One Eye Sees, The Other Feels
The Viewing Room, Mumbai
March 16 to April 14, 2012

The Viewing Room and Patrimonio Gallery are presenting One Eye Sees, the Other Feels, a group exhibition featuring abstract works by artists including Prabhakar Barve, VS Gaitonde, Ganesh Haloi, Prabhakar Kolte, Laxman Sheshtha.

Black & White and Urban Acrylics
Art Heritage, New Delhi
March 16 to April 14, 2012

Black & White

Black & White is a group show of abstract and figurative works by various artists. Nand Katyal’s acrylic on paper works, captures the different moods of nature. Where as the limited palette of black and white adds power to Wasim Kapoor’s ode to Mother Teresa. Shabnam Shah exists like a rainbow between her black and white images. Sanju Jain’s paintings conceal as well reveal the images through their subtle “utterances”.

Urban Acrylics

Raj More loves to explore cities. The fact reflects very much in the city-based artist’s paintings. According to him every city in the world has a soul of its own which is very different form other cities. Every city talks to you. The bar-waitress who is Aishwarya Rai to herself. The colonial edifices that might be dwarfed only by your aspirations. The cabby who drives to the mall, leaving past his days as a textile worker. The 786s and the idols that bless us all.

The Decrypted Self- Solo Show by Dilip Ranade
Gallery Threshold, New Delhi
April 5 to April 25, 2012

Dilip Ranade, in his present body of works invites us into a domain, where strange redemptions await us. The exhibition includes paintings, drawings and watercolours. Through his allegories, we attend to the versatility of the human subject, as relayed through the alternately tender, amusing, melancholy and hair-raising stories of our lives.

 If Ranade addresses a cultural doubleness or multiplicity, he also addresses the binary situation of gender, both in the relationship between men and women, and in terms of the potential instabilities of sexual identity within the individual. The erotic has been a powerful strain in his work. In Ranade’s handling, the figure often assumes the form of a model or a mannequin, as though it were to be held at a distance for objective inquiry while remaining in play as an object of desire.

Solo Exhibition by Faiza Huma
The Seagull Foundation for the Arts, Kolkata
April 16 to May 2, 2012

The exhibition will showcase the most recent works (acrylic on canvas) by Faiza Huma, all from her black and white series. Marked by simplicity and angelic purity, the present works reflect a deep sense of peace that the constrained and confined world we live in, cannot give. Liberated from the burden of surface realities her art moves into a boundless dimension. This sense of freedom and dynamism is seen in her forms, lines and the colour black and white through which she captures the true essence of life that lies in its energy, continuity and vitality. In her own distinctive minimal style, Faiza Huma creates a sacred visual world that promises tranquility and optimism in the world of chaos.

The Lore of Belief- Calligraphic Works by Parameshwar Raju
Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
March 30 to April 13, 2012

Parameshwar Raju’s works reflect the notion of Presentism and eternalism in its ordering of realities in a cerebral manner.

As a presentist, his works convey the thought that at a certain time certain things exist and others do not. This is the only reality one can deal with. And in an alignment to eternist thought he believes that time is an aspect of reality and equals to the three spatial dimensions - past, present and future and because of this, all things that are once  experienced or brought to conscious knowledge  is just as real as things in the present are.

He refers to the study of the Vedas that explains that the universe goes through repeated cycles of creation, destruction and rebirth, with each cycle lasting 4,320,000 years. And almost certainly this has nurtured a strong passion for history, traditional Indian customs, rituals and folklore and their preservation in Parameshwar’s work. This sensibility infiltrates his images wherein he brings up traditional subject – forms that he revisits with an approach towards simplification.

It is noteworthy that in the works of Parameshwar Raju, we are witnessing a new genre that could be termed as iconic – calligraphy.

The exhibition showcases a wide range of work from his series of the Shiva – The Fragrant One Who Makes Us Grow, The Ramayanam, Lores of the Living God - with reference to narratives from the Jagannath Temple of Puri, and significant images of the Surya and the Chandra.

From 2009 onwards the artist traveled within the country to work with traditional Paithini weavers, Kalamkari Masters and block makers. Along with his works on Paper and calligraphic ink, drawings with the English poster nibs; the textiles and metal wares too would be integral to celebrate the lore of belief.

On Route – Spread across the whole of 2012, Lore of Belief would travel to Jallandhar, Amritsar, Jaipur and Cochin.

Culled from The Lore of Belief the entire series of the Ramayanam would be showcased at the ICCR, Azad Bhavan, from May 18th to 23rd 2012. In the later part of the year the series would travel to Kolkata, Mumbai and Bangalore.

The show, The Lore of Belief- Calligraphic Works by Parameshwar Raju has been curated by Koeli Mukherjee Ghose.