Urban blues on Jaideep's canvas

The sense of being trapped in the urban jungles draws viewers.

New Delhi, April 17: The sense of being trapped in the concrete and lifeless urban jungles of big cities draws viewers to Mumbai-based senior artist Jaideep Mehrotra`s works.

An exhibition of Mehrotra`s works, "Growing Panes in Solitude" at the Visual Arts Gallery at the India Habitat Centre here, are mostly abstract frames of dimly-lit rooms with glass windows, windswept chandeliers, dangling wires, shadowy furniture, lives and snapshots of big cities, which are somehow forlorn and mechanical. The artist says he tries to blend snapshots of urban life with elements from the village. "I live in Mumbai and have this preoccupation with city life. But in 2004-05, I tried to connect the village to the city by bringing in elements from both the places into my urban landscapes and occupational spaces. Or else, after a point of time, space becomes a kind of cocoon and confinement," Mehrotra said The artist is back in Delhi after 18 years. The frames in acrylic colours and mixed media techniques on canvas incorporate life on the streets in the villages, the huts and shanties with the high-rises and the traffic of the city with the room through which it can be seen in the distance. "Subsequently Bygone" conveys a sense of decadence with the abstract contours of a broken chandelier in a dilapidated room with glass windows. The show will close April 20. IANS