The Month that was

August – September 2011

by  Mrinal Ghosh

Mélange
The Harrington Street Art Centre
4 August to 24 August, 2011
Mélange means variety. Except variety there was no particular theme in the show. But the paintings of 25 artists from all over India, which were put on display, led us to appreciate the richness of visual expression of contemporary painting of our country. Participating artists are were Achuthan Kudaleer, Akhilesh, Amitabha Das, Anupam Sud, Babu Xavier, Baiju Parthan, Charan Sharma, Dhiraj Chowdhury, Farhad Haussain. Gargi Raina, GR Iranna, Laxman Aelay, Manish Pushkale, Manjunath Kanmath, Mathew Battu, Pradip Rakshit, Pooja Iranna, Rokaya Sultana, RS Sakya, Samir Mandal, Sanjay Kumar, Seema Koheli, Siddhartha, Subhash  Awchat, Veer Munshi.





Paintings of Rabindranath
Academy of Fine Arts
8 August to 10 August, 2011
As a part of the celebration of 150th birth anniversary of Rabindranath and on the occasion of his 70th death anniversary the paintings of Rabindranath held in the permanent collection of Academy of Fine Arts, Kolkata were put on display for general public. It was an important event, since the permanent gallery at the first floor of Academy was closed for a long time and these important paintings of Tagore were out of sight of art loving people. These 37 paintings were presented to Lady Ranu Mukherjee by Rabindranath himself and Lady presented these to Academy during 1960's. There were drawings, portraits, animals, landscapes and other themes of paintings and which were, to some extent, unique even within the entire oeuvre of his paintings.





Roots
Installations by Mrinal Mandal at Ganges Art Gallery
10 August to 31 August, 2011
Mrinal Mandal has been working on landscape painting for more than one decade. He loves nature. So when he sees that the nature is being polluted and destroyed, he feels pain and revolts through his art-expressions. This exhibition was an outcome of such rebellion. Jhargram in West Bengal is his own home land. The pollution and destruction of nature first of all affects the life of the people nearer to the land. This human predicament is the primary theme of the four installations and one video he has created for this exhibition based on the problems that recently vibrated the area. He has shown how exploited people raised their protest, how terrorism and counter terrorism devastated the life and nature of that area and expanded the particular into a general or global issue. It is difficult to transform a contemporary living issue into art. Mrinal's endeavor in this regard is no doubt bold and challenging.





The Frame- Recent Works 2011
Academy of Fine Arts
11 August to 17 August, 2011



'The Frame' is a group of artists formed in 1993. Since then they are working together regularly. In this exhibition six of their members had participated. Within the diversity of expression in their paintings they have one feature common. They search for a regional identity within the eclectic synthesis of various global forms. The participating artists were: Arunangshu Roy, Biswajit Saha, Debasish Samanta, Prangopal Ghosh, Sandhyakar Kayal and Soumitra Kar. 







Kingshuk: Through the World Darkly
First Solo Exhibition of Kingshuk Sarkar at CIMA
12 August to 27 August, 2011
In this first solo the art enthusiasts have been able to appreciate Kingshuk Sarkar's originality and range of his expressions. His art is mainly expressionist and rebellious in nature and grows out of the agony generated out of the predicament of man in the violence-ridden contemporary world. In this exhibition 29 of his works had been shown which included his paintings, both figurative and abstract, soft sculptures and three videos. Kingshuk was born in Assam in 1972. For art education he came to Santiniketan, did his BFA and MFA from Kala-Bhavan in 1997 and 1999 respectively. During 2001 to 2003 he studied as a research scholar in two Japanese Universities. The aesthetics and philosophy of Japanese life and art has inspired him. Apart from these he enthusiastically learnt the Western expressionist modes and American action painting and assimilated these with Japanese mode of creating art with physical involvement. All these aspects have helped him to develop his own form of expressions that has been amply exemplified in this show.





Sanskriti Ceramics: A Journey in Ceramics
Gallery Sanskriti
12 August to 30 September, 2011

The art pieces exhibited here were the products of an annual workshop held at Maihar. All the participating artists worked with clay in the call of 'a journey from the earth to the heart'. Ceramics is often defined as 'objects made of fire clay'. It is made up of all the elements that the universe is made of: earth, fire, water, air and space. Journey with ceramics is therefore a journey through spirituality. In the exhibits, very aesthetically displayed, there was impression of that spirituality. The participating artists were Adip Dutta, Debabrata De, Jagannath Panda, Lalu Prasad Shaw, Manisha Parekh, Mithu Sen, Nantu Bihari, Parash Maity, Prasenjit Sengupta, Ramananda Bandopadhyay, Samit Dey, Tapas Biswas, Tapas Konar, Venjat Bothsa, Satish Chandra, Sovan Kumar among others. 





