India, Oct. 24 -- A dark, many-armed figure smeared in red faces pink lotus buds and blooms across empty white space

A jasmine garland, the kind left behind once the evening puja is over, lies loose across a large white sheet, red and pink roses knotted along its length and parts of it left as bare pencil outline, as though the flowers were still being strung. V Ramesh painted it after a critic visiting his studio remarked that the place felt spiritual, and he set out to find what makes an ordinary space sacred.

The series gives its name to Sacred Spaces, a survey of four decades of his work curated by Tunty Chauhan of Gallery Threshold, which opened at Bikaner House with dancer Navtej Johar performing to Balachandran Raghavan's singing...