Art shows are generally sedate events. Art connoisseurs, critics, buyers, and of course, the merely curious too, come in and gaze at the pictures, murmur their appreciation or otherwise, exchange conversations, make a purchase or promise to and leave. The art show at Taj Vivanta last week, however, had much more, a group of musicians rendering Sufi compositions and the popular “Dama Dam Mast Kalandar” too, on a stage alongside.
If that sounds unusual, well it was meant to be. When Gallery G's Gita Maini, a well-known art promoter, decided to celebrate the anniversary of the gallery with an art show, she decided to combine it with music to add to the atmosphere and the energy of the evening.
So, the evening opened with a display of paintings titled Unbounded Bonding—New Rural Perspectives by Nitin Nangare along with a series called Soundscapes by 22 students of the Sheila Kothavala Institute for the Deaf (SKID). The latter is a CSR initiative with Gallery G to locate and showcase the work of promising artists.
Nangare , who is gradually building a solid reputation for himself specialises in figurative abstracts — faces and forms without features. The price of his art has steadily ascended over the past few years. He brings out the strength of female bonding, and the bonding between a child and mother as well as intra-community bonds in interesting ways in his art. Nangare's striking and colourful images of rural women balancing pots on their heads as perfectly as they did their children on their arms as they went about their daily chores drew the appreciation of many visitors.
Gita explained that the theme of this show was how art can mirror and therefore, gradually influence how women are perceived. The art by the SKID children is also reasonably priced.
The art show, as we mentioned, had an unusual add-on––a Sufi music performance. And providing the flavour was singer Willi (winner of MTV's Rock On). Accompanied by Sudeep Ghosh on the keyboard and percussionist Hitesh Prasad, he rendered energetically and melodiously, a few numbers revolving around the themes of love and romance.
The show moves to Gallery G on Lavelle Road where the paintings are on display till March 31.
