Containers of Madness: Mannat Gandotra

Ota Fine Arts is delighted to present a solo exhibition by Mannat Gandotra (b. 2001, New Deli), an emerging painter currently based in the UK. Gandotra completed an MA in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London, in 2024.

Her dynamic compositional structures of line, charged with energy through colours, and forms, stem from an interest in Jazz and the concept of atonality. Atonal music rejects hierarchical tonal structures, allowing chords and harmonies to emerge unexpectedly within a progression. Among the influences on her practice is Ragamala, a genre of Indian miniature painting that visually expresses the melodies and timbres of traditional music. The Ragamala, which visualizes the emotions inherent in sound, has likely nurtured the foundation of Gandotra’s practice, blending music and painting. The structural freedom and emotional expression found in music are indispensable elements in her approach to painting. Gandotra’s lines vary between straight, curved, and fractured; unexpected colour combinations coexist side by side, and the elements clash and bounce off one another, yet sit together in a dissonant atmosphere.

As I paint, colours appear to emit light,
and forms appear to become gliding ships or sinking kites.
In some paintings there are wild gardens where rhythms collide,
where nature is breaking down compositions, reordering and disrupting harmony.
Atonal, syncopated, dissonant -
this is how I see the world.
Jarring languages, senses, sounds all meshed into paint.
A cycle of lost and found.

The artist has titled the exhibition Containers of Madness. The visual elements confined within the frame of the canvas are constantly striving to transcend its boundaries—colliding with and repelling one another—while maintaining a precarious sense of harmony.

Amidst an increasingly complex political, social, and cultural landscape, Gandotra’s practice embodies a new context for abstract painting—one that does not rely on figurative motifs or narratives, but instead transforms emotional sensibility into a spiritual language.

Artwork image: Mannat Gandotra, Dwelling Places for Brazen Fruit, 2025, Acrylic on canvas, 170 x 200cm