Natvar Bhavsar: Free Yourself – Art Exhibit

Bhavsar: Free Yourself is a two-part exhibition surveying fifty years of the artist’s expressive abstractions and inviting viewers to meditate on the power of pure color. Simultaneously presented at UB Anderson Gallery and in the Buffalo AKG Art Museum’s M&T Bank Gallery (August 21, 2026&April 4, 2027), the exhibition features monumental paintings spanning each decade of the artist’s career.

Bhavsar’s unique physical process centers on tiny particles of pure, dry pigment. He begins by soaking the entire canvas in a clear acrylic binder, then sifts or brushes pigment through handmade tools and fine mesh screens, building up to eighty sealed layers. Air currents, breath, and the rhythm of his body as he maneuvers around the surface help shape the final image a carefully controlled dance that produces textured, smoky surfaces with subtle shifts in color and tone. As Bhavsar describes: “When I enter my studio, everything disappears. It’s like I’ve entered another world. I experience Nirvana. It’s an incredible gift in which I disappear, the studio itself disappears, New York disappears.”

Examined up close, his dappled surfaces are palpable; from a distance, the color fields float and become atmospheric. Some paintings burst with energy, while others suggest a boundless continuum of color. Unlike other Abstract Expressionists, who approached the sublime through solemnity, Bhavsar’s path is ecstatic and celebratory and rooted in his Indian heritage. His work invokes Holi, the Hindu Spring festival in which revelers douse one another in powdered colors to celebrate the divine love of Radha and Krishna. Later works introducing curlicues draw on rangoli decorative floor patterns of colored powder made during Diwali, the festival of light. Bhavsar’s meditative practice results in an intensely personal experience that invites endless free association whether you find yourself peering through a microscope, wandering a Holi celebration, or gazing from the Hubble telescope is left entirely to you.