New Delhi: Bikaner House will host a contemplative journey into art, nature, and the human spirit this August, as self-taught contemporary artist Divyaman Singh presents his upcoming solo exhibition, Light as Creation, at the LTC Gallery from August 21 to 25, 2025.
Known for his evocative abstract paintings and minimal color palettes, Singh’s latest body of work continues his exploration of light, solitude, and the eternal rhythms that connect humanity with the cosmos and the natural world.
Singh, who works primarily with oils on canvas, approaches painting as an intuitive act. Using not just brushes but also his hands, palette knives, and even linen cloth, he creates textured surfaces that carry a tactile depth.
Often restricting himself to just two colors, his works emphasize emotion and inner vision over excess detail, resulting in compositions that are at once spare and profound.
A Life Shaped by Nature
Hailing from Chaugain, a village in Bihar’s Buxar district, Singh’s early experiences with forests, rivers, and mountains left an indelible mark on his artistic sensibility. He often recalls his childhood landscapes as his truest companions and teachers. “I feel truly at home only when surrounded by forests and mountains,” Singh has reflected in interviews.
This sentiment forms the philosophical backbone of his practice. For him, nature is not merely a backdrop but the very source of creation, a living force that fuels his work.
This deep-rooted connection has become central to his artistic voice. His paintings often act as meditative invitations, urging viewers to pause, breathe, and rediscover their bond with the earth.
By emphasizing simplicity—whether in his restrained use of color or in his preference for raw, hand-driven textures—Singh creates spaces for contemplation that resonate with both solitude and universality.
Light as Creation: Themes and Vision
The forthcoming exhibition brings together impressionistic landscapes and studies of trees, where light plays a central role. These works are less about representation and more about evocation—moments of dawn, twilight, or shifting weather become metaphors for memory, transition, and transcendence.
Curatorial advisor Uma Nair describes Singh’s canvases as “pages of the earth,” underlining their meditative quality and their ability to transport viewers into spaces of silence and inner searching.
She observes that in Singh’s recent series, the interplay of scarlet and blue tones mirrors the cycles of sunset and sunrise, symbolizing both the intensity of emotion and the endurance of ancient memory.
What distinguishes Light as Creation is its merging of personal reflection with universal symbols. The exhibition suggests that light is not only the subject of his work but also its source—an eternal presence that embodies transformation and continuity.
An Artist Between Past and Present
Singh’s recent works also reflect his engagement with ideas that transcend geography and time. While rooted in his ancestral memories of the Indian landscape, he draws on modern concepts such as luminescence dating—a scientific method of measuring light trapped in minerals to determine age—as metaphors for memory and temporality.
His art converses with writers and thinkers like Etel Adnan, Rachel Carson, and Anaïs Nin, embedding his practice within a broader dialogue that bridges ecology, literature, and philosophy.
His blue series, for example, transforms the sea into a metaphorical space where body and spirit converge, evoking what he describes as a “visual poetry of existence.”
A Reclusive Creator
Unlike many artists who thrive in bustling studios or collaborative circles, Singh paints in solitude, often working only when moved by an inner compulsion. This instinct-driven process reflects his belief that painting is less about productivity and more about authenticity.
Each canvas emerges as a confluence of emotion and thought, born not out of obligation but from necessity.
Observers note that his quiet disposition translates directly onto the canvas. There is a stillness in his works, a refusal to shout or overwhelm. Instead, they radiate from within—through layers of ultramarine, earthy browns, and fiery oranges—suggesting that art, like light, emanates naturally when given space and time.
International Recognition
Over the years, Singh has built a reputation that stretches beyond India’s borders. His work has been exhibited in New Delhi, Mumbai, Dubai, and Milan, among other cities.
Critics frequently highlight his ability to combine traditional sensibilities with contemporary abstraction, offering a fresh voice in a global art landscape often dominated by noise and spectacle.
Yet, despite international recognition, Singh remains deeply tied to his roots. His connection to his village, his respect for ancestral knowledge, and his reverence for the natural world remain central to his identity as an artist.
Invitation to Stillness
Light as Creation promises not just an exhibition but an experience. By positioning light as both theme and metaphor, Singh opens a window into the interplay between memory, nature, and spirituality.
Viewers are invited into a space where silence becomes a language, where the natural world is both subject and teacher, and where art itself becomes an act of meditation.
As the capital city gears up for this anticipated exhibition, Singh’s work reminds audiences of the enduring role of art: to deepen awareness, foster introspection, and connect humanity to forces larger than itself.
The exhibition at LTC Gallery, Bikaner House, will be on view from August 21 to 25, 2025. For those who step into Singh’s world of scarlet skies, blue seas, and luminous landscapes, the promise is not only aesthetic pleasure but also a quiet encounter with truth and transcendence.
