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Popular culture is oversaturated with the romantic image of the solitary tortured artist working alone in their studio, but the truth is, artists often produce their best work in community with other artists. Nothing comes from nothing. Paul Gauguin and Vincent van Gogh, Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat, Lucian Freud and Francis Bacon, Helen Frankenthaler and Grace Hartigan, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning — art history is replete with instances of turbulent, tragic, and often profound friendship between artists. Something transformative takes place when two artists come together and push each other beyond what they could have achieved working on their own.
As Experimenter enters its 16th year, the Kolkata and Mumbai-based gallery is bringing together four artists selected by artists from the gallery's roster for four solo exhibitions across its two locations in Kolkata. 'Artists for Artists' featuring Aishwarya Arumbakkam and Sathish Kumar, selected by Sohrab Hura; Rupali Patil, selected by Rathin Barman; and Rai, selected by Bhasha Chakrabarti will be on view at Experimenter - Ballygunge Place and Experimenter - Hindustan Road from April 5 to June 14, 2025, to mark the gallery's 16th anniversary. The exhibition attempts to establish how artists, whether through long-form conversations in each other’s studios or outside of the confines of their workplaces, can yield generous and productive ground for experimentation and sustained dialogue.
In 'Ten sounds I cannot hear', Aishwarya Arumbakkam uses photography, video, printmaking, and drawing to build and maintain a close connection with her parents across continents, in the United States and India. Using repeatedly mediated imagery, Arumbakkam shows a complex view of immigration where she and her loved ones are faced with the obstacle of separation while trying to preserve a sense of closeness.
"I have always thought of Aishwarya as a bookmaker first. The material that she works with, feels integral to her practice but it never dominates the perspective. It’s a bit like a writer whose book might be published as a beautiful object, but the writing always remains the heart of the book. Her play with material gives tone to her work and shemanages to do that beautifully consistently."
Sohrab Hura
The title of the series is inspired by a folder in her archive of photographic and audio material, recorded with her parents over a screen, during the COVID-19 pandemic. Through the process of making digital time into physical objects, Arumbakkam attempts to shrink the distance that separates her from her ageing parents and lengthen the time she has left with them.
In 'If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes', Rupali Patil resents new drawings that span various stages of her practice and a new sculptural installation. While one body of work depicts shifting landscapes and the space held by architecture within them, another — exhibited at Patil’s recent solo exhibition in Berlin — explores fluid corporeality in search of a more potent and powerful force, invoking references to menstruation. Her sculptures in the exhibition draw attention to unacknowledged labour, both human and ecological, drawing a parallel between mycelial networks and feminine contributions, which are often undervalued.
In 'Fever', Rai presents parts from three ongoing bodies of work — Fever, Search Party, and Ngan & Nilnil — which underscore her long-standing inquiry into movement, inheritance, belonging, and becoming. The works explore ways of how we notice, absorb, and relate to the world around us and how its vastness influences the intimate.
"Rai is someone who is not only insatiably curious and acutely observant, but in her work one immediately senses a rare generosity of spirit that allows those engaging with it to expand their own powers of observation and experiences of wonder. It would not be an overstatement to say that Rai’s practice is one that pushes me to become a better artist, human, and friend."
Bhasha Chakraborti
"These works were made thinking about spaces around me, particularly my interest in certain tidal structures here, and the way these encounters also shape my understanding of myself," Rai says. "In these works I’ve tried to find a language of drawing that unfolds slowly with the intention of the viewer, which to me is kind of similar to looking at petroglyphs — combining different marks and interpreting them in different ways. And fever, perhaps, becomes a state of suspension — through sickness and love or change and resistance — offering a moment of introspection."
The exhibitions, too, are tangentially in conversation with each other. Like Arumbakkam's 'Ten sounds I cannot hear', Sathish Kumar's 'Sunlight' is an ongoing body of work that began during the COVID-19 pandemic as a response to the unease and anxiety that he experienced in confinement. For him, hope took the form of sunlight, gently easing out the darkness from his mind. Kumar’s photographs from this period are symbolic of his gradual journey from the stillness of lockdown to the post-pandemic years. His subjects are varied — loved ones, sites in Hampi, Kanchipuram, and Chennai, as well as light in its various forms. This body of work has helped Kumar find balance amidst his contrasting feelings of hope and anxiety, where each image is connected by a moment in time.
Artists for Artists: Aishwarya Arumbakkam, Sathish Kumar, Rupali Patil, Rai is on view at Experimenter - Ballygunge Place and Experimenter - Hindustan Road in Kolkata from April 5 till June 14, 2025. Opening preview on Saturday, April 5, 2025, 6 - 8 PM. Learn more about the exhibition here.
