At Emami Art in Kolkata, Sayanee Sarkar’s debut solo exhibition ‘Alchemy Of Absolute Intimacy’ examines the politics of bodies, intimacy, and perception through layered figurative paintings that blur the boundaries between tenderness, violence, memory, and desire.
We live in times when the human form is endlessly categorised, politicised, made to perform, shamed, policed, and surveilled. We are simultaneously urged to celebrate, optimise, discipline, and scrutinise our bodies — we think of bodies in motion or in proximation through our own assumptions and familiar frameworks. Visual artist Sayanee Sarkar’s practice engages with the spatial positioning of bodies to question these assumptions. In her debut solo exhibition, ‘Alchemy of Absolute Intimacy’ at the Kolkata Centre for Creativity (KCC), Sarkar presents a poetic and perceptual rejection of conventional ideas about the human body.
Sarkar is part of a new generation of Indian painters with a renewed interest in the psychological and perceptual dimensions of figuration. A graduate of the Indian College of Arts and Draftsmanship in Kolkata and the Faculty of Fine Arts at Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda, Sarkar has steadily emerged over the past few years through group exhibitions and art fair presentations across the country. This solo exhibition marks a significant leap in her practice.
“As one of the most promising young contemporary artists of her generation, Sayanee has consistently demonstrated a rare depth of vision, sensitivity, and creative rigour. We have featured her work in our presentations at leading art fairs and group exhibitions over the past year, where her practice has drawn meaningful attention from critics and collectors alike.”Richa Agarwal, CEO of Emami Art and Chairperson, KCC
The exhibition centres on the human figure, but not in the traditional figurative sense. Sarkar’s paintings exist in a threshold where figures seem to emerge and dissolve simultaneously. Built from layers of translucent washes and heavily stained surfaces, the canvases possess an atmospheric density and depth. The surfaces gesture towards an osmotic relationship between figure and background, in which bodies become inseparable from their environments.
As Ushmita Sahu, Director and Curator of Emami Art, notes, “Sarkar often refers to the raw canvas as the ‘skin’ of the work; a ground that absorbs, holds, and at times resists the gesture. Working with delicate washes alongside sudden impasto, she allows forms to arrive gradually. Her brushwork shifts between hesitation and assertion, between transparency and density, keeping the image slightly unsettled.”
This ambiguity is central to the exhibition’s emotional and conceptual force. The gestures Sarkar implies in her paintings remain perpetually unresolved. The viewer cannot fully determine whether the scenes portray tenderness, violence, eroticism, grief, care, or estrangement. The figures occupy speculative interiors — perhaps bedrooms, or perhaps secret, psychological spaces — yet the viewer is never fully given access to what happens within them. Sarkar is not interested in narrating relationships so much as destabilising the viewer’s certainty about what intimacy looks like, how bodies communicate, and how meaning is produced through acts of looking.
‘Alchemy of Absolute Intimacy’, a solo exhibition by Sayanee Sarkar, is on view at Galleries 2 & 3, Ground Floor, Emami Art, till 10 July 2026.
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