“Chittadarshani” An Art Exhibition by Dhiraj Hadole, Pravin Waghmare, Swapnil Sangole

 

Pravin Waghmare

Pravin Waghmare’s art practice emerges from an acute attentiveness to the visual and emotional residues of everyday life. Forms, colours, textures, and fleeting sensations are not treated as passive observations but as active forces that impress themselves upon the artist’s inner self. From this silent accumulation of experience, Waghmare constructs a language of abstraction that is grounded firmly in lived reality.

Artist: Pravin Waghmare, Acrylic on canvas

Although his works appear abstract, they are anchored in the rhythms of the visible world, its pauses, frictions, and reverberations. His surfaces carry a sense of return and response: every encounter, whether with nature, society, or the ordinary mechanics of daily existence, rebounds into the pictorial field. This cyclical exchange lends his compositions a quiet intensity, where colour blocks, fractured planes, and layered textures behave like echoes of perception rather than representations of objects.

 

Waghmare’s use of colour is deliberate and experiential, functioning as a carrier of emotion. Lines and forms unfold through an intuitive yet disciplined process, reflecting an honest negotiation between control and spontaneity. His paintings offer a sustained meditation on how experience transforms into visual thought. Pravin Waghmare articulates abstraction as a deeply human, perceptual act, one that translates the unsaid into form with clarity and depth.

 

Dhiraj Hadole:

 

Dhiraj Hadole’s work enters the lineage of geometric abstraction not through utopian rigidity or formal bravado, but through a quieter recalibration of what geometry can contain. Hadole belongs to a reflective generation that allows structure to coexist with memory, affect, and care.

 

His compositions echo the discipline of hard-edge abstraction, yet resist its doctrinaire coolness. The planes feel inhabited rather than imposed; edges meet without aggression, and colour operates as mood. Geometry here is closer to a psychological modulation than an optical one. Reduction does not erase feeling, it distils it. Repetition becomes attention, not control.

Artist: Dhiraj Hadole

Materially, Hadole’s practice departs from modernist purity. The stitched, layered surfaces introduce a tactile memory aligned with domestic knowledge and inherited labour. Quilt-like constructions suggest an indigenous abstraction shaped by patience, repair, and assembly, without slipping into literal craft reference. Cultural specificity is absorbed ethically, not illustrated.

 

These works propose equilibrium: that intimacy can be measured. In this restraint lies their quiet radicalism. Dhiraj Hadole proves that stability is not the enemy of depth, that precision can remain soft. These are paintings that behave like shelters, steady, composed, and rewarding to those willing to slow down and meet them on their own terms.

Swapnil Sangole

Swapnil Vilasrao Sangole’s sculptures are rooted in a rigorous engagement with material, memory, and metaphysical inquiry. Working primarily with stone, he positions sculpture as a site where permanence and impermanence coexist, where time is both resisted and inscribed. Drawing deeply from Indian temple architecture, Sangole distils their structural intelligence, symbolism and spiritual gravity into a contemporary language.

 

His works reveal a careful balance between solidity and openness. Carved voids, layered planes, and architectural motifs evoke sacred spaces while remaining resolutely abstract. Each chisel mark becomes a temporal gesture, an assertion of continuity that acknowledges rupture. The stone is listened to, negotiated with, and allowed to assert its own agency within the final form.

Sculptures by Swapnil Vilasrao Sangole’s

 

Sangole’s sculptures function as thresholds between the material and the metaphysical, inviting tactile contemplation. They are not objects of passive viewing but embodied experiences that ask the viewer to slow down and reckon with scale, weight, and silence. In expanding his practice toward collaborative and community-based projects, Sangole further opens it up to collective memory and shared authorship. Ultimately, his work honours the sacred while confronting contemporary realities. Through restraint, precision, and conceptual clarity, Swapnil Sangole affirms sculpture’s enduring capacity to witness, question, and heal.

 From: 23^rd to 29^th December 2025

“Chittadarshani”

An Art Exhibition by Dhiraj Hadole, Pravin Waghmare, Swapnil Sangole

VENUE: Jehangir Art Gallery, Auditorium Hall

161-B, M.G. Road, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400001,Timing: 11am to 7pm

“Chittadarshanee” Art Exhibition by contemporary artist Dhiraj Hadole in Jehangir Art Gallery

 Holding Space: Dhiraj Hadole’s Geometry

Dhiraj Hadole’s work enters the long history of geometric abstraction not through utopian rigidity or formal bravado, but through a quieter, inward recalibration of what geometry can hold within. Where early modernist abstraction like Constructivism, De Stijl, Suprematism, often positioned geometry as a universal language detached from subjectivity, Hadole belongs to a later, more reflective strain of abstractionists that allow structure to coexist with memory, affect, continuity, and care.

Artist: Dhiraj Hadole 

His compositions recall the disciplined clarity of hard-edge abstraction, yet they resist its doctrinaire coolness. Unlike the mathematically assertive geometries of artists such as early Bauhaus painters, Hadole’s planes feel lived-in. They are not declarations; they are settlements. The edges meet without aggression, and colour behaves less like a system and more like a mood. This places his work closer to artists who softened geometry through experience, where colour interaction became psychological rather than purely optical, like Josef Albers.

At the same time, Hadole’s surfaces carry an unmistakable emotional register that aligns him with a lineage of felt abstraction, artists who used reduction not to erase feeling, but to distil it. One senses an affinity with quiet grids, where repetition functions as a form of attention rather than control. Hadole treats geometry as a meditative framework, a way to steady the mind rather than dominate it. It is evident in the way he constructs the wood stretcher, and drapes the canvas over it deftly, almost like one was reenacting a childhood memory, shaping it to precision.

