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Layered Trajectories

Lemongrasshopper Gallery, Ahmedabad recently presented the Delhi based young artist couple, Tanmoy Samanta and Mahula Ghosh in a two persons show. Sandhya Bordewekar analyses the works and the concerns of these artists.

When one is constantly looking at and interpreting art in Vadodara, one must admit that this suite of water colour paintings by Santiniketan-trained artist Mahula Ghosh surely comes as a breath of cool, fresh air. The subtle delicacy of stroke-play, the gentle layering of translucent images one atop the other, the sharp edge of threatened or actual violence hovering palpably in the environment, the surprising stroke of iridescent gold, re-define the meaning and nature of water colours and lift them to a heightened level of seriousness.

Subtlety is the most significant and interesting element that informs these water-colours. In addition to the paint strokes, Mahula’s use of line is emphatic, the drawing coming out strong and vibrant wherever it is used. The colour shimmers on the paper, allowing for tonal layering to create an extra dimension. The artist’s visual language in the works on display in this exhibition straddles both the abstract and the figurative, and does so with flamboyance that is mature and confident. In works like “Burn” Mahula also uses bits of paper that are glued on the surface of the painting and then ripped off to leave tell- tale marks much in the nature of healed scars.

The titles of the paintings are suggestive (Stain, Burn, Wounds) and offer a clear insight into the artist’s concerns, which are essentially fuelled by the aftermath of terrorist attacks and the horrific nature of terror itself no matter who the perpetrator. While the artworks do not directly portray the actual act of violence, her paintings capture the poignancy, devastation, and futility that every kind and nature of the violent act leaves behind, whether it is wrought by man against man or by man against nature. The physical ‘wounding’ is thus abstracted into a metaphysical reality on paper.

Mahula Ghosh has dedicated this exhibition to the memory of the late Somnath Hore. The artist and his work has had a tremendous influence on Mahula’s artistic development as a student at Santiniketan and in later years as a practicing artist. She exhibits a sensibility to form and colour that is reminiscent of Hore’s work but as a talented artist, she has been able to evolve and work upon her own visual idiom. As a result, Mahula’s work has a power and strength that it has received organically from within, and comes across as deeply meaningful and moving.
 
How can anything that is so apparently simple actually be so inexplicably complex? Tanmoy Samanta’s paintings are like an enlightened philosopher’s simple statements that are loaded with layers of meaning. Naturally, these meanings do not reveal themselves until the viewer lingers over the paintings and actively engages with each work. The artist’s superb control over line drawing helps him to navigate images such that they transmigrate, merge into, or transform each other into complex visual puzzles with multiple interpretations.

For instance, at first viewing “Aquarium” does not have fishes, a tank or even water as its obvious content images. Instead there is a simple transparent bowl with a pair of tailor’s scissors resting inside. A closer look will however reveal that beyond the surrealistic imagery there is the all-pervasive watery turquoise blue against which the bowl is drawn, and it is itself reminiscent of the traditional fish-bowl, while the scissor blades lay flat to look like a fish-head resting on a non-existent stone slab. All of these divergent images bring “Aquarium” together. These images are not the stuff of artistic imagination but are sponged from run-of the-mill visuals of real life and infused with deeper meaning. In “Legacy”, the modest jacket, a little too well-worn and with large stains, is perhaps indicative of the nature of what one receives as inheritance – the warmth and comfort of the family but which comes with its own, not necessarily, positive baggage. But just like one cannot choose the family one is born into, one has little choice about one’s legacy and there is nothing one can do but to accept it with grace.

Tanmoy’s images thus freeze a dramatic moment, and endowed as these images are with the unexpected and bewildering, they significantly raise the level of image-making from the mundane to the extra-ordinary. “Cut Throat” is an interesting and powerful work. There is not a hint of blood-shed but the clean decapitation is indicative of an experienced, cold-blooded operator at work, the hint of limp bones and feathers gesturing towards their fate as slaughter-house waste. One of Tanmoy’s more complex works in this show is “The Master Key”. Is the key just sitting inside the uneven cube or does the box’s transparency allow us to see ‘what lies beyond’, including the key? What doors will this key open? What promises does it hold? Or is it a useless key, its lock lost forever? Each viewer will arrive at their own answers.

Tanmoy Samanta’s paintings speak a language that is deceptively simple at a superficial interpretation, but which becomes increasingly complex, sometimes even profound, as one engages in a deeper conversation with them.