The Luminous Twilight: Om Soorya’s Meditative Landscapes at Palette Art Gallery

A Solo Exhibition by Om Soorya

Palette Art Gallery presents The Luminous Twilight: Place No Trace / Trace No Place, a solo exhibition by contemporary artist Om Soorya. Opening on 24 January 2026 at the gallery’s Golf Links space in New Delhi, the exhibition will remain on view until 20 February 2026.

Landscape as a Psychological and Cultural Terrain

The exhibition explores landscape not as a fixed geography, but as a fluid psychological and socio-cultural construct—shaped by memory, erasure, power, and transformation. Soorya’s practice reflects on how places are continuously produced, remembered, and reimagined in response to rapid urbanisation, technological acceleration, and ideological change.

Rooted in History and Meditative Inquiry

Born in Kerala in 1977, Soorya trained in History and Painting at Calicut University, the College of Fine Arts, Thiruvananthapuram, and the University of Hyderabad. This layered academic background informs his painterly investigations, bringing historical depth and psychological nuance to his surreal, meditative landscapes.

Liminal Zones of Contemporary Experience

Soorya’s works unfold within liminal terrains where rural and urban, past and present, permanence and transience intersect. Fragmented horizons, floating architectural forms, and disrupted spatial cues mirror migratory identities and the erosion of fixed belonging, positioning instability as a defining condition of contemporary life.

Motifs of Memory, Loss, and Return

Recurring visual elements—pathways, terraced structures, stupa-like forms, and clusters of light—emerge from interior and archetypal landscapes shaped by memory and imagination. These motifs evoke cycles of loss, transformation, and return, suggesting environments on the brink of disappearance.

Light as Metaphor and Signal

 

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Using fluid pigments, layered tonalities, and corroded textures, Soorya creates surfaces that hold the emotional residue of history rather than its documentation. The absence of figuration heightens isolation, while light plays a central role—functioning both as a spiritual metaphor and a contemporary signal that bridges continuity and decay.

Place No Trace / Trace No Place

The exhibition’s paradoxical subtitle encapsulates its central tension. As landscapes vanish under urban development and ecological collapse, cultural memory too erodes. What remains is a suspended terrain where traces persist without stable anchors, allowing multiple temporalities to coexist and meaning to remain in motion.

Exhibition Details

Takeaway

The Luminous Twilight offers a poetic meditation on contemporary existence, where landscapes dissolve, histories corrode, and identities migrate. Through surreal terrains and luminous pauses, Om Soorya invites viewers to inhabit spaces where memory flickers amid decay—reminding us that while places may vanish, meaning remains perpetually in motion.