14 May 2024/

PARADISE REGAINED

Palette Art Gallery proudly presents ‘Paradise Regained’ – an exhibition celebrating Earth Day, opened on 24 April 2024 and will continue till 15 June 2024.

“The stunning showcase features landscapes mined and re-envisioned as evocative memoirs blending experience and fantasy. Each piece is meticulously painted, offering emotionally potent narratives. renowned landscape artist Paramjit Singh, with over 60 years of expertise, joins emerging talents from Kerala,” says the organisers of the Show.

ARTISTS

PARAMJIT SINGH/KP PRASAD/SHAJI APPUKUTTAN/SUMESH KUMBALLUR/KP PRADEEP KUMAR/ SANAM NARAYAN/UMESH PK

“We have artists such as the brilliant landscape artist Paramjit Singh who has done landscapes for more than 60 years to the younger talented lot from Kerala.
Here are a suite of paintings that have been created in the solitude of artist studios, they reflect robust imagination as well as the beauty of nature’s rhythms according to a specific time, climate and season. These intricate paintings speak to the most pressing themes of contemporary life: beauty and kindness, cruelty and loneliness, contentment, and even loss. But they also call attention to the quiet moments of life and the knowledge that all disturbances eventually calm,” says the Curator of the Show.

PARAMJIT SINGH

While pedagogue and landscape lover Paramjit creates images that unwind like an album of memories in its many vistas his lush landscape is an ode to the traveller, an ode to the earth for its wilderness that has inspired literati as well as maestros of art world over. Paramjit’s canvases behold the orchestration of his love for the pastoral. His travels all over the world have given him a penchant for the perspective that lingers within and an unending fascination for terrain,” he added.

PRASAD KP

The Vadodara artist Prasad KP, native of Palakkad, creates surreal drama in his intricate detailing that harks back to his native town in Kerala. “Prasad gives us an aerial view in his vertical beauty which has a nestling of deep pink overgrowth that dots his landscape. Look closely and within the little pathways he sometimes creates identities of humans in their daily lifestyle patterns. Prasad takes months to finish a canvas but it is passion and his deepened love for his native land that creates this symphony that becomes a chapter in geophysical wonders,” says the Curator of the show.

SANAM NARAYANAN

“Sanam Narayanan has a running thread of philosophy in his work that laces multiple literary references to create a dialogue between the realms of mystery and reality of the lived idiom. All three works are rice paper on canvas but it is the singular structure of a home nestled behind lush foliage of plants and bushes that evokes a host of nostalgic sentiments. Sanam is a master of compositional control and his reflections of the little vignettes of Kerala’s countryside have about them both the grains of earthy intensities as well as the gravitas of a place that will live in our memory long after we have seen it,” Curator explains on the exquisite works of the renowned artist Sanam Narayanan.

K P PRADEEP KUMAR

K P Pradeep Kumar, renowned artist from Kochi who was highly influenced by the tropical nature and climate of Kerala, blends the concepts of a divine universe and non-dualism to offer a unique perspective, in his artworks. “His artistic exploration focuses on ecological themes, particularly the relationships between humans and animals, drawing from personal experiences. This is expressed through various mediums such as drawing, painting, sketching, photography and moving images, often combined in mixed media formats.
His works delve into natural forms and movements, exploring the spiritual essence of living organisms, earth phenomena and human interactions within various environmental and socio-political contexts. Recent works were inspired by the ‘Water Lily bloom season’ in Malarikkal village, Kerala during the past winter,” explains the curator highlighting the environmental crises and reinterpreting human existence.

SHAJI APPUKUTTAN

“The veteran Shaji Appukuttan uses overview landscape studies and perspectives in the depiction of cinematic indices, which he laces with light in phantamic fragments. Appukuttan has a sleight of hand for surreal drama and his conversations with trees and time both have their paradigms of dialogues within and without. In treatment and tenor his canvas stands alone in the dictums of time and being. When he presents the landscape he places a tiny bird as an emblematic symbol of man and nature,” says the curator.

UMESH PK

“A forest with a little water collected in the centre has a lone deer sipping water. Reminds us of the hymn: Like a deer panteth for the water, so my soul longeth after thee. Umesh is a veteran with luminosity and his placement of nature’s being with the lushness of the forest creates its own intonation of the marvels of earth studies anywhere in the world. The deer is sacred in Hindu mythology as it presents the divine essence of nature and this work is a delicate register that becomes a silent message of love for the earth,” curator narrates the details of the works of artist Umesh P K.

SUMESH KUMBALLUR

“Sumesh Kumballur has a deepened gravitas in the way he creates moody embers of tree studies that look like a dream sequence that comes alive in the nocturnes of life. His darkened trees stand like silent silhouettes that have their own timbre of tendrilled echoes of the botanical brilliance. His large as well as smaller studies are both wonderful leaves of country vistas. His singular peacock, a masterpiece with the lone feather floating in green paradise,” says the Curator.

“All these artists create a conversation between form and content all cradled in the crucible of earth studies as envisioned by the artists themselves. While, treatment of each landscape is distinct and different, we can see that the making of stimulating landscapes becomes important when the landscapes become an important memory and wrap themselves around our senses. Not just slap dash strokes that can create an easy forest, but very detailed needle work with brushes, some dipped in pastel hues and others that dissolve the jungle greens with water streams,” says the Curator of the Show.