“Between Surface And Depth" An Exhibition of Paintings By Bharti Verma, Ruchi Chadha in Jehangir Art Gallery

Bharti Verma

 

Bharti’s figurative practice unfolds as a quiet, resonant inquiry into the emotional life of the human body. Her paintings are not portraits of individuals but threshold spaces where the figure becomes a vessel for memory, vulnerability, endurance, and inward reflection. Faces are often veiled or absent, and gender dissolves into ambiguity, allowing the body to stand for a shared human presence rather than a fixed identity. The personal opens into the collective, and the figure becomes a bridge between private emotion and universal experience.

Artist - Bharti Verma

 

Surface is central to her language. Scraped, layered, and washed grounds recall ancient, weathered walls marked by human touch, evoking the primal lineage of cave painting as witness to existence. Figures seem to emerge from and recede into these terrains, shaped by memory, erosion, and return. In works with multiple bodies, forms overlap and merge, suggesting shared emotional states, intimacy, shelter, burden, and co-existence. Gesture becomes an emotional syntax: bowed backs, folded limbs, and weighted postures carry feeling.

 

Rendered in restrained greys, ash, umber, and muted blues, her palette creates a hushed, contemplative atmosphere. These works meditate on the body as a psychic landscape quietly resilient, grounded in acceptance rather than retreat.

 

 

Ruchi Chadha

 

Ruchi Chadha is a Delhi-based visual artist and a graduate of the College of Art, New Delhi. With over three decades of dedicated practice, she draws profound inspiration from nature’s quiet strength, resilience, and transformative power. A painter and ceramist, Ruchi moves fluidly across mediums, expressing organic rhythms and evolving forms that reflect her deep engagement with the natural world.

 

In this exhibition, she presents her ongoing series of lotus paintings from a distinctive underwater perspective. By shifting the viewer’s gaze beneath the surface, she reveals the hidden ecosystem that sustains the lotus—murky waters, drifting weeds, and subtle aquatic life. Water becomes both environment and metaphor, its ripples, reflections, and diffused light creating a sense of depth, movement, and introspection.

 

Delicate leaves and slender stems ascend through shadow toward illumination, symbolizing hope, courage, and perseverance. Rooted in silt yet reaching for light, the lotus emerges as a powerful emblem of resilience and renewal. Through layered textures and tonal contrasts, Ruchi invites viewers into an immersive, contemplative space. Her works evoke stillness and inner strength, leaving a lasting impression of harmony, endurance, and the quiet triumph inherent in nature’s cycles.

 

This show will be inaugurated on 3^rd March 2026 at 5.30pm by Hon.Guests Ms. Nidhi Choudhari, Director National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, Ms Sapna Kar(Director, Curators.art), Ms Rajneeta  Kewalramani(Director, thecurators.art), Mr. Rajendra Patil(Founder, India Art Festival).

 From: 3^rd to 9^th March 2026

“Between Surface And Depth"

The Inner Landscapes

An Exhibition of Paintings

By 

Well-known artists - Bharti Verma, Ruchi Chadha

 

VENUE:

Jehangir Art Gallery

AC Gallery No. 2

161-B, M.G. Road

Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400001

Timing: 11am to 7pm.

Contact: +91 9899986042, +91 9599944430

“ATHAHA” Solo Show of Paintings by well-known artist Alka Bhrushundi in Jehangir Art Gallery

Alka Bhrushundi’s ‘Athaha’ does not merely contemplate infinity; it constructs it.

In her works, blue is not a backdrop to devotion but a spatial field in which matter, energy, and consciousness appear suspended. The paintings move between vortex and void, between cellular intricacy and cosmic scale. Spirals open like primordial galaxies. Orb-like forms hover as if embryonic worlds. Vein-like calligraphic tracings pulse across surfaces, suggesting neural networks, river deltas, or unseen cosmological diagrams. The language is abstract, yet unmistakably organic.

Artist: Alka Bhrushundi

The artist’s earlier engagement with devotional figuration has not disappeared; it has evolved. What once required an image now unfolds as vibration. The divine is no longer personified but diffused, circulating through colour, texture, and atmosphere. Blue dominates, but it is not singular. It deepens into indigo, fractures with rusted orange, glows with quiet gold. It carries both immersion and combustion.

There is a compelling tension in these works: density and lightness coexist. Feathers drift across turbulent grounds. Gold fissures cut through planetary masses. Mist veils intricate structures beneath. The compositions feel simultaneously microcosmic and macrocosmic; as if we are witnessing the inside of a cell and the birth of a universe in the same breath.

