Aicon Contemporary presents Nightjar, a show of paintings curated by Ambika Trasi and featuring Abir Karmakar’s most recent oil paintings of his city of residence, Baroda, Gujarat.
Karmakar first took up the urban landscape of Baroda as a subject of his paintings in 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, to capture the isolation and anxiety of the time in the style of history paintings. The artist has since continued to paint scenes of the city, depicting views from his home’s rooftop that look out onto neighbouring flats, and street level views of compounds and homes left vacant by their owners who live in the United States yet hoard their properties as a form of wealth storage. Throughout Karmakar’s paintings, nature transgresses and declares itself an uncontainable force that resists the dense concrete of Baroda. The skies in Karmakar’s paintings appear pastoral, boundless, and dramatic.
Find out more on the Aicon Contemporary website.