10/04/2026
Viraag Desai’s works unfold as a continuous dialogue between the city and the environment—each shaping, resisting, and ultimately transforming the other. In his paintings, urban structures and natural forces seem locked in a cycle of mutual influence, where one element gradually mutates into another, forming a creature-like presence that engulfs the very landscape that produced it. The result is an image of a city in constant flux, where growth, consumption, and transformation are inseparable.
Created in his Mumbai studio, the six small canvases that make up the series Leviathan (I–VI) chart a subtle but unsettling progression. Across the sequence, the gradual disappearance of blue becomes the central visual metaphor. This fading colour evokes the increasing scarcity of one of the most fundamental resources for human survival—clean water.
Through this restrained yet powerful shift, Desai reflects on the fragile balance between urban expansion and ecological sustenance. The works suggest a future where the city, like a leviathan of its own making, risks consuming the very environment that sustains it.
VIRAAG DESAI
Title Leviathan - 1 to V1
Medium Mixed media on canvas
Size 10” X 10” each
Tejas Gallery.
222 A J C Bose Road, Circular Mansions 2nd floor, Kolkata 700019. WhatsApp 9830049825
Website www.tejasgallery.com
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