Cirque Du Art

Cirque Du Art is a solo exhibition that presents the multifaceted and emotionally resonant works of Viren Tanwar, an artist whose creative journey has been shaped by his rural roots, academic excellence, and an enduring engagement with the human condition. Born in Hissar in 1952, Tanwar’s evolution from a small-town fabric-dyeing tradition to international art education at the Slade School of Art, London, funded by the British Council, is reflected in his richly layered and stylistically diverse oeuvre.

The title Cirque Du Art invokes the motif of the circus — a site of spectacle, illusion, vulnerability, and performance. In Tanwar’s world, the canvas becomes a stage where the acrobatics of modern life play out: the ecstatic and the painful, the sacred and the profane, the ornate and the stark. Through his signature play of form, light, and shadow, and vivid color, Tanwar invites the viewer into a carnival of visual experience where complexity meets naiveté, and joy is inseparable from hardship.

The works on display move between thematic polarities — spirituality and sexuality, religious iconography and corporeal presence, ritual, and rebellion. Much like a ringmaster in a symbolic circus, Tanwar orchestrates figures and forms that echo ancient traditions and contemporary realities.

Viren Tanwar’s canvases carry a deep textural memory: from the Ajanta murals and Pahari miniatures to the Bandhej and Lahariyas of his Haryanavi childhood. The hashiyas (borders) of his paintings are not decorative margins but sites of inherited memory and craft, anchoring modern narratives in the enduring visual cultures of India. They gesture to a personal and collective past while contrasting with the often flamboyant, theatrical central images — jugglers, sadhus, sensual bodies, sacred motifs, and everyday people caught in moments of transformation.

Tanwar’s work stands apart for its commitment — not only to form but to meaning, to the experience of living fully in a chaotic world. His academic foundation in Chandigarh, his years teaching art in fashion design, and his painterly practice demonstrate an artist who understands both the materiality of the surface and the gravity of the content.

Cirque Du Art seeks to immerse audiences in the spectacle of living — to highlight how performative our social roles have become, how ritual and entertainment have blurred, and how memory continues to seep through even the most modern of expressions. Visitors will encounter a visual narrative of India in flux, seen through a painter’s eye who bridges village and metropolis, tradition and experiment, serenity and drama.

Viren Tanwar’s Cirque Du Art is not just an exhibition — it is an invitation to witness the poetic absurdity of life through a lens both intimate and expansive. It speaks to the timeless dance of image and meaning, where the painter becomes a conjurer and every canvas, a spectacle of color, feeling, and cultural synthesis.