Posted on 27 August 2025:

Fundamental Instincts: Ankur Rana’s Oil-on-Metal Debut Illuminates Primal Creativity

From August 28th to 31st, 2025, the Visual Arts Gallery at India Habitat Center, New Delhi, will host Fundamental Instincts, a compelling solo exhibition by renowned contemporary artist Ankur Rana, curated by renowned Georgina Maddox. 

Marking a bold departure from conventional mediums, Rana unveils twenty-five large-scale works rendered in oil on rose-gold stainless steel—a technique he developed through meticulous experimentation.

The shimmering surfaces, reminiscent of flowing water and refracted light, offered a sensorial experience that echoed the elemental themes of the show. Each canvas explores the deep-seated human impulse to create, survive and connect, drawing parallels between ancient cave art and modern expression. 

Maddox’s curatorial lens framed art-making as a primal instinct—an evolutionary bridge between survival and social bonding. With references to animal creativity and human refinement, the exhibition invited viewers to reflect on the universality of artistic impulse, where instinct meets imagination in radiant form.

Instinct and Imagination: Ankur Rana’s Symbolic Landscapes of Survival and Transcendence

In Fundamental Instincts, renowned artist Ankur Rana’s evocative canvases delve into the primal architecture of emotion—preservation, companionship, love and the elemental urge to belong. 

His oil-on-metal works shimmer with metaphor, dissolving the boundaries between human, animal and divine realms to reveal a continuum of survival and transcendence.

In The Bait, irony unfurls as an oriental woman releases hearts from her bosom while a man dangles the Taj Mahal as lure—an allegory of desire and manipulation. 

“Shallow vs Supreme reimagines Lord Shiva in a smoky, meditative terrain, his third eye suspended between vision and wakefulness, while Ganga flows from his locks like memory itself. Cup of Peace offers a moment of quiet harmony, where a dove and landscape cradle mankind’s yearning for balance.

In The Gift, a kingfisher’s offering is shadowed by the glint of a mobile phone—technology intruding upon nature’s grace.

And in Companion, a girl from the North East shares a tender moment with a parrot, framed by the Himalayas, capturing the fragile intimacy between humankind and the wild.

Ankur Rana’s visual language is both poetic and piercing, inviting viewers to reflect on instinct not as impulse alone, but as a sacred thread that binds us to the world,” explains through the press release.

Ankur Rana: A Journey Rooted in Instinct, Refined by Vision

Born in Meerut in 1981, Ankur Rana’s artistic journey has been one of quiet intensity and expansive reach. Trained in Art Appreciation at the National Museum of Art, New Delhi, and later earning his BFA and MFA in Painting from the College of Art, Delhi, Ankur Rana has spent over fifteen years shaping a distinctive voice in contemporary Indian art.

With ten solo exhibitions and over a hundred group shows across India and abroad, his work has garnered accolades such as the AIFACS Award for Best Lithograph, the Embassy of Cuba Award for Motorcycle Diaries, and the Guru Samman by Sanskar Bharti. His paintings reside in esteemed collections—from Lalit Kala Akademi to Imago Mundi—testifying to their resonance across cultures. 

In Fundamental Instincts, renowned artist Ankur Rana deepens his inquiry into the primal and the poetic, using rose-gold metal as a reflective surface to explore themes of love, survival and transcendence. His semi-abstract compositions and symbolist motifs evoke a timeless dialogue between instinct and intellect, positioning art not merely as expression, but as a universal inheritance.