Photographic canvasses capture nature at its best

Striking detail and vibrant hues transport the viewers to breathtaking lakes, mountains and valleys. These aren’t photographs, but canvasses that have a mystic and photographic quality.

Titled Gazing at Reality, the solo exhibition of recent paintings by artist Basist Kumar has works in oil and acrylic on canvas, which capture natural phenomena. He paints landscapes that are overwhelming in their detail.

Kumar, who has studied art in Santiniketan and China’s Academy of Art, says what interests him about nature is its “perceived enigmatic quality”. The artist explains that “Our experience of nature, as an everyday encounter, is charged with mysticism and spirituality. Both birth and death are rooted in nature, and throughout our lives we develop physical and psychological relationships with it.”

The works stand out because of the rich colours in the canvasses and a stillness that defines them as realistic to the point of resembling a photograph.

“[In his paintings] there is the sense of something epic going on as if from ancient myth yet it can’t really be articulated,” says a statement from Nature Morte gallery, where the exhibition is on display.

The statement adds that Kumar’s painterly technique hits a level of verisimilitude that is buoyant, crystalline and bracing. “There is a conceptual, meditative gravitas to these landscapes. They are like fever dreams; they seem to defy cognition.”

Kumar started exhibiting his works in 2007, and has previously exhibited in Hangzhou, Berlin, Kolkata and Delhi.