Echoes and windows: Kalakriti Art Gallery exhibitions explore repetition and spirituality
In this photo essay from Hyderabad, we showcase a range of artworks from one of the city’s premier art galleries.
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Established in 2002, Kalakriti Art Gallery has become one of the leading privately owned art spaces in South India. It features the works of masters as well as emerging contemporary artists (see our coverage of earlier exhibitions at Kalakriti here).
The gallery recently hosted two exhibitions titled Windows to the Gods and Echoes Within, which were also showcased earlier in New Delhi. In this photo essay, we feature some of these exhibits along with other artworks in stock at Kalakriti.
The 15 featured artists include R. Giridhara Gowd, Sachin S. Jaltare, Ajay Lakhera, Bhaskar Rao Botcha, Divya Pamnani, Dhruti Mahajan, Dushyant Patel, and Debi Prasad Bhunia.
The lineup also featured Keerti Pooja, Om Soorya, Rachana Badrakia, Ritesh Bhoi, Sangam Vankhde, Srinivas Pulagam, and Sumanto Chowdhury. Their works were themed on reflections of the inner world—memory, emotion, silence, and transformation.
“Echoes Within brings together artists who embrace repetition as a meditative and introspective act. In this immersive journey, creation itself becomes the pinnacle of their relationship with their work,” curator Ruchi Sharma tells YourStory.
For these artists, the process is not merely a path to completion but an unfolding ritual. “Each mark, fold, and impression is a quiet meditation, a dialogue between the artist and their chosen medium,” she says.
Collectively, the exhibited works present fresh perspectives on identity and environment. “They reflect deeply personal narratives that challenge conventions, reimagine traditions, and push the boundaries of material and meaning,” Sharma describes.
“At its core, the exhibition explores the intricate relationship between material, tool and language. It probes the fragile yet profound nature of artistic expression,” she says.
Andhra Pradesh artist Giridhara Gowd contemporarises mythical epic stories with his unique imagination and sensibility, art critic Ashrafi Bhagat describes. He builds upon the visual aesthetic of India’s pictorial tradition as seen in the murals at Lepakshi, Badami, Hampi, Tirupati, and other temples.
Gowd developed an interest in stories, poems and historical legends right from his childhood. He adds new visual vocabulary to his artistic interpretation of the murals, Bhagat explains.
Gowd’s works focus on the importance of folk, tribal and classical painting traditions of India. “He explores and experiments with the techniques, mediums and materials of miniature and mural traditions,” Bhagat describes.
“Gowd reflects on the capacity of the human soul to transcend many levels of struggles, desires and wants to reach the ultimate union with the Supreme Being,” he says. The self can slowly be raised to transcend to the higher self.
Gowd showcases artistic elements and practices such as the use of gold leaf, semi-precious stones, natural colours, and miniature formats. “He has used handmade paper such as bamboo pulp paper, silk paper, bhutani paper, and rice paper,” Bhagat says.
Colours used in the paintings are derived from turmeric, earth, indigo leaf, charcoal, and chalk. The conveyed emotions include delight, passion, compassion, empathy, and love.
“It is this energy of emotions, movement, postures, gestures and glances which is at the heart of Gowd’s works and establishes the peculiar saliency that becomes his signature style,” Bhagat affirms.
Born in Maharashtra, artist Sachin Jaltare is now based in Hyderabad. He started as an illustrator in a commercial firm and then switched his focus to art.
“He initiated his forays into the world of painting with a realistic visual language, painting birds particularly, since he is also an ornithologist. As he progressed, he found realistic representation limiting, desiring to break out of the form and express freely,” Bhagat explains.
Immersion in meditation led Jaltare to explore the dual meeting of the form and the formless embodied in Shiva-Shakti. “He was attracted to the elusive, the undefined, the unsaid aspects of the universe as manifest in Indian philosophy,” Bhagat says.
The artist’s expressions are both structured and amorphous within the same spatial and temporal field. “He understands change as permanent. Change carries within itself the concept of time, space and memory,” Bhagat says.
“Jaltare’s works invite the viewer to an absorbing journey in his enchanting universe, exploring the cosmic connection through flora and fauna, the harmony of colours, and the expanse of mystical landscapes,” Bhagat signs off.
Now, what have you done today to pause in your busy schedule and harness your creative side for a better world?
(All photographs were taken by Madanmohan Rao on location at Kalakriti Art Gallery in Hyderabad.)