An exhibition by a leading gallery seeks to reveal the stories of 54 artists from the city

Indranil Garai is the head of an eponymous art consulting firm in the city who, unknown to all by his closest people, is an artist who sketches and draws for his own eyes only. It was during the lockdown that he returned seriously to his personal art practice, with its themes of happiness and tranquility. This will be the first show by Garai, who passed out of the prestigious Vishvabharati university in Shantiniketan, West Bengal, in two decades. “The work that I do for my company are large-scale public sculptures. These are designed by me but executed by a team from the studio. These works are not signed. What you will see in this show are very personal to me,” he says. Among the works is a sketch inspired by queues that wait outside an LPG dealer for a cylinder.

Aparajita Jain Mahajan, on the other hand, went to art school but, in college, meandered into design and studied animation. “I would say that I have been an artist for 20 years, but in fragments, shifting between art and design,” she says. It was only in 2019 that she did a textile installation, which proved to be a turning point. Jain Mahajan’s work is about mapping human experiences in an abstract manner. She started collecting paper from her home a year ago. “All our homes have a lot of paper. These are memories and moments from everyday. I take the paper and convert it to pulp so that there is no remnant of the everyday anymore and I use it in my works,” she says. She has also started working with fabric or katran, which were left behind by her late mother’s textile apparel practice. Pen and ink, however, remain her strongest tools. The exhibition will carry a hint of her personal journey.

Many artists feel that Pune needs a stronger artist community and network with collectors, and an exhibition such as this could help achieve that. “VHC would like to foster conversations among artists and different experts. There will be a lot of inspiration if artists meet and talk,” says Heydari, who contacted each artist, from seniors to beginners, by email before curating from their portfolios and submitted works. “The only restrictions was that, since we don’t have a big enough space to include all sorts of size, we gave artists a size limit for the art they could send. We chose the displays from the works they sent,” says Heydari, who adds that proceedings from the show will go towards a grant for young artists.