Shruti Gupta Chandra : felt rather than seen

Review/Dr Ved Prakash Bhardwaj

Artist: Shruti Gupta Chandra

Abstraction, as a visual language, seeks to move beyond the immediate experience of the visible world and arrive at something more essential—something felt rather than seen. This impulse finds compelling expression in the recent paintings of Shruti Gupta Chandra, where form is no longer the primary vehicle of meaning. Instead, she ventures into an emotional and perceptual realm, dissolving the physical body and allowing sensation, rhythm, emotion, and psychological space to take precedence.

Earlier in her practice, Shruti explored the ph

Mixed media on canvas

physical dimensions of existence by abstracting the human figure within structured compositions shaped by light and shadow. In her new body of work, however, she steps further away from corporeal references. Familiar identities and symbolic markers gradually recede, giving way to an open, fluid space where emotion becomes the central presence. The body is no longer articulated through gesture; it is replaced by what may be described as a melodic vibration across the canvas.

Mixed media on canvas

Her longstanding engagement with music and classical dance subtly informs these works. Rhythm becomes a structural principle. Colours and abstract forms seem animated, almost performative—like a dancer occupying a stage. Significantly, much of that stage appears empty. Yet the emptiness is not absence. Just as the still air around a dancer holds the resonance of movement and sound, the spaces between forms in her paintings are charged with invisible interactions. These intervals are alive with tension, pause, and continuity.

Mixed media on canvas

Reflecting on this series, the artist notes her desire to explore the unknown and unseen, moving beyond traditional compositional frameworks. What emerges instead is a dynamic relationship between space and form—a rhythm that unfolds perceptually rather than narratively. Her inquiry turns inward: where does the mind situate itself within an emotion, and where does the external world begin? Between these two poles lies an undefined yet palpable connection, an oscillation between interior awareness and outward reality.

Mixed media on canvas

Her forthcoming solo exhibition at Shridharani Art Gallery in Delhi will present works that blur the boundaries between the concrete and the abstract. These paintings resist single-point narratives; instead, they unfold as experiential fields. By breaking away from conventional constraints, she enters a freer expressive terrain, one that allows for deeper philosophical engagement with the interrelationship between human existence and the physical and metaphysical realms.

Mixed media on canvas

A notable aspect of this series is her shifting compositional strategy. In some works, layered structures accumulate, producing dense surfaces where forms overlap and dissolve. In others, she pares down colour and gesture, allowing expanses of blank space to dominate. These contrasting approaches are not merely formal decisions but reflections of life’s inherent contradictions. Density suggests emotional intensity, turbulence, or psychological complexity. Emptiness evokes silence, solitude, or existential clarity.

Mixed media on canvas

Shruti often breaks the rhythm of her creative process. She transforms the same materials and compositions. In one such painting, she creates a painting using hand-stitched fabric, which breaks her creative image. This painting, which moves towards minimalist art, expresses that amidst the complexity of human life, there comes a time when it becomes so simplified that it becomes impossible to confine it to a single meaning. Shruti's art, however, defies any boundaries of meaning. Her abstract works offer an open sky of meanings, in which the viewer can access meaning according to their experience and receptivity. This kind of openness, from the form to its meaning, gives Shruti's work new breadth and potential. In her figurative works, she experimented with achieving this, which is now moving towards perfection in abstraction. 

Watercolour on paper

Through this interplay of fullness and void, Shruti Gupta Chandra articulates a vision of life as oscillation—between presence and disappearance, order and fragility, abundance and absence. The abstract field becomes a site where perception transcends language, inviting both artist and viewer into a deeper, more contemplative encounter with being. Life is not all about being full; that which is empty is also life because it holds greater potential for life. This emptiness holds a kind of invitation and a sincere commitment to always making room for others in life. Shruti expresses this sentiment through innovative experiments in composition in her art. The empty space on the canvas is, in reality, filled with something that can be felt, not seen.

Watercolour on paper