Art Events Kolkata: April – May 2011

The Month that was

by Mrinal Ghosh

'Sublime Contours'
Mon Art Gallery.
2 April to 7 May, 2011.
The exhibition showcases the paintings of nine artists from Andhra Pradesh. The common feature of the paintings of most of the artists is that they evolved their forms from the regional traditional root. Decorativeness is the salient feature of most of the works from which one feel the pulse of the nation. Participating artists are: Thota Vaikuntham, Ramesh Gorjala, Saraswathi L, G. Anjaneyulu, Pandu Masanam, Sreekanth Kurva, Chippa Sudhakar, DVS Krishna and Sachin Jaltare. The exhibition shows how local idioms are absorbed within global modernistic project.



Somnath Hore: Prints, Drawings, Posters
Seagull Arts & Media Resource Centre.
7 April to 6 May, 2011.
KG Subramanyan wrote in his catalogue introduction in an exhibition of Somnath Hore held in 1986, which has been reproduced in the catalogue of this exhibition also: 'On a summer morning the world glows with sunlight, the flowers load the trees, the breeze wafts around a heady kind of perfume  but in Somnath's vision it is the spectacle of man's suffering that steals the show'. It is true, wounds of humanity is the dominant theme of Somnath Hore's works. He wanted that the life should be free of manmade tragic suffering of humanity. In this retrospective show of his drawings and prints also such a commitment is the central theme of most of the works. Yet there are works, which are filled with sublime beauty and enlightened human passion. There are enchanting lines that create sonorous rhythm out of the fragmented forms of human or natural elements transpiring a kind of jubilation out of the remorseful reality. Most engaging are his posters designed on various occasions. These were rarely seen in any show held in recent past. The erotic graphics also reveal his engagement with passions of life.



'The Young Man Was…'
Works of Naeem Mohaiemen
Experimenter.
8 April to 9 June, 2011.
Naeem Mohaiemen is a writer and artist working in Dacca and New York. He also works on activist projects dealing with interpretations of nationalism in Bangladesh, and resulting questions on religion, ethnicity and language. In this show, which is his first solo in India, he is mainly concerned with violence and terrorism of various forms. The exhibition showcases a few videos and visuals consisting of photographic and digital images along with poetical texts. According to the concept note, “in the current project, begun in 2006, he has been researching the 1970s revolutionary left and how it functioned as an accidental 'Trojan horse' for the rise of  rightist political forces  with convergence and bifurcation in Asian, African and European narratives”.



50 years of Drawings & Paintings by Dr. Debasis Bhattacharya.
Birla Academy.
12 to 24 April, 2011.
By profession a psychiatrist Dr. Debasis Bhattacharya is a well known painter. He had close contact with Binod Behari since his childhood. Though he has no institutional training in art, he has been meditatively engaged in art practice since his childhood and thus developed a very unique and original personal style. His forms have developed through assimilation of various trends from naturalism to abstraction within which expressionist inwardness has been a dominant feature, where inner psychology of human being has played important role. In this retrospective show works from different phases of his artistic career have been displayed. As an artist coming to limelight during the decade of 1970-s his works shows commitment and rebellious attitude towards the life and reality.



'Some Brilliant Water Colours'
Gallery K2.
20 April to 4 May, 2011.
Water colour is one of the most difficult mediums. The medium conveys the confidence and insight of the artist, his/her inner sensibility through mystic display of coloured space and void. The white of the paper acts as void, which at the same time turns to be a source of jubilant light. Gallery K2 hosted an exhibition of water colour paintings by six eminent and upcoming artists of Bengal that conveyed all these characteristics. The works ranged from minute naturalistic delineation to mystic expressionist inwardness. The artists were Katayun Saklat, Paresh Maity, Aparup Mukherjee, Nabendu Roy, Tapas Kanti MItra and Sudipto Karmakar.



'Uttar Purab'.
Emami Chisel Arts.
20 April to 20 May, 2011.
Curated by Dr. Archana Roy the exhibition showcased paintings and sculptures of about 90 artists from northern and eastern region of India.  This show is a continuation of 'Dakshin-Paschim', a major exhibition held during the last spring in the same gallery and curated by the same curator, Dr. Archana Roy. Last year the focus was on the artists belonging to southern and western region. This year the focus has been shifted to the northern and eastern zone. There are few artists who have worked directly propagating the neo-Indian tradition. Among the artists of 1990-s there is a tendency to work with unconventional form. Some of the artists whose works have been displayed are Gopal Prasad Mondal, Debabrata De, Purnendu Dey, Jyotirmoy Roy Chowdhury, Partha Pratim Das, Tapan Kumar Das, Sunanda Das, Koushik Biswas and some others in sculpture and Tarun Ghosh, Alok Sardar, Arun Bain, Anupam Chakraborty, Amrita Sen, Santanu Maiti, Jai Jharotia, Paresh Maity, Shubhabrata Nandi, Tapan Bhattacharya, Subir Hati, Arunima Chowdhury, Arpita Basu, Ashoke Mullick and others in painting.



Tales from Tagore
Aakriti Art Gallery
10 May to 31May, 2011
This exhibition dwells on the characters, messages, and vicissitudes of physical and emotional reality inherent in the short stories of Rabindranath, a part of his vast body of literature that has cherished and nourished mankind for the last one century. It is not surprising that Gurudev's profound eclectics have proved so fascinating to creative artists.

The attempts/practices by nine artists namely Abhijit Gupta, Aditya Basak, Chandra Bhattacharjee, Chhatrapati Dutta, Prabhat Basu, Probir Gupta, Rajesh Deb, Sekhart Roy and Sourav Jana in this space has defined the poet's rich oeuvre in purely temporal terms, rather by reference to any particular cultural style, an intellectual climate, a reversion to the past or the sway of his brilliant legacy through a visual text that would include their own interpretation of his short stories and their experience of reading Rabindranath, the bond they share with his characters- sometimes volatile, sometimes desperate and sometimes inseparable.