Artist Gajanan Kabade’s Painting Exhibition at Jehangir Art Gallery
“Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder…” it is so true when an artist thoughtfully chooses his medium to express himself through his artworks.
We usually come across in art galleries artworks created with regular mediums like charcoal, colours, threads, cloth, ceramic, stone, metal, terracotta etc but here is an artist who uses a unique medium for his paintings.
Just go through the image on invitation card of *Gajanan Kabade* sir’s exhibition and try to guess the medium used.
Did you get it? Frankly I could not guess it correctly. I thought it is beautiful abstract using vibrant acrylic colours.
But when I entered Jehangir’s gallery number 4 and read an intro note at the entry by Sunil Vinayak Borgaonkar, I became more curious as the medium mentioned was Sellotape! Yes, “Duct Tapes”!
These are colourful duct tapes which you will find mostly use for packaging. But artist Gajanan Kabade has done magic with those mundane duct tapes. He has used colour duct tapes for these soulful creations which is treat to eyes. And these are wonderfully displayed in my personal favourite Gallery No.4 of Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai.
Probably the biggest challenge to use duct tapes as medium for painting would have been number of tape colours. As commercially these duct tapes are available in limited six or max eight colours. But Gajanan sir has overcome this limitation of medium with another virtue of the medium i.e., its semitransparency.
Gajanan sir has beautifully made use of these semi-transparent tapes on white mount board to have soothing tints. And equally used layering technique to create different tones. So, despite available limited colours of duct tape Kabade sir has come out with a rich colour palette.
Sir has mostly worked with sharp edge of tape and hardly use a curved edge of tape in his artworks but still it makes your eyes fix on his paintings and gives you sheer joy. Even he has added textures to his artworks through different ways of sticking tapes for which artist must have experimented over the years.
All this is evident when you see those one after another both vibrant and subtle abstracts. I would request art lovers to visit Jehangir Art Gallery number 4 at Kala Ghoda before 7pm Sunday 5th May for unique experience of artist Gajanan Kabade’s paintings