his exposure to the urban chaos and popular culture of Mumbai, the city he has adopted. So, computer circuitry surfaces amidst totemic figures and eccentric architecture. The old and new, the rural and urban, the remembered and imagined all converge to create images of "vegetation as an electronic grid, roadways as jungle vines, trees as concrete towers," in the words of Peter Nagy.

Beyond Time, Beyond Words
Cymroza Art Gallery;
India Fine Art, Mumbai
Though Gurcharan Singh's acrylics on paper are mostly monochromatic, they evoke colourful narrations of human relationships and their complexities. His conceptual terrains cultivated from the realms of memory are intensely private yet simultaneously universal. Indeed, it is the triumvirate of humans, animals and objects rendered in translucent layers of paint that animate the play of light and shade on his canvases. At times, the protagonist is the common man/woman as he/she grapples with psychological states that define experiences of the marginalised, living on the fringes of society. At others, the mother with child transforms into a 'Madonna with Child' in its divine associations. Animals and birds, especially the parrot, become companions to humans, symbolising the spirits of air, transcendence and freedom.

VERVE VANTAGE VIEW
A Genius Unmasked
Nemai Ghosh, photo-biographer of cinema legend, Satyajit Ray, holds the distinction of providing a crucial link between the film-maker and his audience by revealing unrecorded moments and perceptive insights that would otherwise have slipped into oblivion. That his archive consists of a phenomenal 95,000 negatives covering 25 years of their association makes selection a challenge. But Prof. Rajeev Lochan, director, National Gallery Of Modern Art, gamely delved into the task of portraying the persona of a genius by highlighting his command over the conceptual structures as well as the cinematographic and visual articulation of his concerns. The result: a stimulating exhibition titled Satyajit Ray: From Script To Screen at the NGMA, Mumbai.

Poetry In Bronze
That's an apt description for Ankit Patel's sculptures, presented by Bina Aziz at Jehangir. Titled The Force Within, the solid bronze forms depicted fluid figures engaged in experiencing different facets of human life...birth, growth, love, hate, even the underlying urge to sever the bonds one has spent years in strengthening. Eminent writer, Mulk Raj Anand, pays glowing tribute to the sculptor when he writes in the catalogue: "His forms create human rhythms of bodies that are flexible and suggest elasticity of the human body where flesh is breathing."