In a dusty industrial pocket of Kishangarh — known more for quarries and cranes than collectors and curators — something unexpected unfolded. Marble slabs, usually associated with kitchen counters, palatial staircases, became vessels for intimacy, fragility, and identity.
Welcome to StoneX Art Soirée 2025 — a sculpture-led experience that asked a simple yet radical question: What happens when you discover the soul of stone? Held inside the StoneX Experience Centre — part monolithic warehouse, part modern-day temple to material obsession — the event brought together ten contemporary artists from across India and beyond our borders to rethink marble’s place in the canon of fine art.
Captured in time — at the StoneX Art Soirée 2025
A precise, cerebral, and surprisingly emotional evening brought together several aspects of what one might consider intellectual art. But what it exuded, most strikingly, was honesty.
Stone occupies a complex position in contemporary art discourse. Neither fashionable in today’s ephemeral digital landscape nor easily manipulated by artistic whim, it resists the quick consumption that dominates our visual culture.
Shanthamani Muddaiah’s Bloom turned Macedonian marble into a skeletal silk form — part tree, part shroud, part relic. There’s a wistful grace to it: a nod to tradition without falling into cliché. Elsewhere, Gigi Scaria’s Impossible Stairway was exactly that — an architectural illusion where upward ambition folds in on itself. The kind of piece you don’t ‘like’ — you stand in front of it, quietly uneasy. Harsha Durugadda’s The Way of the Wind took a more poetic route — marble rendered as if caught mid-breeze, defying both gravity and expectation. And Shaik Azgharali, who usually works in mild steel, made a surprising pivot with Cotton Bolls, capturing softness in the most unyielding of mediums. Carrara marble has never looked so tender. There was power too.
(L-R) Shanthamani Muddaiah’s Bloom’s silky form; Gigi Scaria’s Impossible Stairway stands tall
Magesh R’s The Monarch — a tribute to the discipline and poise of Lipizzaner horses — wore its restraint like armour. Yogesh Ramkrishna merged a temple shikhara and mosque dome into a single marble hammer — subtle in form, seismic in implication.
These weren’t sculptures — they were declarations.
The juxtaposition of contemporary art against StoneX’s industrial backdrop invited visitors to consider the remarkable transformation from quarried stone to refined artistic statement. The curatorial decision revealed the complete narrative of stone: visitors could follow its transformation from mammoth to meticulously crafted vessels of artistic intent. This visual journey from potential to realisation unfolded not across museums or time, but within the scope of a single gaze.
Take Teja Mahendra Gavankar’s Khora — a near-spherical sculpture, sliced open to reveal handmade brick-like elements inside. A quiet meditation on balance, ritual, and incompleteness. It’s easy to miss — which is precisely the point. Or Sudarshan Shetty’s signature intervention — layered, restrained, and deeply coded — folding architecture into philosophical tension. You walk past it and wonder if it’s collapsing or being built.
What separates this from the art-as-accessory crowd is that StoneX wasn’t selling marble. They were selling meaning. The sculptures? Yes, a few found buyers — discreetly. But the larger idea was clear: this was about repositioning stone — not just as a building material, but as a cultural medium.
Teja Mahendra Gavankar’s Khora — a play of balance and incompleteness
As Sushant Pathak, Chief Marketing Officer, StoneX Group, puts it: “This is a passion-driven initiative, not a transactional one. We spent years in conversation with these artists. We didn’t want decoration — we wanted depth.” This is reflected in what’s next: a permanent museum and artist residency, set to open in 2026. A bold, and frankly, refreshing move. While many brands flirt with art to pad their cultural capital, few commit to nurturing it. Here, the commitment feels serious.
Perhaps what elevated this exhibition beyond typical luxury showcases was its rejection of immediate gratification — a counterintuitive proposition in today’s consumption landscape.
At the StoneX Art Soirée, attention to art, artist, and detail took precedence
The Soirée’s most sophisticated offering wasn’t tangible but experiential: the increasingly rare luxury of sustained attention. Where contemporary art often courts accessibility through spectacle, these works demanded intellectual engagement, refusing easy interpretation. In Kishangarh, the stone will stay. Some sculpted, some raw, some in quiet dialogue with the dust around them. But for those who walked through that space, one thing was clear: in the right hands, even the heaviest material can feel weightless, and in the right context, even marble can speak.
Feature image courtesy StoneX.
