City's first holistic art centre thrown open

EXPRESS NEWS SERVICE

CHANDIGARH, Dec 20: It was a celestial fusion of many things, colours with rhythm, elements with imagination and creation with the creator. But it was the right commencement for the city's first holistic art centre, Art Folio, which attempts to blend the visual and the performing arts. And Naresh Kapuria, the painter from Delhi, did the Pygmalion, turning the ethereal into corporeal. For the dance that he conceived within his installation saw the painter in his studio enlivening the elements and later on searching for himself amidst them.

This experience many would have had at the inaugural show of the Art Folio which was thrown open to Chandigarh's art lovers by Satish Gujral. For amidst the canvases displayed by 54 artists, the creme de la creme of the country's contemporary art world, the onlooker lost his existence. As he, or she, traversed the various plains of the visual art realm, delving into such diverse psyches as Arpana Caur's and Manjeet Bawa's or Anupam Sud's and Diwan Manna's. One was ushered into the graveled ``angan'' of the centre in Sector 9 by city artist Satish Kaushik's sculptures in metal scrap. The centre's art gallery is the best in the city till date and the book corner set up by Browser provides added nourishment with books on art. And for those who want thediscussions over hot cups of coffee, the centre has a cafe too.

As Alka Pande, the force behind the centre, pointed out, stimulation for both body and mind was indeed the motto for Art Folio set up by the Winsome Foundation. And the dancers, Shovana Narayan, Sharon Lowen and the Reddys, Raja, Radha and Kaushalya, took us to an other-worldly experience through their Kathak, Odissi and Kutchipudi. The choreographed piece had the artist unveiling his creations, as the centre did many such canvases this evening. Raja's Shiva brought in the elements, portrayed by the danseuses, to play on the artist's imagination, only to merge into his creations later on. In fact the foursome delineated the many facets, the moods and the essence of art forms that one could witness in the canvases at the gallery. And Naresh had aptly titled his piece, `Footprints on Canvas'.

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