Untitled 2 by Bhushan Dilip Bhombale

Bhushan Bhombale (b. 1991, Bhusawal, Maharashtra, India) is a Mumbai-based artist whose practice blends painting and sculpture, exploring themes of materiality, memory, and landscape. Rooted in collage and decoupage traditions, his work extends into papier-mâché, repurposed materials, and experimental surfaces that evoke the interplay of nature and urban decay.

Bhombale’s journey into art began in his childhood, experimenting with rice glue and discarded materials to create posters of superheroes and religious icons. His early exposure to board painting in Mumbai and working in his father’s tyre repair shop shaped his tactile engagement with materials. These formative experiences influence his aesthetic sensibility—one that is deeply tied to the textures, transformations, and resilience found in everyday objects.

A graduate of L.S. Raheja School of Art, Mumbai (2013) and Sir J.J. School of Art, Mumbai (2014), Bhombale has exhibited widely, including solo shows at Stranger’s House Gallery (2024) and Gallery Art & Soul (2022), and group exhibitions at the Cairo Biennale (2023), Indian Art Fair (2022), and Jehangir Art Gallery (2019). He has received several awards, including the State Art Award, Mumbai (2017) and the N.S. Bendre Foundation Award (2013).

His work is influenced by the tropical environment and the transformative effects of heat, time, and weather on materials. He draws inspiration from the Mexican artist Gabriel Orozco, questioning colonial aesthetics and exploring how visual languages are inherited, appropriated, and reclaimed. His paintings, often featuring vibrant plant forms set against muted, weathered backgrounds, reference the way nature reclaims space in the cracks of urban infrastructure. By juxtaposing sculpture and painting, he evokes the layered visual languages found in Indian shrine-making, where disparate objects and symbols converge to create meaning.

Bhombale’s practice remains in constant flux, shaped by experimentation and accident—what Indian aesthetics describe as Apbhramsh (the accidental) and Shailikar (the authoring of style). Through his innovative use of papier-mâché and found materials, he creates artworks that embody both a deep connection to his personal history and a broader commentary on cultural memory, resilience, and transformation.