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A Material Conversation at India Art Fair 2026: Sculpture and Painting in Quiet Dialogue
- Style Essentials Edit Team
- 3 hours ago
- 3 min read
At India Art Fair 2026, KYNKYNY Art Gallery presents a tightly curated booth that brings together three contemporary practices rooted in material, process, and physical intelligence. Featuring the works of Sandilya Theuerkauf, Meenal Singh, and Janarthanan Rudhramoorthy, the presentation unfolds as a conversation between sculpture and painting, where material is not treated as a surface or medium, but as an active agent in shaping meaning.
Located at Booth L08 at the NSIC Exhibition Grounds, New Delhi, from 5 to 8 February 2026, the showcase reflects three distinct yet interconnected approaches to making — each grounded in an intimate engagement with natural, industrial, and fluid materials.
Nature as Material: Sandilya Theuerkauf
Sandilya Theuerkauf’s sculptural and relief works emerge from a daily practice of walking, collecting, and observing the natural world. His process begins not in the studio but in forests and landscapes, where he gathers fallen plant-based materials — bark, seeds, twigs, thorns, dried vines — each work constructed using a single plant species.
Rather than imposing form, Sandilya adapts his technique to the physical logic of each material. The resulting compositions reflect a meditative engagement with ecology, symmetry and asymmetry, and the quiet structures embedded within organic systems. His works carry the imprint of forest conservation, environmental education, and lived observation, transforming fragile natural elements into tactile, contemplative objects that speak of balance, intervention, and restraint.
Liquid Landscapes: Meenal Singh
Meenal Singh’s large-format oil paintings operate through fluidity rather than gesture. Working without brushes or direct contact with the canvas, she allows pigment to behave autonomously — flowing, pooling, and settling into expansive abstracted terrains.
Her paintings are driven by process rather than composition. Colour, transparency, and motion guide each work, creating immersive surfaces that feel atmospheric and spatial rather than pictorial. Trained as an architect, Meenal’s sensitivity to structure and volume remains embedded in her painting practice, where landscapes appear not as representations, but as emotional and material states.
Living between Bangalore and her farm in Denkanikottai, her ecological awareness subtly informs her work, where land is not depicted but sensed — through depth, scale, and the quiet behaviour of liquid pigment.
The Body in Metal: Janarthanan Rudhramoorthy
Janarthanan Rudhramoorthy’s iron and steel sculptures explore the relationship between body, consciousness, and spatial presence. Working with dense industrial materials, he transforms weight into form, allowing metal to appear porous, fluid, and unexpectedly light.
Inspired by natural structures such as bird nests, his sculptures reflect on impermanence, containment, and transformation. Rust, patina, and surface ageing become part of the narrative, allowing time and material decay to shape meaning. Many works begin with traced impressions of the human body, translated into metal through a labour-intensive and technically rigorous process.
His practice sits at the intersection of philosophy and physicality — where industrial material becomes a vessel for ideas of absence, presence, and internal states.
Material as the Common Language
What unites the three practices is not aesthetic similarity, but a shared commitment to material-led thinking. In each case, form emerges from process rather than concept. Whether working with forest matter, liquid pigment, or industrial metal, the artists allow material behaviour to dictate structure, scale, and outcome.
Together, the presentation resists spectacle in favour of quiet intensity. It proposes an understanding of contemporary art where meaning is generated through physical intelligence — through touch, weight, flow, and transformation — rather than through overt symbolism or narrative.
KYNKYNY Art Gallery at India Art Fair 2026
Founded in 2004, KYNKYNY Art Gallery has built a long-standing reputation for championing contemporary Indian artists through carefully curated exhibitions and international collaborations. Based in Bangalore, the gallery continues to foreground practices that engage deeply with material, process, and conceptual rigour.
At India Art Fair 2026, KYNKYNY’s booth reflects this curatorial ethos — offering a presentation that feels grounded, tactile, and quietly reflective, allowing three distinct artistic languages to coexist within a shared material framework.
India Art Fair 2026
Dates: 5–8 February 2026
Venue: NSIC Exhibition Grounds, New Delhi
Booth: L08
Presented by: KYNKYNY Art Gallery
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