Ompal Sansanwal work at Jiva exhibition in Bikaner House, Delhi
| Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Artist Ompal Sansanwal can’t watch for his exhibition Jiva to open at Bikaner House on Saturday night. For the final 15 years, he has been constructing a physique of work comprising 60 work that seize the magic and majesty of trees.
“I grew up in the verdant gardens of Katwaria Sarai in Delhi in the seventies; I have vivid memories of my mother taking me out for walks daily; we would sit under a large Banyan tree and she would narrate to me the stories of Ramayana and Mahabharata,” says Ompal, who little realised then that the timeless attract of Nature was silently shaping the artist in him.
After graduating from the Delhi College of Art, he held a number of solo reveals on the Museum Gallery, Mumbai; LTG Gallery and Shridharani Gallery, Delhi, moreover group reveals on the Nehru Center in London, and Yugoslavia. Yet the recipient of the 2022 National Award says Jiva goes to be one of his most charming exhibitions ever since he took a break from solos in 2009.
At 60, the up to date artist has returned with 60 beautiful work in acrylic, pen and ink detailing the cross-hatching method, used by many Renaissance painters to create a singular texture and assortment of artworks mixing classical Asian strategies and themes and Western fashionable methods
“Ompal’s artworks stir you and every visitor will go back with different levels of experiences,” says curator Uma Nair, who has additionally come out with a fascinating espresso desk guide Meditations on Trees that options the work to be showcased on the exhibition. The guide revealed by Aleph, in affiliation with the Black Cube Art Gallery and the Namtech Art Foundation, will likely be launched by Ratish Nanda, famend Indian conservation architect and CEO of Aga Khan Trust for Culture.
Caring for Earth
Ompal Sansanwal work at Jiva exhibition in Bikaner House, Delhi
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
“Trees are the lungs of the world and the exhibition has an ecological echo; it is a happy coincidence that the artist is exhibiting his paintings in April when the world is observing Earth month,” says Nair.
“Every time I look at a tree, I search for forms that relate to human figures; there is an interconnectedness between man and Nature,” says Ompal who accentuates the lengthy intertwining roots of trees and its branches dense with foliage with various patterns of thread-like filaments in his signature model to inform a definite story.
There is a refined but highly effective inspiration underpinning Ompal’s artwork. The earthy to brilliant harmonious colors that infuse his canvases with creativeness and deep reflection with the tree within the centre make a mesmerising spectacle.
Ompal Sansanwal work at Jiva exhibition in Bikaner House, Delhi
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
Tagore, for him, is a tall tree who lives on for his contributions and Ompal has made a singular portrait of the poet as a monochromatic examine. “It is an emotive essence of deep intensity,” he says of his works that took him not lower than two to a few months every.
One of the most important panels that took him seven months is a masterpiece measuring eight toes by four toes. It depicts his childhood reminiscence of heaps of trees, his metaphor for all times, with a variety of natural world and areas round them. “It is in that inherent beauty of spaces in Nature that the spiritual or mythological forms manifest,” he says.
Ompal’s work inform tales of man’s symbiotic bonds with Nature; they take totally different shapes to inform the story of Krishna holding aloft the Govardhan Hill or Christ’s Last Supper, of Shiva and Parvati’s wedding ceremony, and even the Kurukshetra warfare.
Ompal Sansanwal work at Jiva exhibition in Bikaner House, Delhi
| Photo Credit:
SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT
“Ompal is a pilgrim who finds trees of his sensibility and sensitivity. When you look at them in his paintings, you feel a deep sense of spiritual aura,” says Nair. “When I draw the trees, they come out in a meditative form as the cradle of existence,” Ompal provides.
Jiva is on show until May 3, at Main Art Gallery, Bikaner House (close to India Gate); 11am to 7pm
