Rukshaan Art gallery is neither a traditional exhibition space nor an art store. It solely promotes artists with a connection to Baroda, finds out Ornella D’Souza
Mumbai’s art district, Kala Ghoda, has a new tenant. About a month ago, Rukshaan Art gallery moved into the colonial-style Dresswalla House, opposite the Naval Dockyard’s massive mural glorifying India’s maritime history.
Rukshaan Art will only host works of contemporary artists who are based in or have studied at or work in Baroda, Gujarat. After all, gallery owner Rukshaan Krishna is the reason behind Baroda March, a decade-old tradition wherein close to 50 ‘Barodian’ contemporary artists showcase their works at the Coomaraswamy Hall, at Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangharalaya every March.
Barodian artists, opines the 57-year-old, have high integrity. “These artists are in constant conversation with each other. As a result, there’s learning and encouragement. They are not proud but have their pride. They also recommend one another... unheard of in the art community elsewhere,” she says.
Deeply invested
It was a magnificent painting of burgundy rooster at a group show of Baroda artists, more than a decade ago, that converted Krishna into a patron of the arts. She then ran the now defunct Mumbai-based Strand Art room, has had a gallery in Baroda for the last 11 years and actively promotes a band of 10 Baroda artists — Ambu Rathwa, Sanjay Barot, Girjesh Kumar Singh, Hardik Kansara, Shital Panchal, Kamal Pandya, Nimesh Patel, Soumen Das and Ketan Amin. These 10, along with 18 others, are currently showing at Rukshaan Art Gallery. Their works are a mix of paintings, sculptures, prints and mixed media. There’s Girjesh Kumar Singh’s wall of human faces made from bricks belonging to broken houses to recreate loss of identity during migration; Sharmit Choudhari has made a wedding gown of cotton pulp paper and painted a river and boats on the lower portion to signify how marriage is also a form of migration; Baroda’s senior most sculptor, Nagji Patel, has sculpted a cat with a looped tail; Soumitro Gouri’s Chairman is a metal figure frozen with a pointed cone aimed at its butt signifies the precariousness of the role; and Hardik Kansara’s mammoth painting shows the setting of urbanisation in his small town.
Until September, Krishna plans to replace every artwork that is sold from the current display with a new one. She hopes the longer display duration will garner maximum publicity for the artists, who are little known in the city. With 28 artworks on display, doesn’t she run the risk of some of the works being overshadowed? “But doesn’t that happen in life, darling?” she poses. “A few smaller works are making much more of an impact than some of the larger ones. Truth and talent never stay hidden for long.”
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