URBAN CARTOGRAPHERS -

The three cartographers, all from urban backgrounds of Pune, Udaipur & Baroda, map urbanization in their own, unique palettes.

Mitali Shah from Baroda, negotiates the multiplicity and constant transformation of urban cities as organic forms. Treating the surface layer of the ground as skin, she uses materials such as handmade paper, jute and threads. Mitali's paintings on paper, are about approaching the question of urban growth from an oblique angle with cellular forms woven that twist around each other, overlapping to create patterns and drawing the viewer's gaze into an otherworldly landscape, capturing the sense of urban planning that seems clustered and shifting. The layered composition reflects the confusion, constrain, saturation and haphazardness that characterizes contemporary life by exploring city formations as evolving forms and structures. Much of these visuals come about from experience of clustered houses connected by electric wires and cables.

Neeraj Patel a MFA from Udaipur, now living in Baroda, invents from personal experience, creates from an internal world rather than an external one, dramatically personal, each painting contains part of the artist's self, his reflection of being a urbanite. His visual language is a assemblage of various materials, each combine has to be a decision and answered by a new question. His paintings are large because Neeraj wants something very intimate and human. He feels that to paint a small picture is to place yourself outside your experience, to look upon an experience as a stereopticon view or with a reducing glass - a larger picture has you in it!

Shrikant Kadam from Pune, refers to yearning to return from the concrete jungle of the city to a more natural habitat. His paintings are about large spaces collected in memories - soft, a bit hazy, green - yellow, fresh intense blues, defused reds, oranges, whites - a crowded quietness away from the urban cacophony of sounds and images