New Delhi, Aug 2 (PTI) In artist Mehak Garg’s world, men lie leisurely on sofas almost becoming one with it in texture and colour, and women share a seemingly dull afternoon in a room overlooking a quiet street – all exuding a faint yet comforting sense of days strewn across one’s life that could be yesterday, today, or even tomorrow.
“Fragile Creases Whisper Softly”, presented by Gallery Dotwalk and curated by Lakshmi Nivas Collective at Bikaner House, brings together Garg’s immersive large scale oil paintings along with a selection of smaller works that feature a domestic space and its inhabitants that feel familiar in each frame.
The Faridabad-based artist drew from her experiences and memories to conjure rooms, staircases, and scenes of domesticity that are relatable to most, if not all.
“All the works are connected to each other and the feelings they carry are also connected to each other. So the idea was when you go into a space and interact with it you feel this sense of nostalgia and also the memories that you feel you have lived,” Garg told PTI.
The exhibition features an array of paintings of people inside a house, not in any particular activities, sharing a quiet existence and, at times, the looks of somebody lost in thought.
The structure of the house in her paintings, Garg said, comes from her own life and does not belong to one particular building.
“These rooms I have created from my memory of all the places I have seen and lived in. They are mixed spaces from different sites and since it’s a domestic space whoever sees it feels they have seen it somewhere,” the 25-year-old said.
The choice of soft pastel colours also comes from the same philosophy of creating a “pause in time”.
“The selection of colours is very deliberate because I wanted to create a very peaceful, a very subtle and calm feeling. Sort of when it’s a pause in time, when you are trying to introspect, that sort of feeling I was trying to communicate with these colours,” she said.
With intimacy at the heart of Garg’s paintings, the exhibition welcomes the viewer to a world that is not different from their own.
Curators Namrata Neog and Sunoj D of Lakshmi Nivas Collective said that it is one of the most powerful aspects of Garg’s works that one finds themselves in “the silence of one’s thought” looking at these paintings.
“The boundaries between inside and outside blur and the home becomes an archaeological site to explore, where do the people in the images find solace, silence, daydream or heal after distress, banality, labor or conflict. While pondering, the viewers slip into their own memories of homes, sites of intimacy – distant or present,” they said.
The show will feature a curator’s walkthrough and a public talk on Sunday between Garg and sociologist Shivani Rajput.
After coming to a close at Bikaner House on August 6, the exhibition will continue at Gallery Dotwalk in Gurugram from August 16 till September 15. PTI MAH RB
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