From myth to memory

CHENNAI: Fantastical Follies & Divine Oddities is a group exhibition featuring works by Avinash Sen, Jayesh Sachdev, Mahmud Hussain, P.G. Dinesh, and Pankaj Saroj.

The show brings together a collection of artworks that treat figuration as an open field of experimentation.

Instead of viewing figuration as fixed, the exhibition explores it as a shifting language, absorbing fantasy, strangeness, wit, and allegory.

The forms on display are not literal or stable. They are transformed, stretched, embellished, hybridised, or reimagined in ways that change how we see bodies, creatures, and symbols.

These are theatrical, imaginative, and visually striking interpretations that push figuration into new creative territories.

What stands out in the exhibition is the diversity of approaches. Some works exaggerate scale or anatomy to heighten drama, while others merge human, animal, and mythic elements to create hybrids that challenge conventional categories.

Jayesh Sachdev will be presenting his series titled Menagerie. He explains that Menagerie explores hybridity and myth, with creatures that move between memory and imagination. “It grew almost instinctively, as I layered forms and symbols until they began speaking their own language back to me. The works are born out of a collision of the digital and the handmade. The materials shift and surfaces transform. I prefer not to be defined by medium, but by narrative,” says Jayesh.

PG Dinesh’s imagery includes weapons of mass destruction, mythical characters, political figures, and other varied objects coming together in his works. The exhibition will be on view at Apparao Galleries from October 7 to 27.