HYDERABAD: The art exhibition ‘Intimate Intricacies’ at Dhi Art Gallery focuses on the art works of three artists: Kundan Mondal, Sumana Som, and Sanket Viramgami. The opuses range from abstracts to mixed form which will be on display till March 11.
The title of the exhibition is both suggestive and elusive. One doesn’t expect the voluptuous Venuses of Goya or Velázquez spread out on the canvases. Yet the paintings talk to the beholder in their colours and textures that blend in perfection with the individual styles of the artists. The use of subtle to bright colours provide an amalgamation that requires keen observation and dissection of the deep layers of the strokes swept across the surface by the thoughts in the artist’s mind. That’s how in the artwork entitled ‘Critique’ by Kundan Mondal one sees a melange of living beings from the animal kingdom staring towards a burning red centre held in a human hand. It is interesting to note that all the animals bound in a circumference sticking their tongues out. There’s anger in their expressions, cinders that burn slowly ready to engulf the world if not checked in time.
In another work by the same artist which is a collection of framed paintings hung together, you see a uniform energy flowing all around in figures that are shapeless yet seem to form shapes on their own merging with the ambience around which, the artist seems to have deliberately kept gloomy; the inky shades hold prominence in the small canvases making the works appear as if they belonged to a different world beyond the reach of common eye. The gloom rules even when the canvases take slightly lighter shades. Perhaps it is an attempt by the artist to bring to a close the juxtaposition of darkness and light in a different way.
The work by Sanket Viramgami is more of a modern landscape tossed in a sparse kingdom of flora and fauna with lovers sitting with each other. The shades he uses are muted, kept in tones of ash-blue and pale-green. On the far side of the canvas suddenly appears a cluster of choc-a-bloc buildings guarded by a wall which appears quite dystopic in nature.