“UTKARSA” Celebrating JMS Mani’s Mastery (1948-2021) Art Exhibition in Jehangir Art Gallery

This Show will be inaugurated on 11^th November at 5pm by Honourable Guests Mr. Anant Nikam(Veteran print maker, artist and former HOD all department of Sir J.J. School of Arts), Mr. Gourmoni Das(Director & Founder of Nine Fish Gallery and Dot Line Space Foundation) in the August presence of Rajesh & Ranjitha S, S & D of JMS Mani.

JMS Mani

UTKARSA marks a sincere tribute to the life and creative legacy of J. M. S. Mani (1948–2021), one of Karnataka’s most revered modern artists and a transformative educator. Curated by Darshan Kumar YU, Curator(Muesmuseologist), artist & Thinker, Omit Curator NGMA, Bengaluru, and presented by JMS Mani’s family, this posthumous exhibition draws together key works spanning his iconic Badami series, expressive landscapes, and sensitive charcoal and mixed-media drawings and sketches, offering Mumbai audiences an intimate encounter with an artist who shaped both canvas and community.

His first solo show happened in Jehangir Art Gallery in 70’s.

 

Rooted in a rigorous academic foundation, Mani’s early practice honed traditional disciplines of light, form and perspective, later blossoming into an intuitive painterly vocabulary that balanced realism, symbolism and emotional intensity. His celebrated Badami series remains central to Indian art discourse, elongated rural figures, dusky-skinned, rendered with sincerity and grace, their gestures carrying the poetry of daily labour and social memory. These works reaffirm Mani’s lifelong conviction that dignity lives in the ordinary and beauty in lived experience. Equally powerful are Mani’s landscape studies, from the atmospheric ruins of Hampi to abstracted chromatic vistas, where nature becomes metaphor for time, memory and the human spirit. His drawings, often executed in charcoal, reveal a master draftsman able to distill emotion through line alone, capturing movement, fragility and stillness in equal measure. Throughout his evolving practice, Mani cultivated his studio as a sanctuary of creativity and learning, a space meticulously organised yet spirited, where students, artists and grandchildren entered freely. As a devoted teacher and principal at Ken School of Art, he encouraged experimentation, peer support and the courage to think beyond conventions. His belief in nurturing the next generation remains one of his greatest contributions to Indian art.

UTKARṢA honours not only a master painter but a mentor whose life’s work embodies artistic excellence, humility, and the deep conviction that art must stay rooted in humanity. This exhibition invites Mumbai art lovers to celebrate a legacy that continues to inspire—quietly, fiercely, and with unwavering devotion to the creative flame.

 

Sushma Sabnis

Mumbai

 From: 11^th to 17^th November 2025

“UTKARSA”

Celebrating JMS Mani’s Mastery (1948-2021)

 

VENUE:

Jehangir Art Gallery

161-B, M.G. Road,

Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400001

Timing: 11am to 7pm

Contact: +91 9886598387, +91 9538449359

“Aawaran” Solo Show of Paintings by contemporary artist Sonu Gupta at Jehangir Art Gallery

Sonu Gupta’s solo exhibition ‘Aawaran’ moves like a quiet blade through the theatre of human psychology. These works aren't content with surface aesthetics; they pierce the soft underbelly of identity, asking the viewer to confront their many selves; the borrowed masks, the inherited fears, the curated performances we stitch into our skin simply to survive society. Gupta does not lecture; he reveals. Patiently. Relentlessly. With tenderness and unease in equal measure.

Artist: Sonu Gupta

The figures here hover between flesh and fiction. The artist realistically rendered their bodies, but their presence dissolves into abstraction, as if memory itself is glitching. Masks appear not as props, but as organs we have grown used to breathing through. Some are stark white, sterile and compliant; others burn with ornamental complexity, as though the mind’s labyrinth has finally broken the skin. There is a ritualistic undertone, a soft echo of purification rites shadowed by the modern fatigue of having to constantly recalibrate one’s face for the world.

 

Gupta’s palette, warm and muted, feels ancient and digital at once, earth and algorithm in conversation. These blurred edges and pixelated textures quietly insist that identity today is never fully analog, never fully sincere. We live filtered. We feel edited. We unmask only when absolutely necessary, and even then we tremble.

 

Aawaran acknowledges veils exist, not just to deceive but to protect, nurture, and incubate. Just as soil holds the seed and night shelters the dawn, these human masks sometimes prevent us from shattering. The exhibition’s deepest argument whispered, not shouted, is that vulnerability is a pilgrimage. Peeling away the layers is not a dramatic act of exposure, but a slow devotion to truth.

 

In a world obsessed with hyper-visibility and polished personas, Sonu Gupta invites us to pause. To breathe. To ask the uncomfortable question: When all the layers fall, who remains? And perhaps more importantly, are we ready to meet them?

 

Sushma Sabnis

Mumbai

 From: 10^th to 16^th November 2025

“Aawaran” 

Solo Show of Paintings by contemporary artist Sonu Gupta

 

VENUE:

Sonu Gupta

161-B, M.G. Road

Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400001

Timing: 11am to 7pm 

+91 8767017725