The stitched and layered qualities in his work also introduce a material memory absent from classical geometric abstraction. Here, the work quietly diverges from Western modernist purity and moves toward a more indigenous abstraction; one shaped by domestic knowledge, textile logic, and inherited labour. Hadole’s quilt-inspired works situate him within a broader global shift where abstraction absorbs cultural specificity without becoming illustrative of the milieu. The geometry does not reference craft directly, yet it carries its ethics: patience, repair, assembly, warmth.

Emotionally, these works do not aim for expressionism. There is no outburst, no rupture. Instead, they emerge as a feeling that can exist in equilibrium, that care can be structured, that intimacy can be measured without being diminished. This places Hadole in dialogue with post-minimalist sensibilities, where restraint becomes a moral position rather than an aesthetic trick.

What makes Hadole's paintings quietly radical is their ethics. They insist that stability is not the enemy of life. They argue, without preaching, that a composed surface can still carry intimacy, that precision can still be soft. Dhiraj Hadole’s geometry is not about control for its own sake; it is about building a space where inner turbulence can settle without being forgotten. In that sense, his work aligns with the exhibition’s spirit of Chitta–Chitra: the mind and heart translated into image, not through confession, but through construction.

These are paintings that behave like shelters. They do not shout to be understood. They stay, they steady, and they reward the viewer who is willing to slow down and meet them at their pace.

Sushma Sabnis

Mumbai

December 2025

From: 23rd to 29th December 2025

"CHITTADARSHANI"

Art Exhibition by contemporary artist Dhiraj  Hadole

VENUE: Jehangir Art Gallery, Auditorium Hall,161-B, M.G. Road, Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400001, Timing: 11am to 7pm

Oscar-Qualified Marathi Short Film Dear Panther Selected at London Lift-Off Global Network

The Oscar-qualified Marathi short film Dear Panther has been officially selected at the prestigious Lift-Off Global Network – London Lift-Off Film Festival 2025, marking a significant international milestone for Indian independent cinema. The festival is regarded as an important global platform for emerging filmmakers, offering international exposure and industry networking opportunities.

The Lift-Off Global Network hosts a series of film festivals during the Lift-Off Season, featuring curated screenings, showcases at Pinewood Studios, workshops, and structured networking programs. Selected filmmakers are invited to join the Lift-Off Network Members Hub, enabling participation in global focus groups, professional workshops, and collaborations through both online and in-person sessions.

Set against the backdrop of a rapidly advancing yet deeply unequal India, Dear Panther presents a powerful social narrative. While the nation celebrates historic achievements such as the successful launch of Chandrayaan-3, a significant segment of its educated population continues to struggle for basic rights. The film captures this contradiction with sensitivity and realism, earning its status as an Oscar Qualified Short Film.

The story revolves around a PhD scholar fighting a prolonged legal and bureaucratic battle with the local Municipal Corporation to claim his rightful home. His personal struggle evolves into a broader resistance against systemic injustice, administrative neglect, and widening socio-economic inequality. As the divide between the privileged and the marginalized deepens, Panther emerges as a voice for the oppressed. The film compellingly questions whether he can lead his community out of systemic deprivation—or be consumed by it.

The film’s impact is strengthened by its strong creative execution. Director Dhananjay Nirmalaxman Sable delivers a compelling vision, supported by Shonali Dhakane’s precise editing, Ajay Sagar’s realistic cinematography, and evocative background music composed by Pratik Borase, which draws audiences deeper into the emotional landscape of the narrative.

A unique aspect of Dear Panther is its authentic portrayal of real-life residents from Mumbai’s Dadar chawls, many of whom continue to live without basic civic amenities or housing rights. Their lived experiences lend the film a powerful documentary-like realism. Sable also plays the lead role of Panther, delivering a restrained yet impactful performance that captures inner conflict, resistance, and moral urgency. The supporting cast—including Deepali Badekar, Ashlesha Gade, Shonali Dhakane, Pragya Garibe, Atish Akhade, Harish Kadam, Kishor Bachhav, child actor Aaradhya Jadhav, and 73-year-old Vanitabai Kharat in her debut performance—adds emotional depth and credibility. Officials’ roles portrayed by Ankush Chourpagar, Amar Lahane, Nitin Shinde, and Ravi Kale further strengthen the narrative.

Dear Panther has received recognition at several prestigious film festivals worldwide, including:

12th Goa International Short Film Festival, Panaji 2025 – Best Indian Writer (Screenplay)

Jaipur International Film Festival 2026 – Official Selection

Vaanam Art Festival – P.K. Rosy Short Film Festival, Chennai

Kobani International Film Festival, Germany

Egyptian-American International Film Festival, New York

Ajanta-Ellora International Film Festival, Chhatrapati Sambhajinagar, Maharashtra

The film’s post-screening Q&A sessions have sparked meaningful discussions, underscoring its strong social relevance and cinematic impact. With Dear Panther, writer-director Dhananjay Nirmalaxman Sable establishes a distinct voice on the global stage, while co-producer Nitin Shinde, in his debut as producer, successfully shoulders a significant creative responsibility.

The production received substantial local support from Amar Lahane Mitra Mandal, Chunabhatti, and Bouddhajan Panchayat Committee No. 127, Dadar, whose cooperation was instrumental during filming.

The international recognition of Dear Panther is not merely a milestone for a single film but represents a meaningful step forward for socially conscious Indian and Marathi cinema.

🔗 Vote for Dear Panther at the London Lift-Off Film Festival 2025:

Tickets are now available for purchase by the public via website:

Dear Panther Voting and Preview Tickets are now available for purchase by the public via website:

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