New gallery aims to be a bridge between Pune artists and the world

“I think Pune has great artists and the art scene is full of potential. There are a number of art schools here as well as art lovers who normally go to Mumbai to attend shows. Now, I hope, they will have an opportunity to experience exhibitions and performances in our gallery,” says Heydari.

The gallery has high ceilings and is designed to be in sync with the greenery it is set amid in Koregaon Park. “We made special walls within the gallery space that can hold very heavy artwork. One of my up-and-coming artists has made big frames that are 1,000 kg each,” says Heydari. Apart from the main white cube space that can showcase paintings, sculptures and new media works, the gallery contains rooms to show videos and multimedia exhibits.

A distinctive feature of the gallery is that it comes attached with a restaurant, which will act as a meeting place for artists and art lovers to get together and have conversations. “It is a proper restaurant with a bar that serves contemporary European food. Working with chef Ajay Chopra from Mumbai, we have put a lot of attention into creating dishes and beverages to be compatible with the kind of art we are showing. Everything is very much curated,” says Heydari.

Krishnamachari, whose last curatorial venture was in Yinchuan, China, four years ago, adds that he finds the gallery to have a lot of potential. “When we see the cultural space in India, we find most of the galleries in Delhi and Mumbai… I feel that having a gallery is an important aspect of culture-building in a city. This is all the more significant during the pandemic when having a gallery gives confidence to the local contemporary art practice,” he adds.

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The artists at the exhibition are eminent for their work on materials, artisanship and workmanship, and range from Benitha Perciyal, whose practice encapsulates the use of primarily organic materials, with a strong focus on those that induce olfactory experiences such as myrrh, cinnamon and frankincense; Tanya Goel, who focuses on textured pigments though she uses a diverse array of materials from urban climes such as aluminum, concrete, glass, soil and mica to accentuate the equally versatile effect of light on them; Sudarshan Shetty, whose installations are developed around a rigorous selection of materials and juxtaposition of things that are culturally distinct; Manish Nai, who is set apart by his thrust on minimalism at a time where excessive ornamentation is the norm; and Sumedh Rajendran, in whose works one finds contradictory values and social apathy juxtaposed.