“Layers of Water”, an exhibition by Dhanashri Sujit Deshmukh, is being presented at the Nine Fish Art Gallery and Dot Line Space Art Foundation, Byculla, Mumbai, from November 4th to 30th, 2023, from 10.30 a.m. to 7.30 p.m.

Untitled, untitled, and again, untitled. There are many things in this world that cannot be named or pinned down; many things are felt, experienced, and expressed without categorization. Those are the moments of life, the silent pauses in which connections are made and the inner life lived. Every individual has these moments, and here we see the artist working her way through these moments, living, transmuting, translating, manifesting through and in material – her innermost being traversing and recreating these silences. Dhanashri, being a visual artist, naturally takes colour and the materiality of the same to do so. Silences come alive as colour and thickness, and flow – the very viscosity of life. And then she moves on to the next work, each work representing an emotion, of peace or silence, moving through her, often appearing spread thin across the canvas and sometimes coagulating thickly as emotions tend to do, on paper or board; and each finally remaining un-titled, un-named. Devoid of objects and subjects, in Dhanashri’s works, the very physicality of her presence is felt and ‘seen’ – at places in the violent caking of colours left unfinished, at places as lazy swirls of water in dying breezes. As viewers standing before these works, we get drawn into her world of emotions, reverberating our own but remaining finally unidentified.

The curator in me has always felt that art is finally experienced only in the ‘seen,’ not in the explained.’ In life, one’s inability to capture emotions, feelings, transitions, and the difficulty in naming the same remain inexpressible desires, wanting finalities, wanting closures. But then that is perhaps the very genius of sentience. Dhanashri seems to acknowledge this, and it is through her abstractions that she translates them on canvas – abstractions standing in for abstractions. Like the movement of water, the artist and viewers together ebb and flow through the show.

Date: 04th to 30th November 2023
Time: 10:30 am to 7:30 pm
Address: Nine Fish Art Gallery
The New Great Eastern Mills, Salsette- 27, 25-29 Dr.Ambedkar Road, Near Rani Baug,
Byculla, Mumbai 400027
Website: www.ninefish.in