Girish Shahane steps into Abir Karmakar's house of illusions. 

Abir Karmakar's contribution to the Kochi-Muziris Biennale in 2016 spread across the Kashi Art Gallery, a repurposed old Portuguese house not interesting enough architecturally to quality for the 'heritage' label.  

Languid portriats of friends, set within the living room and the bedroom, populated Abir Karmakar's 2005 show from my photo ablum. Seven years later, Kamakar's paintings have returned to Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke, but the people inside them have avnished. In this suite of 30 paintings and two vidoes, Karmakar has traded precise, photo-realism for a softer, feathery style and fleecy brushstrokes. 

In "Room, Interrupted in Passage", an exhibiton that opned on Wednesday at Galerie Mirchandani + Steinruecke in Colaba, a suitre of 30 paintings that bear remarkable resemblance to photographs, capture the interiors of hotel rooms and their bathrooms in various angles. The common thread that runs through them is the absence of any human character. But there are his impreints—the curtains rolled up at the windows till, scrambled bed sheets and glasses full. 

Ranjana Steinruecke could have sold the exhibition by Abir Karmakar twice over in her gallery in Mumbai. However she resisted the demand at home for her young star, and brought the large format paintings to the Berlin guest show at Galerie Heike Curtze. ‘Interiors’ is the modest title for a spectacular debut, of this young Indian abroad.