A special evening at The Claridges New Delhi brought together various facets that define good living — art, fine wines, food and big cars. We sampled the best
Just how do you translate art in motion on to canvasIJ Fluid movements into brilliant static splashesIJ Often, it has a lot to do with the mood, the ambience and people participating.
This is precisely how one would describe the special Spanish evening at The Claridges New Delhi on Thursday announcing the start of a special exhibition curated by a Mumbai-based art group, Dolna. It was an evening of fine wines, sangria, tapas, live dancers and splash of colour from the exhibits on display. And a fine collection of cars by Audi Gurgaon at Sevilla.
Called AUDIVAROMA, it was for the first time that Audi had exhibited cars from all its series: the Q series, A series and their latest R8, from Audi Gurgaon.
As Oliver C Martin, Regional General Manager, The Claridges Hotels & Resorts played host to an animated gathering, including the Ambassador of Spain to India, Gustavo de Aristegui (chief guest for the evening), High Commissioner of Canada Stewart Beck and the Irish Ambassador Feilim Mclaughlin, guests witnessed a fascinating jugalbandi between well-known artist Subodh Poddar and live dancers.
Poddar used tubes of bright paint and knife to flesh out the images on his canvas, and they were definitely more than a shadow of what was being enacted live!
Apart from Poddar, works by Devyani Parikh, Dinesh Gain, Pragati Sharma Mohanty, Prerna Kewalramani, Rajat Shubra Bandopadhyay and Vallery Puri from the collection of Dolna made for the other canvasses.
“This is an extension of our art in motion series which we set up for ICCR earlier this month,” said Mithu Basu, curator and founder of Dolna who conceptualised this unique art show.
“For ICCR, the artist captured live jhoomer dancers on to his board. The exhibit will be on display till Sunday.” Other than its thematic presentation, there really was no common thread that bound the exhibits together.
Each artist held their own by proxy of their work. So if it was the brilliance of a calm Buddha against the backdrop of golden leaves by self-taught artist Devyani that smiled down at the patrons, Rajat’s watercolours on canvas (abstract and figurative) worked to calm overactive vision.
If art made for the food for soul, keeping the stomach’s happy was lavish tapas doing the rounds, with a lot of recipes coming out of the hotel’s grand Josper oven. What made it interesting was the live charcoal flavour that the oven recreated.
“I’d refer to the evening as coming together of cultural synergies, in this case Spain and India. We hope to create more platforms along the line in the near future,” said Martin, Regional General Manager, The Claridges Hotels & Resorts.