Ode to time

Gallery five is presenting The Memory Chronicals - a solo show by artist Madhuri Bhaduri. Madhuri’s works suggest her acute observation of light. Everything else – even colour – must needs be secondary to it. That light can be bright, harsh, and incandescent; it can be dappled, shaded, and shadowy; it can be alluring and seductive or mischievous and playful. Its relationship with colour is almost transient. On the surface, they might appear joyful, but a closer look discloses hints of poignancy and destiny. They are, like the wrinkles of age, or the scars of time, worn gracefully, weathered a little, magical as only life can be. In Madhuri’s paintings, they are her markers of time. 

The exhibition is on from January 27 and will continue till February 28 at Gallery five, Lado Sarai in the Capital.

Madhuri’s Artworks are divided into three series- The Reflections series, The Landscape series and the Rooftop Series. 

In the Reflection series Madhuri captures the myriad textures, reflections and colours of various water surfaces- It could be a pond, stream, a fishbowl, or the sea. She discovers the world of possibilities inherent in water which is mostly invisible to the common sight. It is in a way her ode to water as a universal symbol of change.

In the Landscape series Madhuri acknowledges the fact that nature, beyond all is the perfect teacher. She attempts to evoke the essence of nature in all its subtle glory. The golden rays of the rising sun, the haze of a hot day, a silvery moonlit river; shadows and light in a wet forest, a deserted path lined by wild flowers, a trail cutting through a meadow; a moss laden rock are all rendered in an impressionistic style.

Most of her landscapes appear to be places of seclusion; and secluded inhabitations allow freedom and possibilities of mind, body and spirit. Madhuri takes inspiration from her extensive travels within the country and outside making these landscapes the sum of her memories of remembered places. 

She uses colours of every imaginable palette in textures created by a multitude of painterly tools to gather up a dominant tone for each separate painting Nature drapes herself lightly in the colours of her painting, no one similar to the other.

In her series of rooftops, Madhuri has approached the subject in two ways. In one, she merely creates planes of patches to represent the context; in others, she has literally walked the road, firmly holding the viewer’s hand as she guides him up the street, to the very door of the rooftop that conceals it. 

What lies beyond is left to our imagination. What lives pass under those roofs? Paint and colours layered geometrically; hint at her art undertaking another journey, a journey away from abstraction but Madhuri just stops short of taking the final step and stays firmly rooted in her signature language of abstraction.

Space fascinates Madhuri and the events across her canvas are intuitive, intense immediate and direct. She depicts her interaction of mind and matter in a dialogue of brush and paint that is warm, vivid and sensual to the eye. In these form space compositions it is colour that holds together the spatial composition. 

She has a huge following of her works from all over the world and the success of her art can be seen from the way her paintings have been appreciated commercially from the leaps and bounds over the years.