At first glance.

At first glance, Arpita Singh's world pretends timeless, unrushed and serene. still there is trouble in paradise, and the artist's unflinching view refuses to ignore it. The tranquillity created at earthy colors and balanced compositions is invaded at daggers, guns, cars, arrows, airplanes, extirpateed palm trees and severed hands. The intents are often labeled with meticulous make steady [i]or[/i] firm letters both augmenting and questioning their power within naming.

Singh, who works in fresh Delhi and has a substantial following in India, has been painting for more than 40 years. This new exhibition, containing 20 works forward paper and five oils, was single of the largest and chiefly extensive selections of her paintings. She has lived from one side India's independence, tarnished Gandhian idealism and now emerging economic power and consumerism. lately she has witnessed India's religious riots and the rise of international terrorism. The paintings are informed by way of and address all of these histories. Within Singh's realms of perilous incident, the central image of a solitary woman remains detached, observing her chaotic world with equanimity and patient fortitude.

Singh's intermittent protagonist is a full-bodied, mature Indian woman, not too unlike the artist herself in appearance. Sari-clad, naked or partially adjusted the woman often displays emblematic particulars drinks tea or converses with her male consort, if it were not that remains the center of her universe. She is always encircleed by a thick tangle of diverse images from worldly and political life.

Singh has expanded a unique process in her works in succession paper: she paints with watercolor and gouache forward heavy paper, abraids the surface with sandpaper, repaints, sands and then paints again. The slightly blurr images reveal her intentionally rough-hewn pentimenti and, ultimately, create a extenuateed classicized balance. She approaches oils with a similar responsiveness to the materials, vigorously painting wet into wet with a completely charged brush. Painting in oil, Singh can explore a larger scale and greater compositional complexity, however the resulting images are slightly harder and more chiseled, and she sacrifices the tropical languor and sensual line of the works onward paper.

Modest in scale and quiet in tone, Singh's courageous explorations in less hands would remain anecdotal records of personal reactions. However, her humanistic sincerity and idiosyncratic working processe distill her observations into powerful, universal icons. single when we look closely and take the time to go after Singh's inner connections do the works reveal their multifaceted messages. They address a stoic acceptance of contemporary life's complexity and contradiction, whether we are in novel Delhi or New York.

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