Melting candy, unbalanced hearts, yards and yards and yards of discarded gift paper: maybe we have the holidays on our brain, but Indian Mylar Vision, a yet-to-open exhibit by German artist Anselm Reyle, reminds us of the end of Christmas.

A Brush with Berlin

Showing in India for the first time, Reyle’s art is housed at Galerie Isa, a 2,000 square-feet, split level gallery at the Great Western Building that launches this weekend. According to gallery director and art collector Ashwin Thadani, Galerie Isa will focus exclusively on contemporary art by established international artists - after Reyle, the he plans to showcase works of Puerto Rican visual artist Angel Otero.

Wrap Your Head Around This

The gallery’s wide, whitewashed walls and soaring ceilings are a perfect backdrop for Reyle’s huge works, the bulk of which are crafted out of shimmering sheets of artfully crumpled foil, which seem to have been rescued from under a gift-laden tree and pinned against purple and blue backgrounds, juxtaposed with neon lights, preserved behind thick panes of glass.

The melancholia of a party's end is also echoed in a porcelain sculpture made entirely from Messien cups, white, gold and melting into each other, and huge canvasses streaked with sugar-sweet shades of blue, pink and yellow, reminiscent of disintegrating candy canes. These colours appear again in the Drawing By Number series, dripping over dolphins and horses and pandas but refusing to stay within their boundaries.

Novel Ideas

“I want to live inside that,” one of us Scouters thought when we saw a large frame of undulating foil, as shiny and blue and absorbing as the long twilights of the summer solstice that Joan Didion describes in her new memoir Blue Nights. But on our way out, we were offered another perspective of the same universe, a translucent, turquoise block that a pair of hands was desperately trying to break open from the inside. It made us glad for the strong afternoon sunshine. 

Getting there: Galerie Isa, 132, Great Western Building, first floor, opposite Lion Gate Clock Tower, Fort, call 66373432 or visit www.galerieisa.com, opens Saturday, December 17.