Invoking narratives

Niranjan Pradhan and Shekhar Roy, two Kolkata based artists explore the mysteries of life through sculptures and paintings respectively. Sarmistha Maiti visits this double solo held at the Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata and explains how these artists deal with the mysteries of life in their art.

Holding a strong narrative in the fine strokes of brush or through the sharp curving cut in metal or stone in fact allows the artist to go beyond the realm of images and give birth to interesting tales and thereby making the artist a great storyteller. Shekhar Roy, the painter and Niranjan Pradhan, the sculptor, can be so regarded, as their works don’t simply convey imageries of certain forms but are conceived and conceptualized to form a broader base of communication and every time a delicate storyline is found to be submerged in the core. Pradhan’s artistic career initiated from the 60s and Shekhar Roy started sailing on the same boat from late 70s and thus both of them have experimented with their specific medium over the years to leave their own mark in every piece of art they execute. Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata took the opportunity to bring them together though in two separate shows but at the same time in November from 3rd to 18th and hence the art lovers of the city came across two brilliant narrators through their paintings and sculptures.

Shekhar Roy shares an intimate space with his canvas and is driven by a melancholic nostalgic force. But his process of interaction in no way remains restricted simply to a personal level because the narrative he tries to sew reflects the changing times and his protagonists are somehow entrapped in this passage of time. Hence a sense of time coming to standstill or freeze takes a wider dimension that adds a dream quality to the narrative he gradually develops. A sublime monochromatic tempo mostly in variable grey shades plays dominance on the canvas yet the use of yellow ochre, chrome yellow and Prussian blue in certain areas tunes in with the rhythm that holds together all his works in a single flow.

There are some common motifs Roy has repeatedly used in his paintings. The bicycle, the parachute, the balloon, the staircase, the entrance door, the strings of musical instruments and the lonely faces – all of them appear to be in desolation but they have a well-knitted association among themselves. Roy’s treatment in acrylic on canvas recurrently pricks on the subject of isolation and anguish that apparently looks concentrated on the protagonist who suffers but that’s not the end of the story. The undercurrent of the tonal layers induces a wider connotation where the boy or the girl or the young man undergoing an afternoon nap no longer holds the central position, rather becomes signifier of the socio-political reality of our existence. Individual element that floats on the picture plane might not carry any meaning in itself but when it stands in connection with the other visual elements, automatically they are blended in a well-framed anecdote and on a whole share an intellectual implication. Roy has treated the various states of the subconscious mind in counter with the social challenges and has left a deeper imprint of the entire process of urbanization that has gradually reduced human souls to insignificant beings. The pangs of existence have been drawn through the broken lines between the real space and the nostalgic dreams in most of his works.

In contrast, the sculptures by Niranjan Pradhan carried a serene message that life is still beautiful and full of oomph. There were no direct depiction of agonies and anguishes as such but the struggle and the adversities faced for mere survival were suitably blended with the rhythmic harmony of life. Thus the spirit of living could not get swayed away in any form in each of his works.

Well, that’s the philosophical aspect of his narrative that he has rehearsed over the years to give birth to works like Creation, Beauty and Beast, Delighted, and Expression – all in bronze. In these four sculptures, the voluminous cubist structure helps to develop a contrast of inner emotions where the beautiful and the beastly, the good and the evil, the pious and the sinful have been evoked side by side. On the other hand, Mother playing with her child, World Cup – 2010, Eternal Bond, and Motherhood again in bronze, carries a positive force with a universal appeal.

Pradhan’s specialty lies in his simplicity of communication and he very well knows how to mould the structure so that it can carry a relevant message to the viewer. The conjugation between the figurative and the abstract forms holds the most significant area in Pradhan’s works. He plays with ease to shape both and none of them defy the unique mood of the real objects. Pradhan is a master in developing a subjective position with his creations and at the same time he can chop a log of wood, pierce into a piece of stone, mould a metal block or shape a fibre-cast. Aakriti Art Gallery had taken full initiative to bring forward the various mediums Pradhan has handled in his long career of forty years and given birth to some of the best works in sculpture of our times. 
 
There is a strong element of mystery in both Shekhar Roy’s paintings and Niranjan Pradhan’s sculptures and probably Aakriti Art Gallery found it to be the most perfect combination to curate the double shows by bringing them together at the same time of the year, yet contouring the specific borders.