Between Surface and Depth: Listening to What Lies Beneath

At Jehangir Art Gallery, Between Surface and Depth: The Inner Landscapes (on view from 3–9 March 2026) unfolds as a quietly powerful meditation on interiority. Bringing together the works of Delhi-based artists Bharti Verma and Ruchi Chadha, the exhibition resists spectacle and immediacy. Instead, it asks for slowness—for attention to surfaces that are never merely surfaces, and depths that reveal themselves only through sustained looking.

Though formally distinct, the practices of Bharti and Ruchi converse through shared sensibilities of introspection, resilience, and transformation. The exhibition does not impose a linear narrative; rather, it creates an atmospheric field where the human body and the lotus become parallel metaphors for inner states of being.

Bharti Verma’s figurative works anchor the exhibition in the emotional terrain of the body. These are not portraits in any conventional sense. Faces are obscured, erased, or turned away, and gender dissolves into ambiguity. What remains is the body as a site of memory—bearing, holding, enduring. Her figures appear less as individuals than as embodiments of shared psychic states: grief, shelter, vulnerability, quiet acceptance.

A defining strength of Bharti’s work lies in her treatment of surface. Her canvases feel excavated rather than painted—scraped, layered, weathered like ancient walls or geological strata. These textured grounds carry a sense of time and erosion, recalling the primal impulse of early mark-making. The body seems to emerge from these surfaces and recede back into them, as if memory itself were shaping form. In works with multiple figures, bodies overlap and merge, suggesting collective emotional experiences rather than discrete stories. Gesture replaces anatomy; posture becomes language. A bowed spine, a folded limb, a weighted stance—each holds emotional resonance.

Her restrained palette of ash, umber, gray, and muted mineral blues deepens this introspective mood. Silence permeates these works—not as absence, but as presence. The quietness asks the viewer to listen inwardly, to recognize the body as a psychic landscape shaped by time, experience, and quiet resilience.

If Bharti’s works draw the viewer inward through the body, Ruchi Chadha’s lotus paintings guide us downward—beneath the surface of water, into a submerged world that is rarely seen. Ruchi’s decision to adopt an underwater perspective is both conceptual and poetic. The lotus, often depicted as a pristine symbol of purity, is here shown within its true environment: murky waters, tangled stems, drifting weeds, fish, and filtered light. Purity, the works suggest, is not untouched—it is earned.

Water becomes central to Ruchi’s visual and symbolic language. It distorts, reflects, and transforms. Gentle ripples fracture reflections of sky and foliage, while light filters through in soft gradients, creating a luminous, immersive atmosphere. Curved perspectives and subtle movement give the viewer the sensation of being suspended within the pond itself, neither fully above nor below.

The lotus stems stretch upward with quiet determination, navigating darkness in pursuit of light. Leaves bear marks of wear—frayed edges, translucent veins—speaking of endurance rather than perfection. Fish and aquatic life move in harmony, reinforcing a sense of interconnectedness and balance. Here, resilience is not heroic or dramatic; it is steady, organic, and patient.

What makes Between Surface and Depth compelling is not contrast but continuity. Bharti’s bodies and Ruchi’s lotuses exist in different visual registers, yet they mirror one another in spirit. Both artists explore emergence—whether of form from textured ground or of bloom from silted water. Both resist the illusion of immediacy, insisting instead on process, time, and becoming.

The exhibition ultimately invites viewers to move beyond what is immediately visible. It asks us to consider how surfaces—skin, water, paint—carry histories beneath them. In doing so, Between Surface and Depth becomes less an exhibition to be consumed and more an experience to be inhabited. It lingers quietly, unfolding long after one leaves the gallery, like memory itself.

Following is the analysis done by Romartika's autocurator tool of one of the iconic painting by the artist. Complete analysis can be downloaded from the link below.

BHARTI VERMA_ANALYSIS_AUTOCURATOR.pdf

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