From the beaches of Croatia to the valleys of Kashmir, a new exhibition here promises to take viewers on an extraordinary visual journey of not just various landscapes from across the world but also into the creative recesses of the minds of artists who have painted them.
Over 70 paintings by 18 Indian artists have been put together for the exhibition titled, “Lands Within” at the Egg Art Studio here that will showcase both “real” and “imagined” journeys undertaken by the artists and challenge the audience to decipher the narratives as they “weave the inspiration of travel into their own visual stories.”
Curator Amrita Varma has broadly divided the show into two halves: landscapes (real) and mindscapes(imagined).
“There is this beautiful world that already exists around us but we haven’t explored it enough in its true sense. This exhibition is exploring that world – the land and its people – and also its impressions – how that spirit is reflected,” she says.
Mumbai-based artist Kishore Pratim Biswas paints steam engines halted at junctions with workers surrounding the vehicle. Through his works, he attempts to reflect on an “Indian way of life.”
“These landscapes are telling not just about the surroundings we live in but also discovering the beauty of it in a relaxed sense. These are things that even a layman would love to see and will be able to associate with,” says Varma.
According to her, the exhibition blends the classic with the contemporary.
While ‘landscape’ as a genre is among the basic forms of art, it is also timeless. And it is this timelessness captured in contemporary brush strokes that the show seeks to explore.
“Landscape is something that has always been a classic genre but the reason for me to do this is because it hadn’t been explored so much in the Indian professional art scene.
“It is the engagement of the artist and his co-creation with the subject at heart that makes these artworks contemporary. It is classic but it is also exploring contemporary life and scenes around it,” she says.
It is the ‘mindscapes’ segment of the exhibition that vindicates the contemporary context used for the landscapes.
“For anyone to take landscapes seriously in contemporary context, they have to to be able to see how an artist creates impressions of the same world. One has to be taken a further away to see how the mind is perceiving things,” says Amrita.
Here, she talks about city-based abstract artist Saurabh Narang who is largely influenced by architecture. His works reek of science with geometrical lines and curves and yet reflect the surroundings in a way that “you cannot really place it in a real landscape. But, in a sense you can delve deeper into his mind.”
The joy of landscapes perhaps lie in the sheer simplicity of their beauty, that it appeals as much to an art connoiseur as to a layman.
“A landscape series is the best way to get people involved into art in a more intimate manner,” says Amrita.
Shiffali Wadhwan’s paintings are a represenation of her memories from her trip to Croatia. The reproductions are so intense that they are capable of transporting the viewer to the moment when she saw a group of people enjoying a brunch on the beach-front. Other artists who will be exhibited include Anuradha Sarin Khurana (Delhi), Ashish Kushwaha (Madhya Pradesh), Bijay Biswal (Nagpur), Bipasha Sen Gupta (Delhi), Fanil Pandya (Baroda), Kunal Batra (Delhi), Pradeep Kumar Verma (Chandigarh), Sandeep Mani (Delhi), Sarika Dandona (Delhi), Shampa Sircar Das (Delhi), Rabani Bhagat (Delhi), Sanjay (Lucknow), Tapasya Gupta (Delhi), Umika Mediratta (Delhi) and Masood Hussain (Kashmir).
The show which begins today at the Egg Art Studio here is scheduled to continue till September 15.
