KOCHI: Mother Earth offers the most mysterious canvas, resplendent in a thousand tones and tints. Art of Photography, the ongoing exhibition at Kanakakunnu Palace featuring four artists, is basically an up, close and personal affair with nature. While Adithya Varma tries to capture the serene gloom and tonal variations, Resmi Varma focuses on the winged world. Life, the series of photographs by Varun Thottathil, a techie-turned-photographer, offers some arresting snapshots of everyday life. Rishi Kapil’s paintings, gritty and vivacious, revel in the royal era.
Adithya Varama flirts with the ever-changing skyscape as it erupts into a bewitching tonal play. While the drama of sun and clouds become the focal point of many works, mountains, aquamarine water bodies and animals also feature in some. Almost all his frames relish or celebrate nature in some way or other. While a juvenile eagle-owl fills one of Resmi’s frames, a perching black-naped monarch stares out of the next. There are flamingos and turtle doves, hornbills on flight and butterflies, all seized in their true agility and charm.
Varun’s lens zooms into ordinary sights offering impressive silhouettes and unusual perspectives. The photographs, some of them stunning black-and-whites, easily starts a conversation with the beholder. Fish markets, temple festivals, deserted streets - everything seems to intrigue him. The lensman gives a surprising twist to familiar structures and visuals, even to some from your immediate surrounding. Rishi Kapil, a Mumbai-based artist, calls his style ‘contemporary impressionistic realism’. He indulges in palace interiors and portraits through thick storks and cheerful hues. If it’s Napoleon Bonaparte’s bathtub that dominates one work, the battle of Colachel comes alive in another huge canvas. The exhibition winds up on December 21. Timing is 9 am to 9 pm.