The exhibition includes works of eight artists from Baroda, Mumbai, Bhopal, Kolkata, Bangalore and Srinagar and captures in this range, the width of abstract practices. While New Delhi-based Kishori Kaul’s landscape Finesse shows a diffused impact of western impressionism through her depiction of autumnal trees that sprout shocking pink and red blooms, Sanju Jain’s canvases are starkly abstract. He plays with colour and light, creating opaque and grainy patches that attempt to capture the instant reflections of the mind. Alkazi explains: “Human moods cannot be expressed though words or figures. In Jain’s works, textures and interplay of hues speak volumes.”

Aswini Godbole evokes a lyrical sense in his portrayal of the female form in Wish for Life 2, but his other work in the exhibition, Freedom, depicts a sense of fatefulness than liberation. It shows the hand of fate above humans desperately reaching out from the bottom of the canvas.

The exhibition also includes a collection of ceramics by a family of Mumbai ceramic artists BR Pandit and his son Abhay, and Jyotsana Bhatt’s “closed dome” vases and pots. While Abhay’s works allude to the flow of water and the rise and fall of waves, Bhatt’s works, in warm hues and understated elegance, seem to hold the breath of life.