‘Athaha’ proposes infinity not as escape, but as interior expansion. These paintings ask the viewer to recalibrate scale, to consider that vastness may reside within the smallest pulse of awareness. In an era of distraction and speed, this work insists on sustained looking. It resists narration and instead offers immersion.

Infinity here is not decorative mysticism. It is a disciplined exploration of energy, stillness, and threshold. Stand before these works long enough, and the boundary between outer cosmos and inner landscape begins to thin.

The Exhibition will be inaugurated on 3^rd March 2026 at 5 pm by Honourable Guests Shri Rajendra Patil (President -The Bombay Art Society, Founder – India Art Festival), Prof. Dr. Ganesh Tartare(Sir, J.J. School of Art, Mumbai), Shri Rishiraj Sethi (CA, CFA; Director – Aura Art eConnect Pvt.Ltd)

 “From: 3^rd to 9^th March 2026

“ATHAHA”

Beyond the Boundaries

Solo Show of Paintings by well-known artist Alka Bhrushundi

 

VENUE:

Jehangir Art Gallery

AC Gallery -1,

161-B, M. G. Road, Kala Ghoda,

Mumbai 400001

Timing: 11am to 7pm.

Contact: +91 7703880130        

Kivutar : Rupture from Rapture Sejal Patil Exhibition at Nippon Art Gallery From 24 February 2026

Rupture from Rapture emerges from lived experience shaped by chronic illness, delayed diagnosis, and prolonged encounters with medical neglect. Rooted in Sejal Patil’s experience of endometriosis, the exhibition unfolds across painting, charcoal drawing, and installation, positioning the body as both subject and site. Pain is approached not as spectacle, but as accumulated knowledge—endured, internalised, and gradually transformed through artistic process.

Artist: Sejal Patil 

At the centre of the exhibition is the medicalised body and the systemic dismissal of women’s pain. Years of misdiagnosis, invasive procedures, and emotional invalidation inform a visual language marked by fragmentation, internal blockage, and repetition. Rather than depicting clinical events directly, the works absorb their psychological and physical aftermath. The body appears disrupted and overwhelmed, resisting clinical objectification and insisting on embodiment as lived reality rather than abstract system.

 Diptych Paintings: Inflammation, Closure, and Vulnerability 

The diptych paintings form a central body of work within the exhibition. Developed during periods of physical immobility and prolonged confinement, these works emerge from a deeply vulnerable state. Bedridden and isolated, the artist turned inward, using painting as a means of self-closure and survival. Form plays a critical role in these works. The recurring central shape draws upon the vaginal form, not as explicit representation but as an embodied reference to pain, inflammation, and endurance. The figured body, shown in a squatting posture, conveys states of physical distress, vulnerability, and numbness. Presented as a diptych, the body is distributed across two planes, suggesting division and rupture, and resisting containment within a single image. Vulnerability is not concealed or softened; it is integral to the work’s visual and emotional structure. 

Charcoal Drawings: Confusion and Internal States 

The charcoal drawings operate as a parallel, more immediate register. Executed intuitively, these works emerge from states of confusion, numbness, and internal chaos. Scribbled marks evolve into bodily forms, echoing sensations of inflammation and internal pressure associated with endometriosis. 

Here, the body is not externalised but mapped internally. Lines overlap, compress, and entangle, reflecting moments of mental overwhelm and physical immobility. The drawings function as visual journals, capturing fleeting psychological states rather than resolved compositions. Their rawness resists refinement, preserving the instability of lived experience. 

Stitched Works: Repair, Resistance, and Material Memory

Thread and fabric introduce a materially distinct yet conceptually linked body of work. These stitched surfaces bring the language of repair, care, and persistence into the exhibition. Stitching operates both as action and metaphor—binding, holding, and mending without erasing damage. The act of stitching becomes a slow, deliberate counterpoint to the urgency of drawing and painting. Fabric, often associated with domestic labour and femininity, carries bodily memory. Threads trace wounds rather than conceal them, acknowledging pain while asserting endurance. These works reflect an attempt to hold the body together when it feels internally ruptured. 

Process as Survival Across all media, process remains central. The works are not outcomes of conceptual planning but emerge from necessity. Painting, drawing, and stitching become therapeutic acts—ways of coping, enduring, and reclaiming agency within a body marked by pain. In this context, vulnerability is not weakness but a mode of truth. 

Rupture from Rapture holds intensity alongside fragility. It does not offer resolution or recovery narratives. Instead, it makes space for witnessing—allowing pain, care, and resilience to coexist without hierarchy. 

