The art gallery Kynkyny.com has put together a virtual art show, Kaleidoscope, featuring 16 artists whose work spans the spectrum of styles and techniques from the hyper-realist to the impressionist and the fantastical.
Among the artists whose unique art pratices light up this show are Basuki Dasgupta, Bhaskara Rao Botcha, Dimpy Menon, Elayaraja, Ganapati Hegde, G. Subramanian, Gurudas Shenoy, Suresh Kumar, Santhana Krishnan, Laxman Aelay, Madhuri Kathe, Naina Maithani, Ramesh Gorjala, Rajkumar Sthabathy, Siddharth Shingade and J.M.S. Mani.
While Shenoy and Mani, perhaps the most experienced of the artists in the show, stay rooted in their themes and practices—Mani with his best-known work of depicting the historic Karnataka town of Badami in oils-on-canvas that portray an idyllic, quintessentially south Indian town, inhabited by long-limbed, languorous flower vendors, fruit sellers and street hawkers, and Shenoy’s sprawling urban landscapes and cityscapes in rich textures and bold tones like gold, turquoise and crimson.
There are many striking paintings among the works of the other artists as well. Ganapati Hegde's fantastical, anthropomorphic creatures come alive on canvas surrounded by fecund, surreal forests teeming with caterpillars, chameleons, monkeys, birds and butterflies, set within a tapestry of elaborate patterns and textures. G Subramanian recasts gods like Saraswati, Krishna, and Brahma as free-spirited, childlike beings that are full of divinity and innocence. The artist embeds his playful and multidimensional collages with textual illustrations, symbols and spiritual motifs. Growing up in a coastal village in Tamil Nadu, Subramanian was inspired by the theatre traditions and folk arts of the region, and uses these elements in his works.
Dimpy Menon, the only sculptor in the group, celebrates the human body in her spare bronze works. The Bangalore-based artist depicts dancers, lovers, mothers and meditators in her dynamic sculptures that are often leaping, flying and pirouetting through space.
Part-installation and part-painting, Santhana Krishnan’s renditions of indigenous doors in Kumbakonam function like portals that take you to a bygone world, where time stands still. Painted in cheerful, almost gaudy colours, and embellished with wall graffiti, census numbers and Kollam motifs, the doors are left tantalisingly ajar, beckoning you to peek into the self-contained universe of the home within.
“This group show celebrates art and life in all its moving and redemptive moods and expressions,” says founder Namu Kini. She and her husband, Vivek Radhakrishnan, started the online gallery in 2019 as a counterpart of their Bengaluru gallery Kynkyny.
The current exhibition, which started on 18 January, features mixed-media works by established and emerging artists, exploring mythological terrain, personal memories, physical spaces and faraway landscapes. Spanning a multiplicity of genres, from sculpture and realist oils to abstract expressionist works, the exhibition offers multiple lenses to gaze through.
‘Kaleidoscope’ is on till 28 February on Kynkyny.com.
