“My roots are in Nepal. I grew up seeing the mountains and so my works are always influenced by Nature,” says artist Impress Singh. I am at the exhibition Impresshoffmannnutan, where she has exhibited her art along with the photographs by her husband Torsten Andreas Hoffmann, and installation art by her sister Nutan Singh. They are all from Germany.
An arcylic painting called Samarpan catches my attention. It shows two footprints inside concentric circles in green, red, yellow and blue. “Each step that we take on this earth should be considered as an offering to our universe. So our paths should be carefully chosen.” Impress Singh uses impressionism in her art. Her colours are bold and her brush strokes are thick. She shows me a glass painting she calls The Colourful Jungle. “I use colours like blue, green and yellow to bring happiness to my works.”
In another painting called Stupa on the Mountain she has painted a shrine that she saw while she was trekking through the mountains of Nepal with her husband.
“It was beautiful and I had to paint it”. A memory from her childhood finds expression in Holy Fish.“Fishes are considered holy in my motherland,” she explains.
Life in Mumbai
I move from the paintings to the photographs by Hoffmann. In one photograph called Collage of Globalisation-New York Times Square and Mumbai, he has super imposed the image of a woman from Mumbai on a tall glass building in New York. “Mumbai, Varanasi and New York are Hoffmann’s favourite places. So most of his pictures are about the life of people in those cities”, says Impress. Another photograph depicts Mumbai too, in its two avatars. On one side, people wash their clothes in dirty water and on the other side are tall skyscrapers.
Indian Life shows a busy street in Varanasi that is lined by shops on both sides. The people walking through the streets are blurred. I am told the dream-like effect is created by a clever use of shutter speed.
It is installation art by Nutan Singh next and it is interesting to see the use she makes of of plastic toys. “When I was young, I did not have many toys. May be that is the reason I am more fascinated with my son’s toys than he is. Balance in size and colour are the most important things in this.” One of her installations depict a workshop. It has an open toolbox and a worker inside it. “I like to find beauty in things that is not usually considered beautiful,” she explains. She also has installations of aircraft, zoo, holiday spot and houses.
Info you can use
The exhibition is on till April 11; 10.00 am to 6.30 pm
@ Kasthuri Sreenivasan Art Gallery, Avanashi Road
04222574110 for details
