SUNIL PADWAL: Giant-sized imagery
Sunil Padwal is known for his philosophical urban protagonist protesting silently against all manner of ills and his faceless faces have easily found takers at his overseas shows…but his recent solo show Numb, at Vadehra Art Gallery, Delhi, was radically different. Though framed in boxes, it was out of the box with its series of line drawings of insects symbolising our leaders and installations of instruments related to surgery – perhaps a solution to the country’s malaise of materialism and greed.

While the figurative style is his forte, Padwal is not averse to experimenting. In his first exhibition, he had reconstructed and painted objects just for fun…and now that he has gained maturity, he would like to explore that medium from a different angle – maybe for his upcoming solo show next year. What occupies him now is the imagery for his giant wall mural that has to be up in time for the Kala Ghoda Art Festival in February.

“My wife Tanuja and I collect inexpensive lights like Chinese lanterns, diyas, fairy lights, kite lights. We recently picked up some affordable lights from Milan…and we have a lot of candles. We love to light them up for the festive months and spend evenings at home. This year, our son Satt is almost three…big enough to understand what celebration is all about.”
(He is currently occupied with the imagery for his giant wall mural for the Kala Ghoda Art Festival in Mumbai in February.)

MAYA BURMAN: Illusionary story telling
Maya Burman’s paintings are bright, happy and vibrant like a hymn to nature and to womanhood. It is difficult to believe that the daughter of artist couple, Sakti Burman and Maite Delteil, began painting only recently, abruptly putting an end to her studies in architecture. “Painting came to me like a kind of salvation – like yoga or meditation,” says the artist who works with watercolours and ink on paper, with occasional touches of colour pencil and pastel. “I love the sensuous quality of paper… it’s almost erotic!”

In her ongoing exhibition at Art Musings, Mumbai, titled Once Upon a Time, she is a story teller who sometimes speaks of strange creatures inhabiting an idyllic space. Half animal, half bird, they personify the dichotomy we all face…especially Burman, who is half Indian and half French – a perfect blend of two cultures and two styles of painting. “If I wanted to celebrate an event in my life, I would invite very few people and have a picnic, maybe in a country house… or just lie down somewhere with cushions and music. The company is important. I visualise a tent and a gathering lit up with candles, preferably in a big garden filled with flowers and the fragrance of burning incense sticks. Light is like a living thing, it spreads a glow.”
(Her exhibition is at Art Musings, Mumbai, from November 2 to December 1.)

BOSE KRISHNAMACHARI: Kaliedoscopic profusion
Bose Krishnamachari works hard, but parties even harder. With his polished pate, colourful clothes and matching spectacle frames, he is a recognisable figure at almost every art ‘do’ in the city. That is, when he is not jet setting from Milan to Paris or travelling within the country to curate art shows. The vibrant artist is as recognisable as his series of Stretched Bodies, where pigments of varied hues sprawl next to each other in kaleidoscopic profusion on his canvases. Yet he often veers towards minimalism.
At an exhibition starting December 7 at the Swarovski Gallery in Innsbruck near Vienna, he will be showing four paintings – two ‘extreme figurations’ of Mumbai’s dabbawallas and two ‘chromomaniac abstractions’ – along with his installation of dabbas embedded with LCD screens, Ghost Transmemoir. Then he will be curating the inaugural show for Aditya Ruia’s new art space, due to open in January. Alongside, he is preparing for his own solo show in Mumbai…and in March, another of his curated shows begins at the 1x1 Gallery, Dubai. For Krishnamachari, there is always something to celebrate!
“Celebration is between the self and the other. I am not a narcissist. My friends and family are important for me to celebrate life. Any event, especially intellectual…like an art show, can be a cause for celebration. I once threw a catamaran party off the Gateway. If you can afford to throw a yacht party, you should – but the venue does not matter.... Light is most important to see a form. An artist should be aware of light, should understand where it is coming from, only then the form arrives.”
(He is curating a show for Aditya Ruia’s new art space in January, preparing for his solo show in Mumbai and curating for another show at 1X1 Gallery, in Dubai)

RATNA GUPTA: Emotional outpouring
Ratna Gupta is a book artist by training... but the only evidence of that in her first solo show Metamorphoses Retold at Gallery Beyond earlier this year, was the installation of rebound books cohabiting a bookshelf with other expressions of her thoughts and emotions. This young artist’s work is spontaneous and she made a natural transition to three-dimensional structures and installations by casting her own body parts in resin.
When Sunny Sung of Simyo Gallery, Korea, read about her and saw her work, she was impressed enough to invite Gupta to show her resin sculptures at the Singapore Art Fair in October. Gupta is now focussing her energies on casting a giant root in resin for her next show. She stumbled upon this remnant of a tree that was felled to make way for a road…and the fact that all the useful parts were taken away set her thinking about the way we discard the older generation. Her emotional outpouring should be worth the wait.
“Whether it is a festival, an art opening or a wedding, I like having the people I love around me. Ideally, I would love to celebrate by going away – getting close to nature, as I love the sea and the mountains. Diwali is the only festival I really celebrate. Every year I have decorated the house with marigolds and lit as many diyas and chai glass lights as I could find.”
(She is busy with casting a giant root in resin for her next show in 2008.)