10 ways of seeing: How a group exhibition in Pune sheds light on the reflections of emerging, established artists

Spiritual reflections in paintings

Walk around the gallery, and you are faced with the power of intense self-reflection and spiritual thoughts. Yash Divakar Chawardol’s experience of the layers within, which he realised during Vipassana Meditation, shapes his abstract works. Priyanka Sawant is motivated by the shloka, Tamaso Ma Jyotirgamaya (Lead me from darkness to light), to understand “a woman’s inner strength and her aspiration to rise beyond the darkness of limitation into the light of self-realisation, empowerment, and freedom. It symbolises the eternal quest for knowledge, truth, and liberation from fear and constraint”.

Smita Marathe’s colourful art speaks of “a single spark in the meaningless, dark void” at the beginning, when even time did not exist. “This is the same gleam we seek in our lives, the quiet hope that arises in moments of chaos,” she says.

The collection is a melange of styles — from glass to acrylic, and subjects, from nature to women to the self. (Express Photo)

Shravni Dagade’s paintings reflect the quest for peace of mind as she takes up an empty, white canvas and begins to play with colours. According to her, the different angles and shapes depict a variety of emotions, “the colours represent my extremes and the textures offer glimpses of who I am”.

Pune’s Vesavar Art Gallery is exhibiting its second annual Year-End Art Showcase 2025. (Express Photo)

Santosh Shirsat, who has studied himself as the focus of his paintings for more than 20 years, presents the face. “The shape of the face remains the same, and the ‘self’ in it is reduced. The face is not my own or that of a particular society, but only a human face, trying to express various emotions, such as sadness, compassion, fear, anxiety, anger, and lust…” he says.

Mohammed Sadikot’s works in the exhibition are a part of a new series, in which the lines between the human body and the vegetal world are undefined and shifting. The figures in his works are distorted, so that hips could be mounds of earth and ribs can be mistaken for ridges on a bark, while the arms and legs are root-like stilts. It is the artist’s way of telling the viewers to “show down and reconsider harmony”.

10 artists, from up-and-coming names to those whose signatures have made a mark, reveal the shapes of the future (Express Photo)

Manoj Darekar makes us look at the cityscape and the outdoors under a blue sky as if through the wires of a cage. Rupesh Pawar, who comes from a farming background, works with oil but aims to give his works a quality of lightness and transparency. “I avoid rigid formats and work on uncut handmade paper to let each painting grow organically,” he says.

It is fitting that one of the captivating works has faces of glass. These are by Narendrasingh Bais, who has mastered working with glass for over 25 years. Taking inspirations from nature and regular life, he dives into memory, heritage, and identity, creating a dialogue between craftsmanship and storytelling. “Glass is more than a material, it is a living language that captures time and the humavarn experience in its most authentic form,” says the artist’s conceptual note.

Idea of being trapped in Saikat Baksi’s paintings

Saikat Baksi, a well-known artist and author, conveys the idea of being trapped, of the false notion of free will and freedom in today’s world.

Baksi’s painting, ‘Moments Die, Memories Don’t’, captures the irony that the dead moments stay confined in the form of fossilised memories. “We never escape the prison of our memories even if the moments disappear,” he says. The other conceptual art piece, ‘Trapped’, depicts the illusion of a blue sky through the open window, while the upper section of the opening reminds us of the stifling reality that the image of the sky is just a sticker pasted on a solid brick wall.