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Hot and Trendy but like Cakes
The celebrations for the Independence Day are not over yet when the city wakes up with the horrifying news of the Hyderabad blast. Quite a number of my friends, associated with IT stay there now. Images of the gory and mangled bodies have taken away our peace of mind. Uncertainty looms large over us. I wonder – wheret are we heading towards?
The film lovers, too, have not yet got over the shock of losing two milestones at a time – Bergman and Antonioni are no more. Retrospectives, seminars and talks have flooded the city and it still feels it’s not enough to mourn over such a loss.
Two exhibitions in the city last week have made me go back to what I had been brooding over a month before: stagnation is perhaps getting the better of us and has been playing havoc with the young artists to a greater extent. ‘Ten Steps’, a group show by ten young graduates at the Birla Academy of Art and Culture featuring their recent works said a lot about the present scenario of the upcoming artists – all of whom are schooled in the art institutions in the city and at present operate from Kolkata. In fact, they primarily belong to the Indian College of Art and Draftsmanship. The show features Piyali Ghosh, Arunava Mondal, Korak Bhowmik, Kundan Mondal, Sanjiv Singh, Soumya Kishore Chakraborty, Sourav Bhattacharya, Subhas Karmakar, Sukanta Sarkar, and Tapas Chakraborty.
Although most of them belong to the institutions that belong to the colonial past, a certain bend of mind, to break free from the institutional pedagogy is apparent. True, young minds are prone to revolutions, (is that the reason why most of their canvases have an ambitious scale?) but it is time for us to decide upon the path. The works of Soumya Kishore Chakraborty’s spatial exploration in ‘Landscape’ and Subhas Karmakar’s linear stylization to create a broken, haggered and wrinkled face in the work titled ‘Self’ at once recall Panesarji and Shyamal Dutta Roy respectively.
Arunava Mondal’s shifts in style after he has been to Shantiniketan from the Indian College of Art and Draftsmanship are evidently a result of a broader schooling. He tries to capture the essence of nature. I have been observing this of late – a number of artists in this dingy and chaotic city now have taken a plunge to capture the ‘rhythms’, ‘essence’ or ‘reverberations’ in nature in the most weirdly possible abstract styles. I wonder – where do they get it from? (Do they sell better?) Sourav Bhattacharya – hats off to the electric media – it seems, draws inspirations from Baroda. He uses photographic reproductions and often follows the collage-palimsest mode. Also, exposed to the technical expertise of commercial art (he is the son of one of the best known commercial artists in the city, Amiya Bhattacharya), he puts them to the best of his use. Kundan Mondal’s work , titled ‘Babu-Bibi’ is a painting on Nepalese paper with gouache on which he renders a drooling 19th c baboo (Bengali gentleman) courting his woman – a reproduction from the 19thc Kalighat pata, on which he superimposes a reproduction of the Kolkata metro ticket. Kundan’s work is a reaction that generates out of his experiences in the city, for he is alien to it. He primarily belongs to an agrarian family from one of the rural areas. Tapas Chakraborty and Sukanta Sarkar Sukanta, seem more prone to borrow popular idioms, rather than creating their own.
The other, an annual show of the students pursuing their diploma in art at the Birla Academy, seems to put it plainly – the aftermaths of the fossilized Bengal school and the characteristic Government Art College water colour style still prevails dominantly. The students more practiced in developing what seems ‘ideal’ show a great deal of concern for the market even at such a tender age. Their canvases feature remarkable skills, and facsimiles of work of such as Nandalal Bose, Paresh Maity and Bikash Bhattacharya , rendered painstakingly. “They sold like hot cakes!” An excited coordinator exclaimed. Seeing the possibility, one from the authority suggested to put down the ones already having the red dot, and replace them with newer works, which so far could not be put up for lack of space. No sooner said than done. Framers, volunteers and the teenager artists clubbed up to finish the job.
We have countless trendy artists in Kolkata. We have trendy art works twice the number. All that we need now are trend setters. I don’t mean to say that one should not count on influences of the past or from the preceding genre of artists, but one needs to appropriate such influences. Most young artists are lost due to the simple reason that they cannot produce indigenous works. A vicarious knowledge then becomes the sole cause for hindrance in their stepping forth.
List of recent shows around the city:
CIMA Art Gallery will be featuring artist Jaya Ganguly’s recent works till 15th September. Inaugaration: 28th August
Artist Chhatrapati Dutta is having his solo show at the Gallery Aakar Prakar till the middle of September.
Gallery Kanishka’s at Hindusthan Road is showcasing a group of contemporary artists till 8th September.
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