In Hyderabad, the Prakriti: A Quiet Continuum explores nature as inner landscape

Nature gathers in the soft fall of evening light, in reflections that tremble on water, in the slow memory of trees rooted deeper than time. The latest exhibition in town, Prakriti: A Quiet Continuum, curated by Ruchi Sharma, leans into this stillness, offering a contemplative pause where silent landscapes become both a site of observation and a space of inward return.

Prakriti: A Quiet Continuum brings together artworks of four artists

Bringing together the works of Lal Bahadur Singh, Sumanto Chowdhury, Roy K John, and K Sudheesh, the exhibition unfolds as a meditation on prakriti — as an internal state of being. Across the show, nature is neither static nor ornamental. Light changes, seasons pass, and surfaces hold traces of time, inviting the viewer into a slower, more attentive rhythm of seeing.

K Sudheesh’s works, for instance, emerge from an intimate engagement with the backwaters connected to the Poonoor River. “The reflections on the water serve as a mirror for buried memories and the quiet, solitary moments of the human condition,” he notes. What begins as soft pastel sketches evolves into layered oil canvases, where texture becomes a metaphor for time itself. His paintings capture the hush of evening — the still water, the weight of silence — offering what he hopes will be “a sense of healing, silence, and meditative calm.”

In contrast, Roy K John turns to cultivated landscapes of Kerala, where jackfruit and banana groves appear as recurring motifs. Drawing from iconographic traditions, his works quietly reflect on the erosion of natural abundance, transforming familiar forms into subtle commentaries on ecological fragility.

Lal Bahadur Singh brings a different energy — his compositions animated by vivid juxtapositions of flora and fauna. Parrots, cows, and bulls inhabit spaces that oscillate between rural and urban, memory and immediacy. His works feel shaped by both lived experience and movement across geographies.

Sumanto Chowdhury’s practice, meanwhile, is deeply process-driven. Through layering and assembling multiple surfaces, he constructs landscapes that feel fragmented yet whole. The act of construction mirrors the way landscapes are remembered, revisited, and reassembled over time. Reflecting on his connection to place, he shares, “I have been brought up in Shantiniketan… everything I see, I try to make it in my painting.” Working with mixed media — colour pencil softened by watercolour washes — he draws inspiration from the Prayer Hall, seeking to capture its soft character through delicate line and tone.

Together, these practices dwell within nature, attentive to its subtleties, its silences, and its slow transformations. In Prakriti: A Quiet Continuum, the landscapes are not empty — they are alive with memory, perception, and the rhythms that shape both the world outside and the one within.

On till June 15.

Free entry.

11 am to 7 pm.

At Kalakriti Art Gallery, Banjara Hills.

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