The ongoing exhibition at the Renaissance Gallery is an eclectic mixture of profiles, nature, rural life and abstracts.
Five artists — Bruno Ville Franche, Jacques Beaumelle, P.S.Kumar, Soumya Chakraborty and T.Irudhayanathan have exhibited different styles of paintings.
While P.S.Kumar has put up his pen and ink works, including abstracts from his series ‘Line and Layam’ on man and desire, Bruno Ville Franche has painted women, all of them having their eyes closed, as though they are coming to terms with something.
One of the women is wearing a saree , another wears a blouse and skirt and sits on the floor like a resigned bride. Yet another stands bare-backed, with a green braid falling down to her waist, facing away from the viewer. Bruno has also painted an old man in a saffron dhoti, lost in the tunes of his one-stringed instrument.
“Women carry children in their wombs for ten months and then give birth to them. Yet there is so much female infanticide and trafficking of women. My works are addressed to those who do not respect women as mothers who gave birth to them,” says Bruno, a BFA graduate from Pondicherry. This is his first exhibition in Bangalore.
Urban eclectic figures occupy the canvases of Soumya Chakraborty. In the first painting, a curly-haired girl in a yellow spaghetti top and a floral skirt listens to music from her pink phone. Motifs of women who look like they re modelling appear in rows in the background. Next to the girl there are three magnified images of cards — one king, one queen and one ace, painted in a glow of orange, pink and green, not their usual colours.
He has also painted a girl in her underclothes, brushing her teeth looking into the lilac mirror over a pink washbasin. Her shimmering bathrooms walls are an almost turquoise-teal blue, men are hanging onto a long pipe leading upto a shower head. Above the bathroom wall , at the top of the canvas is a skyscape filled with colourful skyscrapers.
French painter, Jacques Beaumelle on the other hand complements the Soumya’s high energy works with his mellow oil paintings of “Pavots” or poppies, “Lotus” “Cannas” flowers, and “Bougainvillea” . He has also painted a brown-skinned Lord Shiva against a field of yellow flowers and “Boss in Motor cycle”, an old Vaishnavite man dressed in white riding a motor cycle.
Iruthayanatan’s abstracts lend a touch of surreal to the exhibition.
The exhibition at Renaissance Gallerie, off Cunningham Road, will be on view until November 19. For details, contact 22202232
