UP FRONT AND CLOSE is a group show of 16 artists. Most of them have moved from their places of birth to other cities and some who have always been there and that reflects in their work. Their perception of living in large, metro cities, the complexities, the newness of adapting to establishing and putting in fresh roots, while holding on to the perceptions from the past; the multilayered life styles of the city.

While Prajakta Palav's work reflects the burgeoning middle class, Rajan Krishnan's looks back at his roots and the insidious havoc caused by careless use of technologies; Manish Chavda celebrates the few natural oasis of nature in Jamnagar while Preetha Kannan warms about the loss of forests; Sanam's works are haunting skyscrapers that diminish the people who live there to machine like slots; while Santana Gohain creates canvases of steel like strength, weaning memories imbedded in their surfaces; Ganesh Gohain, Sheetal Gattani and Antonio Ecosta weave their own memories of landscapes, nostalgia and multilayered imagery of the passage of time; Chandra Bhattacharjee & Sanjay Yamgar look closely at people and their travails at the grassroot level while Shiladitya Sarkar probes deeper in that direction with his graffiti like glyphs of abstraction; Farhad Hussain & Dileep Sharma give us a glimpse into the predominant Page3 world while Puneet Kaushik ruminates under the skin at relationships. Pritam Bhatty delves into the modern day iconic culture while Abir Karmakar probes into alternate lifestyles spawned by the city.

The works, all done in the small format, insist that they be viewed, looked at, Up Front and Close.