Young artist Virenpratap Singh Bhaika's solo exhibition ‘Tyger Tyger Burning Bright’ opened on September 13 at the Open Palm Court Gallery, India Habitat Centre in New Delhi.
The show brings together 15 paintings, a 30-minute film titled Roar and Resilience, and the artist’s sketchbooks. On view till September 18, the exhibition highlights Bhaika’s evolving practice at the crossroads of art, ecology, and conservation.
Currently a Fine Art Scholar at Harrow School, UK (2021–2026), Bhaika’s art has been influenced by his experiences in India’s forests, volunteering on human-animal conflict initiatives in Namibia and Tadoba in Maharashtra, and his interactions with the Gond communities of central India.
“I’ve always been drawn to the wildlife of India’s jungles. At first, I aimed for accuracy, drawing tigers and elephants over and over. Now, when I depict the same wildlife, I focus on the fragile, and often broken, balance between urban expansion and natural conservation,” he remarks.
While speaking of collages, the artist says, it helps him put together radically different figures, like a tiger and an excavator, and to express the stark contrasts witnessed firsthand in India. “Yet as much as collage is about rupture and contrast, it is also about connection,” he adds.
Bhaika’s pieces are also inspired by Gond art, where animals, people, and forests are the subjects of each artwork. “Their visual language dissolves the boundaries between nature and culture. Inspired by this, I began incorporating Gond elements into my own work to reflect the realities faced by communities living at the edge of the wild,” he explains.
The exhibition features four key projects: collages based on Bhaika’s documentary on tiger conservation; abstract acrylic works focused on the vitality of the jungle; Gond-inspired narratives; and compositions influenced by Italian classical art and American modernism.
Bhaika says, for him, painting is more than an art form.