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Equinox Shift: Ways of Seeing Here and Now
Joydip Sengupta, a young painter from Delhi has his first major solo at the Bose Pacia, Kolkata. He derives his images from mythologies and from the icons of industrial and IT boom. Oindrilla Maity reviews each work in the show and reveals the artistic intentions.
Walking into the huge colonial building with lofty ceiling and vertical iron beams reaching up to meet the horizontal ones itself give the gallery - Bose Pacia – a different mood. Set against such an environ, Joydip Sengupta’s gigantic canvases depicting power stations, transformers, reservoirs, escalators and huge iron structures that dwarf human presence hint at an automaton world, which seem to be just an extension of the gallery itself. Its staticity so well matched with the paintings.
Bizarre, disparate, weird to the point of absurdity – that was my immediate reaction, after taking a primary look at the pictures in water colours and oils. . It gives the feeling that one has traveled into an unknown planet and then gradually discovers the known objects – the handrail of the escalator; the backrest of the seats in a public bus; mythological Hindu gods and icons; images styled after the Egyptian mural paintings; terrorism and violence; the 19th century Calcutta and its baboo culture; acrobatics; the representational juxtaposed with the abstract – a wide range of visual references with marvelously handled textures and colours. There is a labyrinth of a rich visual text, often seemingly confusing, and such confusion emerge more as a result of the solo show featuring works produced at different periods during the past years (often as early as 2002), coupled with the ones produced in recent times. Joydip has concentrated on different images at points of time. Sometimes during the past the shift was on ancient Hindu mythological gods such as the Chhinnamazta engaged in an act of copulation; sometimes on the dwarfed presence of the human being before the omnipotent power generators, which now seem to devour him- a Frankenstein produced by the human invention – a backfire of what we have produced to aid ourselves. Often he has concentrated on borrowed images from the patas produced in the 19th c Calcutta, and so on and so forth.
Power House by Joydip is divided into two picture planes. On the left is a transformer, a vertical iron structure, standing still since times unknown. On the right are several massive and stolid structures, seemingly reservoirs or storehouses of energy, casting a shadow on a tiny human standing after them. On the top right corner, a small square plane comprises of two dhoti-clad wrestlers engaged in a feud between them. Their ancient costumes state that they belong to a time in the past, which is in a complete contrast to the more contemporaneously placed power generators. Pool Splash (2002) renders about five female swimmers, about to take their plunge, all with their backs before us. The space below is filled with dots nearly in a haze. The other half of the picture plane on the right comprises of abstract shapes, which might interestingly be associated with the swimmers splashing into the water, and the movements caused after their disappearance under water. It’s nearly a felt experience and perhaps ideally, abstraction is the solution to catch its essence. This one is also indicative of Joydip’s mood of experimenting with abstraction in the earlier years.
In Talk Show, once again Joydip’s signature style of dividing the pictorial surface, rendering two female acrobats performing what is called as ‘the peacock’ on two equidistant planes at the edges on the extreme right and left , while the center is further divided into two horizontal halves with the upper half bearing a pair of closed lips. The lower half bears two metallic pipes with a metallic steering wheel attached to each, indicating forced control over them. Of the two arrows on each of the pipes, one points to the direction upwards, while the other points downwards.
The Blue Devata is one in which the artist places a grotesque blue god (once again one from the Hindu mythologies) juxtaposed with a row of closed shoe shops and showrooms, one of their sign boards reading ‘Kobbler’. The repetitive use of icons such as armed soldiers, votive figures or copulating couples from the miniatures are spotted almost everywhere. A stunning drama is witnessed in Performers (2004), where Joydip moving away from his usual spatial arrangement goes even more cinematic – more so because of the rendition of one arrested and fleeting moment of violence. A hurrying personnel, of whom only the left waist pocket is visible, with the butt of the pistol jutting out of it covers nearly two-thirds of the foreground. The middle ground bears two freshly wounded bodies, one of which has not yet reached the ground. A fleeing helicopter makes its way above –after a typical Hollywood thriller fashion.
Moving Focus , another painting in an ambitious scale comprises of two picture planes with a cement concrete mixture into which nearly half of the body of its operator has gone (as if devoured by the machine), set against a richly textured background similar to that of a wooden plank, juxtaposes the handrails of an escalator. Gleaming reflected lights heightens the polished blue surfaces, as against the roughness of yellow wood on the other side other side of the pictorial plane. Superimposed on the escalator is a dancing icon on lotus, as though painted from a printed page. Above in a horizontal arrangement are images ranging from a Bhutanese mask to a motor-bike and other things, set against a mesh of unknown patterns.
Joydip’s photo realistic paintings are dexterous renditions of images from contemporary Indian life, and certainly, the end products are ‘complex puzzles that weave together myriad influences and experiences…’ The dynamic shifts in imagery giving rise to a Surrealistic orientation and a moot presence of the objects hinting at certain poignancy at once make Chirico come to mind. On the other hand, his truthfulness to the painstakingly rendered world, his deft handling of colour and textures elevate him to the status of a Classicist.
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