Last month, New Delhi was witness to one of the finest group exhibitions in a long time. ‘Spaces’ saw Sunny Khullar, Udit Kulshrestha, Sanjay Nanda, Sunando Mazumdar, Babli Das and Mazhar Elahi showcase some fine work.

The exhibition displayed the synergy between those who are shunned and isolated by society due to their intellectual disability and those who are loved and revered by society for their artistic genius. The former provides an inspiration for the latter who further develops it into a thing of beauty.

Artiste Profiles

Sunny Khullar. JS Kullar (Sunny) is a professional airline pilot flying as a senior commander for Jet Airways for the last 11 years. He started out, taking photos with a Nikon SLR film camera in 1998, and thanks to his profession he did get to travel quite a bit and pursue his passion. 

In 2005 after a long stint with a regular Point and Shoot (Digital), he finally switched to a DSLR. This opened up a new horizon in taking photos for him, space being no constraint now, he starting piling up the MB’s on his machine. His first ventures into a photo community began all thanks to a social networking web site, where he joined the group “Delhi Photographers”.

This really helped him improve his techniques both in terms of compositions and post editing. The group has been extremely selfless and generous in imparting information, considering the fact that all his photo knowledge comes from book and the web, mostly self taught. 
   
His works have been showcased recently in an exhibition called SPACES, at the Indian Habitat Center. Some photos were also nominated to be displayed recently in a event by UNDP (United Nations Development Program).

What really catch his eye are: monuments, abstract forms, vivid and contrasting colours. He has also recently started work on his own web site where he hopes to encourage and showcase new emerging photographers and artists from India and the world.

Udit Kulshrestha. Born in Rajkot in 1977, Udit Kulshrestha spent his childhood travelling the length and breadth of the country, as an Army officer’s son. Thus began the yearning to perceive objects, both animate and inanimate, from dissimilar points of view; a trait that came in handy during his seven years in marketing in the domains of Internet, Media, Paints and Durables. With his parental lineage in performing and visual arts, (his grandfather having taught the Great Ghazal Maestro Jagjit Singh) he succumbed to his genetic calling as a visual artist, choosing photography as the medium of expression.

Encouragement came to him in his initial learning period during commissioned projects for UNESADE, Spain, on issues of Education, Poverty, Sustainability, Street Children and other ‘Blind Spots’ of the society, surreal to the indifferent many being miles away from the elitist voyeurism that crowds our senses. Having published some of his editorial works across the US (Smithsonian - 2008), RCE Barcelona E&S, Spain (2007 & 2008), Pearson University, Singapore (2008) and Times of India & Traffic Life Magazine, India (2007 & 2008), his profession keeps him busy creating visual delights for the Advertising, editorial and corporate clientele in the domains of people, lifestyle, still life and sports.

While his professional life as a marketer gave him enviable insights into the ever-changing society that we are in, the particular segments that he has worked with, have given him incidental but truly invaluable lessons For e.g., his stint with ICI Dulux gave him new understandings of the varying hues of colours, their innate harmonies, inherent contrasts and the play of light on colour temperature. His recent showcase on the Life & Tales of Doors, aptly entitled Darwaaze’, held at Market Café, Khan Market, New Delhi during July-Aug 2008 is an illustration of the same. Some of his personal works adorn walls not only domestically but internationally as well in private collections and he is represented by galleries in Ahmedabad, New Delhi & Gurgaon. 

A self taught inquisitive photographer and a traveler – more a voyager of the visual senses – he explores the mediums of motion imagery, literature & creative writing, philosophy, design and music to hone his pictorial perspectives. He is currently exploring the vistas of People, Street & Life, Abstracts and Still Life. He is also working on a coffee table book on a small but diverse and economically self sustaining community based on faith, slated for release in 2010. Udit hails from the Land of the Taj Mahal, Agra and is based out of Gurgaon, a suburb of Delhi.

Sanjay Nanda. A graphic designer by profession, passionately in love with photography whose experiences as a visual designer helps him see beauty in mundane things. His images use the interplay of light, textures, and colours to create unusual and complex forms that seduce the viewer with the ability to extract the beauty out of ordinary surroundings and convert them into visually appealing images and at the same time using concepts and techniques that are grounded in the domain of fine art.

A photographic process that involves a persistent scouring of the urban landscape for: the uniquely unseen; compelling moments of light, texture and form; and, often times, decaying elements in the constructed environment. His works are attempts to extract and synthesize the less seen, yet strangely elegant, fragments of the urban landscape in order to reconstruct an urban aesthetic. Monuments and the processes of time being made visible as beautiful sources, resonating with strong form and textural interest. His work often combines multiple photographic layers of urban imagery forming resonant compositions.

Casting a wide net, he does shoot a variety of subjects looking  for scenes that can be composed in a thought-provoking way with colour combinations that somehow stir him without attempting to edit the work or discriminate when in the field. Not a capturer merely reproducing a particular scene or image photographically; he is a collector of the raw visual materials that allow him to explore the inherent dynamics and tensions of the picture plane. These select works of his collection "Yantra Mantra: Lost in Time & Space"® are also part of various private collections.

Sunando Mazumdar. An artiste who weaves visual delight of reflections and still imagery taking a mundane mind to a different plane of interwoven layers.  He has been trained in the Triveni Kala Sangam under the tutelage of Sh. OP Sharma. His quest for the perfect click has taken him all over the world. He lives and works in Ghaziabad.

Babli Das. An abstractionist who uses the medium of canvas to tell tales of a vivid mind and a profound thought. A resident of Delhi debuting her works accumulated over time. A visual depiction of her minds' spaces.

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