From: 15th to 21st November 2022
“Where There is Light”
An Exhibition of Paintings by well-known artist Neena Singh
Venue:
Jehangir Art Gallery
161-B, M.G. Road
Kala Ghoda, Mumbai 400001
Contact: +91 9892833050
Email: singhneenaartist@gmail.com
Timing: 11am to 7pm.
Neena Singh’s 14th Solo Exhibition “WHERE THERE IS LIGHT” was inaugurated on 15th November 2022 at Jehangir Art Gallery by Dr. Pheroza Godrej in the presence of Mr. Govind Nihalani, Pritish Nandy, Vikram Sethi, Kanwaljit Singh, Y. P. Singh, Abha Singh among others
This collection of work centres light, both metaphorically and aesthetically. Painting feverishly and obsessively throughout the pandemic provided Neena Singh with a life-raft of hope. It became a portal to view human endurance, spirit, joy: embalming them in paint. Singh is a light seeker, having desperately searched for it throughout her life. Art, poetry, spirituality, and philosophy have all provided clefts in the darkness. Art not only encouraged Singh as seeker but allowed her to become a creator of light. Light is a decisive role in Singh’s compositions. High use of chiaroscuro, by placing the inkiest colours next to the lightest, perfectly expresses the boldness of the artist. The power of each tone is exemplified, the eye of the viewer traveling instantly to this place of high-contrast and visual excitement. We are drawn into these deep, often mysterious landscapes. We wade through and sink into them, confronted by our own darkness,
our own search for light and hope. In Singh’s painting Into the unfathomed, a canvas of bottomless deepening blue acts as a portal for reflective melancholy, yet the vibrant slash of titanium white in the centre of this same canvas tempers this contemplative submersion with a flurry of vital energy. This painting perfectly demonstrates Singh’s ability to capture a malignance tempered and always overcome with a celebration of life, of the sparking essence of human vigour. In other pieces, such as Where splendour dwells and Tracing the thread of being, contemplation is diffused by an explosion of dynamic marks, keeping our eyes initially dancing on the surface of these paintings. These pieces foreground a sense of joyful activity, of movement, of human endeavour. After being visually excited by the abundance of marks and colours, we are coaxed through the surface to a just-visible underpainting. Journeying through this thicket of marks to a dreamier space represents a kind of steady contentment that
comes with appreciating the energetic possibility of the human experience. The organic shapes, suggested mountains, oceans, and valleys in Singh’s work speak to the remembered, stumbled across, and imagined landscapes which inspire the artist. The influx of images of nature rejuvenating itself throughout the covid-19 pandemic was a generative source for her. The constant flux of nature mirrors Singh’s exploration of transcendence and renewal. The ebb of a river, the gathering of snow, the turn of a season, the passing of clouds, all foreground change and contrast as both inevitable and positive. In her abstracted landscapes, glimpsed moments of changing light lead the viewer through the space. They remind us of sunlight streaming through a break in heavy cloud, or the fierce foam on a lashing tide. These elemental contrasts are again visual representations of light being connected to the dark and dangerous. Compositionally, these light sources often appear at the horizon point of the painting, or in the upper-third, drawing the eye up and through these imagined landscapes to something hopeful. In this way, these paintings, although often tumultuous and powerful, have an elegiac yearning to them. A desire to escape from the immediate darkness to the light out there.
—Kate Reeve-Edwards
Dr Pheroza Godrej Inaugurated 14th Solo Show Of Artist Neena Singh In Jehangir Art Gallery
