The Month that was

by Mrinal Ghosh

Looking In by Lalu Prasad Shaw:His Drawings, Paintings, Graphics
Galerie 88                                                
8 December, 2011 to 8 January, 2012

The exhibition was spread over three galleries. The ground floor gallery showed his graphics. The drawings and paintings were displayed separately in the two first floor galleries. Lalu Prasad joined Society of Contemporary Artists in 1967. After that for a few years he devoted himself to graphic prints. These works were mostly abstract and monochromatic..The form was very unique and original in the context of the general trends of our practice of abstraction. In the next phase he shifted to painting in tempera. Here he used simplified popular figurative form and displayed a quiet, soothing, sober and humorous expression. Yet his humour is very pungent with subtle social criticism.

52nd Annual Exhibition of Society of Contemporary Artists
Birla Academy                                            
13 December to 23 December, 2011

'Society of Contemporary Artists' formed in 1960 is a premier artists group of Kolkata, whose activities for the last 52 years have made great impact towards the development of modernity in the art of India. In this annual show displaying drawings, paintings, graphics, sculptures and installation type of works of 22 members of the Society some of the artists have deviated from their known conventional expression and experimented with alternative or cutting edge type of form. The participating artists this year were: Aditya Basak, Amitabha Banerjee, Atanu Bhattacharya, Atin Basak, BR Panesar, Bimal Kundu, Dipak Banerjee, Ganesh Haloi, Kishore Chakraborty, Lalu Prasad Shaw, Manik Talukdar, Manoj Dutta, Manoj Mitra, Manu Parekh, Niranjan Pradhan, Partha Dasgupta, Pradip Moitra, Sadhan Chakraborty, Sanat Kar, Suhas Roy, Sunil Das and Sunil Kumar Das.

25th Solo as Retrospective of Biman Behari Das
Nandalal Bose Gallery of ICCR                    
17 December to 24 December, 2011

Rabinrdanath Tagore Centre of ICCR has sponsored the show of the eminent sculptor and former Principal of Government College of Art & Craft, Calcutta, Biman Behari Das, who has made a great impact in the Indian art scenario since the beginning of 1970-s. Through his journey in sculptural creativity for more than 40 years he has worked in various forms and multiple mediums like bronze, stone, terracotta, wood, fibre glass etc. Very often his subjects are religious and mythical. He has tried meditatively to create an indigenous identity of his works and evolved his forms through synthesis of Indian classical and traditional sculpture with Western modernist forms. This has been his very original contribution in contemporary sculpture.

76th Annual All India Fine Arts Exhibition 2011
Academy of Fine Arts                                
18 December, 2011 to 1 January, 2012

Founded on 15 August 1933 Academy  organized its 76th annual exhibition..On this occasion Academy presented life time achievement award in the memory of Lady Ranu Mukherjee to an eminent veteran artist Rabin Mandal. The exhibition displayed works in three categories; invited artists, senior artists and open category. Artists invited were Rabin Mandal, Bijan Chowdhury, Jogen Chowdhury, Prokash Karmakar, Sunil Das, Bipin Goswami, Sadhan Chakraborty, and Late Samprity Dutta. In senior category there were 17 works and in open category 180 works had been displayed. Six artists received awards in open category and one in senior category. Nine artists received certificate of merit. The exhibition had focused to some extent on the contemporary art scenario of Bengal.

Indian Impressions in Modern & Contemporary Art
Gallery Kolkata                                       
21 December, 2011 to 21 January, 2012

The exhibition, Indian Impressions , had tried to trace the from two aspects, first from the view point of form and then from the aspect of content. The show displayed the works of senior artists like KG Subramanyan, Prokash Karmakar, Jogen Chowdhury, Manu Parekh, Bijan Chowdhury, Suhas Roy and a few others..Therewere also artists like Ramananda Bandyopadhyay, Dipak Banerjee, Rini Dhumal and T. Vaikuntham who develop their form entirely from the traditional root and elevate them towards modernity. From the next generation Atin Basak and Bratin Khan follow the philosophy of exerting tradition. Ashok Mallick, in spite of his proficiency in western idioms very often amalgamates traditional form with it. The young artists Pampa Panwar, and Sanatan Saha through their art education at Kala-Bhawana, Visva-Bharati have deep feeling for proper synthesis of local and global. The other artists participating in the show were: Vivek Sharma and Abhishek Dasgupta. There were three sculptors also: Niranjan Pradhan, KS Radhakrishnan and Debabrata Dey.

Alice in Wonderland: Drawings, Paintings and Sculptures by Mrinal Dey
Ganges Art Gallery                                       
21 December, 2011 to 12 January, 2012

As to Alice, so to the artist of this exhibition the world is a grotesque kind of absurdity. The pull of gravity experienced by human beings is enormous. They tend to get shattered by their own weight. Yet they exist and dream. The civilization is crushing by its own force, own ambition. This is what man has made of man. Mrinal Dey in his drawings, paintings and sculptures puts forward this grim tragedy of contemporary existence. Despite his original concepts and ideas in paintings and sculptures the artist is best in his pencil drawings, not only for the bold skill but for restrained strength.

And My Eyes Fill With Sand: Solo Show of Rathin Barman
Experimenter                                              
21 December, 2011 to 4 February 2012

This is the first solo exhibition of Rathin Barman (b. 1981). His works are less a comment on the contemporary universal social crisis, but more an observation on mankind's insatiable need or internal contradiction that distracts them from human values. The images he presents both two dimensionally and three dimensionally are not unknown, but when he shifts the context they appear as grotesque projecting on the unnaturalness and inner void of the contemporary reality. His fire brick constructions are really unique and when these hang from the branches of a barren dead tree implanted on the floor of the gallery in the form of an installation, it very obliquely projects the inner contradiction of the present circumstances.

Odyssey: A Journey into Time with the Collection
Birla Academy of Art and Culture            
9 January to 12 February, 2012

This year on the occasion of 45th anniversary of the Birla Academy of Art and Culture, in place of their usual all India contemporary annual art exhibition, has housed a unique exhibition with the selected art pieces from its own collection. Spread over five floors it is a curated exhibition showcasing Indian classical and traditional art, modern and contemporary painting and sculpture and also international art. 

A Dense Web of Balances
Sculpture Show at Aakriti Art Gallery
12 January to 31 January, 2012

The exhibition showcases the works of contemporary sculptors mostly from Bengal. The sculpture of the veteran Delhi based artist Satish Gujral is one of the prime attractions of the show. The works of the artists of the 1960-s Uma Siddhanta, Shankar Ghosh, Niranjan Pradhan and the artists of seventies like Manik Talukdar, Asim Basu show how tradition and modernity is assimilated. In the next phase the works of Bimal Kundu, Shyamal Roy, Sunanda Das and Tapan Kumar Das delineate separate trend through extension on the formal attributes of the previous generation. The next generation of sculptors who started during 1990-s and thereafter includes Akhil Chandra Das, Chandan Bhandari, Jayanta Paul and others.