Review By Mukur Biswas

KIVUTAR - Solo Show by Sejal Patil

The work of Sejal Patil unfolds at the intersection of body, memory, and lived experience. Rooted in deeply personal realities, her practice transforms pain into a visual language that is both intimate and universal. In her paintings, the body is not merely a physical form but a site of endurance, vulnerability, resistance, and transformation.

Emerging from prolonged illness and the experience of being unheard within medical spaces, her work reflects a profound awareness of how women’s bodies are often observed, interpreted, and regulated — yet rarely fully listened to. What might appear as fragility in her imagery reveals itself instead as strength: a quiet but persistent act of reclaiming voice, presence, and agency.

Artist: Sejal Patil 

Each canvas becomes a space where interior experiences take form — where silence finds texture, and emotional memory becomes visible. Her practice does not simply narrate suffering; it reshapes it, allowing moments of confinement to open into reflection, release, and healing. The personal, in her work, becomes a shared emotional landscape.

This exhibition invites viewers into a space of attentiveness and care — one that encourages stillness, empathy, and introspection. To encounter these works is to be reminded that the body remembers, the body speaks, and through art, it can also begin to mend.

— Curated by Heena Ravindra Uchhe

क्युरेटर नोट

सेजल पाटील यांच्या कलाकृती शरीर, स्मृती आणि जगलेल्या अनुभवांच्या संगमातून उलगडतात. अतिशय वैयक्तिक वास्तवातून उगवलेली त्यांची कलाप्रक्रिया वेदनेचं रूपांतर एका अशा दृश्यभाषेत करते जी एकाच वेळी अंतर्मुख आणि सार्वत्रिक आहे. त्यांच्या चित्रांमध्ये शरीर हे केवळ भौतिक स्वरूप नसून सहनशक्ती, असुरक्षितता, प्रतिकार आणि रूपांतर यांचं जिवंत क्षेत्र बनतं.

दीर्घकाळाच्या आजारपणातून आणि वैद्यकीय व्यवस्थेत स्वतःचा आवाज न ऐकला जाण्याच्या अनुभवातून त्यांच्या कामात स्त्रियांच्या शरीरांकडे पाहण्याच्या दृष्टिकोनाची सखोल जाणीव दिसून येते — जिथे शरीराचं निरीक्षण, विश्लेषण आणि नियंत्रण केलं जातं, पण त्याला पूर्णपणे ऐकलं जात नाही. त्यांच्या प्रतिमांमध्ये दिसणारी नाजूकता ही प्रत्यक्षात एक शांत पण ठाम सामर्थ्य आहे — स्वतःचा आवाज, अस्तित्व आणि अधिकार पुन्हा मिळवण्याची प्रक्रिया.

प्रत्येक कॅनव्हास एक अशी जागा बनतो जिथे अंतर्मनातील अनुभव आकार घेतात — जिथे मौनाला पोत मिळतो आणि भावनिक स्मृती दृश्यरूप धारण करतात. त्यांची कला केवळ वेदनेची नोंद करत नाही; ती तिचं पुनर्रचन करते, बंदिस्त क्षणांना चिंतन, मुक्तता आणि उपचाराच्या दिशेने उघडते. वैयक्तिक अनुभव त्यांच्या कामात सामूहिक भावविश्वात रूपांतरित होतो.

हे प्रदर्शन प्रेक्षकाला संवेदनशीलता आणि सजगतेच्या अशा जागेत आमंत्रित करतं — जिथे थांबणं, जाणवणं आणि अंतर्मुख होणं महत्त्वाचं ठरतं. या कलाकृतींशी संवाद साधताना आपल्याला जाणवतं — शरीर स्मरण ठेवतं, शरीर बोलतं, आणि कलेच्या माध्यमातून ते हळूहळू स्वतःला पुन्हा सावरण्यास सुरुवात करतं.

— क्युरेटर: Heena Ravindra Uchhe

.

.

KIVUTAR

Solo Show by Sejal Patil

You are cordially invited to an evocative exhibition of painting and sculpture, where form, colour, and emotion come together in powerful harmony.

Preview: 24th February

5:30 PM onwards

Nippon Gallery, Fort, Mumbai

Exhibition continues till 28th February 2026

Daily: 3 PM – 7 PM

Curated by Heena

We look forward to welcoming you for an evening of art and conversations.

Hashtags

#Kivutar

#SejalPatil

#SoloShow

#ArtExhibitionMumbai

#NipponGallery