I have had a long-term romance with black and white. With all the naiveté (foolishness?) of youth, I was convinced that life and people were either black or white. But lessons along the way illuminated the vast areas of grey that populate life and people’s characters. And if black and white are two ends of the spectrum, then it is the grey that is the main river that flows in between.

Since life has taught me better, this love for black and white has remained an aesthetic pursuit. Usually photography scores high on the monochrome mood, but this time, it was a painting exhibition, Black Frames, by four artists — Akash Anand, Danesh Aagha, Daljeet Singh and Kumar Gaurav — that was an absolute delight.
For one, the works by all four were in perfect synergy with each other and were displayed to their best advantage. There were no visual hiccups, and the starkness of the blacks juxtaposed with white lingered long after one came away. The form and content chosen by the artists are quite original as they discover newer paths to present the expressions of their aspirations and realities.
The potent images created to etch the pictorial space with precise ideas and thoughts are definite to each artist’s thought process and hence, the work evolves on its own referential context and becomes persuasive to involve us to discover further. Distances and differences of experiences and origin blur in this togetherness.
Akash Anand is an artist who is essentially self-taught, someone who has taken the tough journey to move forward by developing his own trajectory. A computer engineer by training, he has chosen to pursue his calling — art, as his interest and passion lay there. Ever willing to experiment, he gives a lot of thought before embarking on any series and has the conviction and capability to carry it through; his earlier series in brunt paper won him several accolades and a staunch following.
Anand is exploring the unknown arenas of the surreal. It is this questioning approach to his own work that has impelled him to explore vistas of his own creative impulses. His sombre expression, the extent of clarity and absence of any kind of apprehension, and the harmonious co-existence of form and content — all off this is partly achieved through his mental play of the mundane and the bizarre, which lend a dream-like quality to his work. This capability of breaking away from the stereotype while maintaining the essential chord with reality is what renders a sense of commonality to his work. This makes them subjective, not objective snapshots swollen with the artist’s ulterior motives. He has embarked on his journey and one hopes that it will be eventful and interesting, for his roots give him the strength to wing into hitherto unexplored vistas. But it is his almost childlike (not childish) wonder in venturing into unknown worlds that has an endearing quality.
Kumar Gaurav’s enamel marbling technique was almost reminiscent of the work that emanate from Mother’s ashram in Pondicherry. It is a tough procedure to handle and can easily go awry. But the artist tackled it with competence. The thematic content of the work was focused in looking at life up close and had close ups of women’s faces.
On the other hand, Daljeet Singh opted for the airbrush to enable him to follow a spiritual quest in his works. The airbrush is something that Singh handled with care. He etched the Buddha in different emotional postures with lots of love. He explored the nine chakras playing with light and shadow to great effect.
Danesh Aagha’s charcoal and acrylics pick up components of the facial features like the eyes and nose as floating representations to underline the central motif: The reflective work in lively blacks ruminate about the mysteries of life as they meander into the depths.
These works have an inherent need to be simple, yet specific. It is a subtle interplay with the content of a personal language. One cannot divorce the newness of the idea from the artistic representation in each case. All the frames have a definite mettle and stand out as separate entities when juxtaposed with works of the same series.

Alka Raghuvanshi is an art writer, curator and artist