Sea View is thrilled to announce the opening of its inaugural Hollywood location with Talking to the Moon, a solo exhibition by acclaimed Indian artist Amitesh Shrivastava (b. 1975, Khairagarh, India). The exhibition will run from October 10 to November 15, with a public opening reception on October 10 from 6–8 pm.

Drawing on his childhood immersion in the dense forests of Chhattisgarh, India, Shrivastava’s work is a mediation on the interconnectedness of all things. He has developed a distinctive pointillist style in which forms converge and dissolve, visually embodying the cacophony of the region’s interwoven life force. With densely layered earthy browns, vibrant greens, and coppery oranges, his paintings live between abstraction and figuration, offering fleeting glimpses of weightless bodies and other Animalia that appear and disappear across his canvases. 

This exhibition emerges from Shrivastava’s solitary nocturnal process. He works primarily at night in a secluded Mumbai studio without Wifi or books in what he describes as a cave. Approaching painting as a spiritual and emotional act, akin to prayer, he relinquishes control to access his subconscious. “I don’t want to be a commander in my paintings. I want to lose myself,” Shrivastava explains. Freed from the constraints of daytime logic, this nocturnal ritual of “talking to the moon” – his universally shared companion – gives rise to raw, unfiltered expressions that form the heart of the show.

Central to the exhibition is Shrivastava’s concept of murmurs, pre-linguistic expressions free of judgment, emanating from both living beings and the natural world, much like a baby’s cry, a dog’s howl, or a running creek. His paintings embody these fleeting, instinctive utterances, washing over viewers in waves of pattern and color that resist linear interpretation. A key work, suitably titled Murmur, captures this essence: a girl whispers to a newborn horse, their connection felt rather than explained, conveying the innocent, fluid communication Shrivastava perceives in all things.

In multiple works, pairs of figures are found camouflaged within expansive landscapes. “When you are in nature, you dissolve.” This dissolution conveys a deep sense of humility, emphasizing the vastness of nature and the small, faint presence of the individual within it. Each painting captures a unique and fleeting truth, that “the same landscape appears in a different way depending on who you share it with and who you are that day.” Much like studying tree bark or shifting forest light, Amitesh remarks that in his paintings, “you can’t see the same thing twice.”

Amitesh Shrivastava recieved his MFA at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara and his BFA at Indira Kala Vishwa Vidhyalaya, Khairagarh. Shrivistava has held solo exhibitions at Villa Magdalena, San Sebastian, SP (2024); Gratin, New York, NY (2023); and Project 88, Mumbai, IN (2024, 2022, 2020, 2017) and group exhibitions at Bikaner House, New Delhi, IN; Project 88, Mumbai, IN; Art District XIII, New Delhi, IN; Cona Foundation & Mumbai Art Room, Mumbai, IN; Wechselstrom Gallery, Vienna, AT; Ganges Art Gallery, Kolkata, IN. Shrivastava is in the permanent collection of the Kiran Nadar Museum of Art.