BIG Cinemas' Bollywood pop art make-over

Evidence that mass culture is taking over Mumbai can be found in the recent commission of Pune-based "pop artist" Jayesh Sachdev's space design for Sangam BIG Cinemas' recent renovation and relaunch in Andheri East.   

BIG Cinemas is India's largest cinema chain with multiplexes in the United States, Malaysia, Nepal and the Netherlands.

Sachdev's subject? The obvious one. Bollywood. Because there is no popular culture more powerful than commercial Hindi cinema in Mumbai, its birthplace, or in India.

For good measure Sachdev took OTT to town on scale, medium and color. Thirty-foot works comprised of layers of watercolor renditions, pen and ink, acrylic, oils, pencil doodles, Bollywood posters, digital art brought together in a neon clash of orange, yellow and pink. Printed and pasted flat onto the cinema's walls, lobbies, elevators, canvases and merchandise in what the PR is attempting to spin off as "India's first Pop Art inspired cinema space."