Visual Ventures
Exhibition of Paintings curated by Dr.Saba Gulraiz at Emami Chisel Arts
23 August to 17 September, 2011
On the surface there is turmoil. In the core there is peace and tranquility. This is true in life and often may be true for art also. The exhibition which showcased paintings of 22 artists from all over India focused on that tranquility both in figurative and abstract trends. It reflected on the variegated hues that contemporary art in India displays. The curatorial note stated: 'This exhibition is an endeavor to present a glimpse of this boundless and myriad world of vision by bringing together a group of artists who have successfully created a strong visual language through which they are venturing forth to communicate their artistic sensibilities.' The participating artists were Akbar Padamsee, Gogi Saroj Pal, RB Bhaskaran, Rini Dhumal, Seema Kohli, Sekhar Roy, Sridhar Iyer and Tapas Konar in figurative works and Achuthan Kudallur, Amitabha Dhar, Faiza Huma, Gopi Gajwani, Harshavardhana Swaminathan, Jinsook Shide, Ram Palanippan, Saba Hasan, Samindranath Majumder, Shobha Broota, Sunil De, Vilas Shinde, Yogesh Rawal and Yusuf in the abstract.





Chittaprosad: A Retrospective
Birla Academy of Art & Culture
30 August to 11 September, 2011
Organised by Delhi Art Gallery this was the first ever retrospective exhibition of the works Chittaprosad Bhattacharya (1915  1978), who was the pioneer of the particular trend of the art of 1940-s that grew out of the rebellion against social decays and political turmoil. A Marxist political activist turned into an art activist, the self taught artist Chittaprosad made great impact in the art field through the artistic documentation of the devastating reality of the famine of 1943. Starting from that point his artistic activities traversed through various directions and created a very important formal structure through assimilation of Indian classical and folk trends to delineate the social reality. The exhibition was designed in a manner that included his drawings, paintings, linocuts and other prints, his writings in original, his letters, posters, puppets and photographs. Five very important books on various phases of his art thoroughly researched by art-historian Dr. Sanjay Kumar Mallik has been published on the occasion of this exhibition.



Creativy III Confluence of Masters Presented by Jagriti Art Initiative
ICCR, Nandalal Bose Art Gallery
2 September to 8 September, 2011

The exhibition showcased wide range of art works, painting and sculpture, by 18 eminent artists from all over India. Within the diversity of form and content of the modernist and contemporary works, there was a common point. That was the concern of the artists about the temporal reality. The participating artists were Bikash Bhattacharya, Rameshwar Broota, Vasundhara Tewari Broota, Jayashree Chakraborty, K. Laxma Gour Shibu Nateshan, Madhabi Parekh, Satish Gujral, Manu Parekh, Niranjan Pradhan, Surya Prakash, Sohan Qadri, Gargi Raina, TV Santosh, Paramjit Singh, KG Subramanyan, T Vaikunthan and Nataraj Sharma.





Social and Political Injustice: Trends in Contemporary Art 2011
Aakriti Art Gallery
7 September to 30 September, 2011
Art is in itself a kind of rebellion. Albert Camus wrote in his famous book The Rebel, “Rebellion, though apparently negative since it creates nothing, is profoundly positive in that it reveals the part of man which must always be defended”. So the artist always protests against all forms of social and political injustice. Van Gogh once said. “The world is a study of God which has turned out badly”. Now in the age of post-colonial globalization social and political injustice has taken a gigantic form. Life has no respite from it. This group show of paintings and sculptures by 14 artists, most of whom are young, revealed the rebellion and discontent in various forms that throws light on the deep rooted malady the world is suffering from. Participating artists were: Akhil Chandra Das, Buddhadeb Mukheriee, Debashish Dutta, Ketan N Amin, Mithun Dasgupta, Nantu Behari Das, Pappu Bardhan, Partha Guin, Prandeep Kalita, Priyanka Lahiri, Sagar Bhowmik, Subrata Biswas, Swapan Kumar Mallick and Tapas Biswas.