The recently concluded first edition of Art Basel at Hong Kong suggests the emergence of East as the market of the future. The Swiss based art fair first saw a move westwards when it also started a show in USA at Miami in the winter in 2002 along with the traditional summer show at Basel.

There is something refreshing about Sarika Mehra’s show, Born from the Terrain at Latitude 28. The works and their presentation are unpretentious and uncomplicated. Most of the paintings are made with gouache or oil on canvas, and are simple in terms of composition and colour arrangement. The imaginative and narrative images are set within almost monochromatic landscapes.

In the latest group show of works by four upcoming artists Mekhala Bahl, Anjali Deshmukh, Ranu Mukherjee and Shalina Vichitra at Gallery Espace, ‘grain’ has been interpreted as that which makes up material forms. Grain like the atom is seen as a minute, indivisible, omnipresent entity, seen and unseen, in all creations.

The Sublime, remains an ideal aspired for by the artist and seer alike; that which is in the “eternal now “beyond time and space and only experienced seldom expressed. The artist through his aesthetic grammar can only approximate the sublime. Vadehra Art gallery presents Ideas of the Sublime curated by Gayatri Sinha with a selection of artists from various generations and genres.

The artist experiences self as flowing through a past, present, and future whereas time, much like space, is a dimension. The perception of time embodies a fundamental paradox that reveals a profound limitation in our ability to ever get to the real essence of things.

In digital age, image has become a mere source or origin that artists use as a foundation for creating a final artwork. Hemant Puri’s show Urban Realities at Art Postive illustrates this quite well. The graphic artist, designer and has used reworked photographs in myriad ways to create vastly different effects.

Indian art is not topical or politically engaged, and artists continue to paint customary themes in their usual styles even as the world around convulses. The reluctance to step out of the comfort zone is partly due to a fear of losing patronage and partially the reflection of a disconnect with social realities.

With the beginning of IPL 6, the entire mediaitic space: print, audio and visual is beginning to be usurped by this form of cricket. Mukesh Sharma, an artist has used the hype media around this new kind of cricketing format; fuelled by advertising, social media and changing viewership where everything is reduced to bytes to create his artworks.

Festivals in India not only mark a celebration of a historical and mythological event, but a change of seasons, landscape and states of being which is reflected in art and culture. Holi or Vasantotsav, asanta-Mahotsava or Kama Utsav as it was known in antiquity is the quintessential festival of colours and a celebration of pleasure.

In his latest show Sanctum Santorum, at Gallery Threshold, V Ramesh, through a set of 17 paintings, tries to recreate a moment of peace and oneness that a devotee feels when he experiences the presence of his or her ishtadevata, or personal god in a physical or intangible garbhagriha or sanctum where the image of God is enshrined. The artist explains, “Bhakti is singled out as a lietmotiv not only as an underlying, unseen presence, but something that can be felt palpably as an emotional exaltation.”