Jaipur Centre for Art Inaugurates with “A New Way of Seeing”
‘A New Way of Seeing’ at Jaipur Centre for Art invites viewers on a journey through abstraction, reflection, and perception, bridging Jaipur’s heritage with contemporary artistic innovation.
The Pink City is poised to take its place on the global contemporary art stage with the launch of the Jaipur Centre for Art (JCA) at The City Palace. Co-founded by HH Maharaja Sawai Padmanabh Singh of Jaipur and contemporary art specialist Noelle Kadar, JCA is a visionary initiative that blends Jaipur's rich cultural heritage with the vibrancy of contemporary art. Its inaugural exhibition, “A New Way of Seeing,” is now open and runs until 16th March 2025, presenting a dynamic lineup of Indian and international artists.
A Vision Rooted in Heritage and Innovation
Situated within The City Palace, JCA spans 2,600 sq ft of public exhibition space. It embodies the co-founders' mission to position Jaipur as a global hub for artistic exchange and innovation. Speaking about this endeavour, His Highness Maharaja Sawai Padmanabh Singh remarked:
“JCA is a testament to our unwavering commitment to the city's artistic heritage and creative potential. I hope to contribute to bridging the history of my lineage and the evolving contemporary world.”
Noelle Kadar added:
“Our mission is to open the doors of Jaipur to the world, inviting galleries, artists, and art enthusiasts to immerse themselves in contemporary art practices through the unique perspective of this vibrant city.”
Unveiling the Inaugural Exhibition
Curated by the esteemed Peter Nagy, “A New Way of Seeing” brings together eight celebrated artists who explore the intersections of abstraction, reflection, and multiplicity. The exhibition challenges viewers to reimagine how they perceive and interact with art through diverse mediums such as painting, sculpture, and photography.
Participating artists include:
- Tanya Goel
- Manjunath Kamath
- Anish Kapoor
- Alicja Kwade
- Sean Scully
- Dayanita Singh
- Hiroshi Sugimoto
- L.N. Tallur
Curator Peter Nagy describes the exhibition as:
“A broader conversation about the intersections of vision, material, and meaning in contemporary art. The show will bring together some of the most advanced forms of contemporary art being created today.”
Highlights from “A New Way of Seeing”
Hiroshi Sugimoto: Photography Beyond Reality
Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto exemplifies the exhibition’s themes through his series Theatres and Seascapes. Sugimoto’s long-exposure photographs challenge traditional associations of photography with truth, creating luminous, timeless images of theatre interiors and serene horizons. These works transform mundane subjects into profound meditations on temporality and vision.
Dayanita Singh: Time and Memory in Images
Dayanita Singh explores the endless possibilities of the photographic medium. Her Time Measures (2016) offers enigmatic bundles of dyed muslin, each uniquely faded, symbolizing the subtle interplay of time, colour, and texture. Her Archivologies (2024) takes this further, presenting black-and-white photographs of distorted paper bundles that evoke archaeological artefacts of lost knowledge.
Alicja Kwade: Sculpting Illusions
Alicja Kwade’s Transformator juxtaposes tree branches cast in bronze with a mirrored ball, creating reflections that blur reality and illusion. Works like Siege du Monde—a chair on a stone sphere—challenge our assumptions about weight, materiality, and time, while her Rain series made of gold watch hands reflects on our subjective experience of time.
Sean Scully: Emotional Abstraction
Sean Scully’s Wall of Light series captures fleeting moments of light and shadow. Quintana Roo Wall (2022) transforms stone and light into fluid, emotional forms, reflecting the artist’s belief in the infinite possibilities of abstraction and its capacity to hold memory and spirituality.
Tanya Goel: Structure and Chaos
Tanya Goel’s Mechanism 21 continues her exploration of rigorous abstraction using pigments crafted from unconventional materials like aluminium, mica, and soil. Her Botanicals watercolours reinterpret nature’s colours into geometric structures, bridging the scientific discipline of observation with artistic creativity.
Anish Kapoor: The Illusion of the Real
Anish Kapoor’s stainless steel mirror discs, such as Oriental Blue to Clear (2023), manipulate light, space, and the viewer’s perception. These works explore the paradoxes of representation, inverting reality and magnifying reflections to create disorienting yet poetic experiences.
L.N. Tallur: Tradition Meets Technology
L.N. Tallur combines traditional Asian sculpture with cutting-edge AI and 3D printing in works like Glitch Tandava. These bronze sculptures reflect irony and transformation, as ancient forms are warped and reimagined, revealing new layers of meaning.
Manjunath Kamath: Layers of History
Manjunath Kamath’s triptych White Whispers over Shy Red Canvas blends motifs from diverse cultural traditions into a grid-like mosaic. His terracotta Bojh Series sculptures evoke archeological fragments, suggesting a dialogue between history’s erasures and cultural evolution.
Beyond the Exhibition
The Jaipur Centre for Art’s ambitions extend beyond its exhibitions. The Centre will introduce an artist residency program, inviting creators to draw inspiration from Jaipur’s rich cultural and historical context. This initiative aims to foster collaboration between artists and the local community, bridging tradition and modernity. By seamlessly merging Jaipur’s heritage with cutting-edge contemporary practices, JCA marks a pivotal moment in the city's cultural evolution.
