Curator's Note:

Architecture celebrates life through dynamic narratives that are sensorial, experiential, and associational. Art in its various forms is a similar manifestation of an imagined idea. In seeking how architecture kindles art, this exhibition platforms the work of seven contemporary Indian artists who explore this abstraction. From emerging talent to established masters; across various mediums and techniques; drawn from distant geographies, the elaboration uses the universal vocabulary of design to express individual languages of creativity. Emanating from the common crucible of architecture, each artist navigates scale, proportion, light, and time with their own sensibilities of visual dynamics, so elemental to the built form of architecture.

Anil Thambai uses graphite on sunhemp paper to create a haze of arabesques, spatial geometry, and perspective. Aman Krishna’s strong post-modern cubist forms evolve through stages of digital intervention to emerge in a collage of juxtaposed monochromatic shadows and rendered surfaces. Falguni Bhatt exploits the plasticity of ceramics, porcelain, and stoneware to pierce open windows on warped primordial walls of time. Jignesh Panchal’s multiple layers of paper remap urban elements as he witnesses spaces and objects of his intensely vernacular ambiance. Narayan Chandra Biswas sculpts intricate 3-dimensional fretwork in steel. The underlying familial carpentry skills of his growing years emerge in the crafted journey of the traditional wooden houses that he recreates with startling reality. Sangam Vankhade presents a strongly structural mosaic in deep vibrant blue overlaid by a trellis of white, reminiscent of the traditional perforated jaalis of India’s heritage architecture. Exploring yet another medium of this exhibition, Sangam carves the arcades of ancient Rome out of blocks of white marble. Sumakshi Singh’s delicately hand embroidered doors and windows of white yarn on a matrix of gossamer muslin, stun with their seeming simplicity.

Like individually arranged parts of a symphony, this medley of artists orchestrates a saga. Within their diverse cognitions, architecture is the Sutradhar of this group show.

Ar. Yeshwant Ramamurthy

Guest Curator

Installation view