Manju Sharma’s exhibition of mixed media miniature works on small bits of paper, ‘Nature in Bloom’, is a series of landscapes that depicts the seasons in all their luminous glories. The paintings ? not chrishtened with individual names ? are like a compact visual sonnet; they look like clones of one another, with a few mirror differences. Sharma has worked with patience and painted them in stages. She has prepared a ground of flat colours and covered them with a coat of black. She has also used a vibrating paint gun. This spreads out pulsating layers of wavy paints. Sharma has used oil pastels to highlight a shade here and a hue there. The final touches are applied with a thin brush. We are taken through hilly paths, valleys and leaves as they rustle in the wind.
Sandip Sarkar
Opposites always attract. A stunning visual of a giant megapolis at night with skyscrapers stretching towards the horizon and honeycomb apartments peeping out of an ominous darkness is placed in the room next to the one displaying two children making merry in a stream against a mountainous backdrop. Both share the same technical finesse and creative synergy which, coupled with large-sized prints, could leave a mesmeric effect on the viewer. Lensman Peter Bialobrzeski’s exhibition at Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre shows the world of opposites in a seamless fashion, yet a viewer cannot evade the awe that the juxtaposition of surreal shots of Asian megacities and serene German landscapes evoke.
Anshuman Bhowmick
The explosion in the number of self-styled artists in recent times makes one wonder about the necessity of rigorous training for years in an art college. Diya’s solo exhibition at the Academy of Fine Arts had 44 works on view. Some were done on plastic with ONP ? a special type of pen. Others were pastels on hand-made paper and a few were glass paintings done with acrylic colours. In a number of works she has used glaring and shining aluminium foils. They were fixed with adhesives on the painted surface and this adds to them a feel of a texture. The works resemble ancient Egyptian art on papyrus, Chinese and Japanese scroll paintings, Rajasthani miniatures and Madhubani folk art. Knowing the shallowness of popular art appreciation, one is bound to have nightmares.
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