Artist Ranjan Kaul presents his latest works titled ‘Staying Alive’, the exhibition showcases the everyday, the mundane and the ordinary life that interest him, particularly the quotidian life of common people and their compulsions and predicaments. His works depict their myriad moods, emotions and dynamics. Besides his works in oil and acrylic, the artist now expands his repertoire using pastels, water colours and mixed media. The treatment in the artist’s works is layered, with use of abstraction and simplification to emphasize form and expression. The show includes creative images of allegorical works in water colour with elements of irony, pathos and metaphor. Building workers become butterflies balanced precariously on a scaffolding; a bird with outstretched wings flings bricks to his head; a mule with a skeletal backbone carries a pile of bricks. In another morphed image titled ‘The Chariot’ a rickshaw-wallah races down the street as a horse carrying two passengers. The callous attitude of the authorities towards sanitation workers is depicted using the backdrop of an elephant in another remarkable work titled, ‘Of Holes and the Elephant in the Room’. In this solo show, the artist will be showcasing as many as 45 works in various mediums.

14 – 20 Feb 2019 | Art Gallery, Lalit Kala Akademi, Rabindra Bhavan, 35, Ferozeshah Road, New Delhi