One of the most ancient, longest and grandest epic of India, Mahabharata chronicles stories of eternal social life, the battle between gods and demons that is at once fabulist and mystical, yet modern and real. For aeons numerous creative minds, researchers and scholars have kept themselves busy in the study of the mystique of this epic. Though originally written by Vyasa Deva, from Kalidasa to Goethe, Rabindranath Tagore to Peter Brook, many creative geniuses got influenced and presented their interpretations of it. Even Satyajit Ray had contemplated bringing it alive on celluloid. Similarly, it was the allure and mysticism of this epoch-making creation, Mahabharata, that inspired Subhaprasanna—one of the foremost contemporary artists of Bengal—and provided him with the fodder for this series of paintings that constitute the exhibition, Mystique of the Epic.

Subhaprasanna visualizes the abstract forms of all these significant events, the tangible composition of all characters and places, periods and realms as they appear in his mind. A certain timelessness and spatial expansion happen as characters of epic proportions assume centre stage against Subhaprasanna's enigmatic backdrops. Painted in the intersection of timelessness and spatial ambiguity, the characters remain moored to their mythological origins, but also retain a creative potency that allows the spectators to reimagine and reinterpret them against contemporary reality.