by Mrinal Ghosh

'Yeh Image Mahaan : India Meets Bharat'
CIMA Gallery 29 October to 20 November.

The concept note on the show is as follows: 'In India so much of our life is lived in the past. … The old order dresses itself in new and ornamental clothes. Hybrid becomes chic and kitsch classy. … What the more thoughtful expressions reflect back at us, is that although the gods and the economy are well (in place), what ails the Republic, is the space between the two arbitrarily crystallized images of India and Bharat. The Civil Society is the bridge between these two notions; its absence and the turbulence within the void, is (represented by) the Image Mahan.' The show designed on this concept has two parts: early modern and contemporary. In the first stage it shows through prints of Abanindranath, Jamini Roy, Husain and Bhupen Khakhar how tradition has worked towards the building up of modernity. In the second stage it has traversed through evolution from the 1960s to the present through the works of Jyoti Bhatt, Ganesh Pyne, Jogen Chowdhury, Meera Devidayal, Shreyashi Chatterjee, Sanjeev Sonpimpare, Rashmi Bagchi Sarkar, Shakila, Kingshuk Sarkar, Chintan Upadhyay, Debraj Goswamy, Manas Acharya, Sumitro Basak, Farhad Husain, Ashish Ghosh, Mayank Kumar Shyam and others.
 
 
Calcutta Painters: 46th Annual show.
Gallery Kolkata. 23 October to 4 November.

The artists associated with the group 'Calcutta Painters' have been working together since 1964, when the group was established, and has contributed considerably towards development of our modernity. With the passage of time many of the old members have severed link with the group and new members joined. The 26 artists participating in their 46th annual are Anitia Roychowdhury, Animesh Nandi, Barun Roy, Bijan Chowdhury, Bipin Goswami, Debabrata Chakraborty, Dhiraj Chowdhury, Dwijen Gupta, Gowtam Bhowmik, Isha Mahammad, Jogen Chowdhury, Niren Sengupta, Nikhilesh Das, Pradip Mondal, Prokash Karnmakar, Rabin Mondal, Shyamashree Basu, Sibaprasad Karchowdhury, Subrata Ghosh, Sudip Banerjee, Subhabrata Nandi, Susanta Chakraborty, Surojit Das, Tapan Ghosh, Tapan Mitra and Wasim Kapoor.
 
 
Jogen Chowdhury: Drawings, Doodles and Sketches
Ganges Art Gallery. 1 to 30 November.

This solo exhibition showcased 70 small format drawings and sketches of the artist done within the span from 1975 to 2009. All the works were untitled. There was one coloured sketch, ink on paper, done on 10. 04. 1975, an expressionist face in profile hinting at how the environment of the painting of Rabindranath indirectly casts shadow on his work. The remaining works were done between 1983 and 2009. Almost all of them were linear. One could feel the features of various characteristics of his lines. Mostly his lines are thick and dark. These works sprang out of his tryst with the darkened reality of life and the existential dilemma that the life confronts during its sojourn. Through the unnatural heftiness of his figures and images he expresses the ugly face of decaying reality. This rebelliousness is a major characteristic of his works. But gradually he has transformed this darkness into light, ugliness into beauty. Most of the images of this exhibition, human faces, plants, floral arrangements, landscapes etc. were the expressions of such beauty, transcending darkness in order to reach out to light.
 
 
'Isolation, Black Ship Etc'
Solo exhibition of Kazi Nasir at Mon Art Gallery. 23 to 30 October.

Actually this was a preview show of his paintings that were scheduled to be exhibited later at Delhi. The paintings showed his skill in naturalistic execution in the form of fantasy. Through a kind of magic realism they hinted at the void within the apparently neatly designed reality.
 
 






'Visual Alphabets'
Gandhar Art Gallery. 24 October to 4 November.

The exhibition brought together the drawings of some of the promising artists, who have extended the concept and definition of the linear form from its conventional meaning through their works. Some of the works showed, the drawing is not only 'a structural expression of perception', but something more that adds to the reality a unique fourth dimension through introspection. The participating artists were Chhatrapati Dutta, Chandrima Bhattachaya, Manjari Chakraborty, Debashis Manna, Sunil Padwal, Debnath Basu, Kazi Nasir, Mallesi HV and Nantu Bahari Das.
 
 
Landscape paintings of Dilip Das
Academy of Fine Arts, 2 to 9 November.

Dilip Das is consistently working on landscape painting since the latter half of the 1980s. He has exhibited his works several times in London, Paris and in different parts of France also. Through continuous association with this particular genre he has built up an original style of his own that, apart from internalizing the impressionistic attitude and some of the trends Indian landscape, expanded it towards an expressionistic inwardness concentrating on impersonal sonorous beauty of nature. In the present solo he has showcased mainly landscapes of rivers and sky, sunrise and sunset in cool and warm meditative chromatic exposure.
 
 
27th Annual Exhibition of 'The Group'
Academy of Fine Arts. 10 to 16 November.
'The Group' is the only association of the women artists in Kolkata. It was formed in 1983 with active support and participation of such personalities like Meera Mukherjee, Karuna Saha, Santosh Rohatgi Moitra and Shanu Lahiri. Gradually some of the senior members have severed links with the group due to death or other reasons. New members have joined. In the present show 14 artists have participated. Two of them, Nilima Goel and Banasri Khan, are sculptors. The rest twelve are painters. They are Shyamasree Basu, Dr. Anjali Sengupta, Tapati Mukherjee, Arati Das, Anita Dutta, Sudeshna Das, Minati Nath, Madhusree Mucchal, Rina Mustafi, Santana Dutta, Bharati Chowdhury and Maitreyee Chatterjee. The works of these 14 artists reflect on various aspects of contemporary art practices including social and aesthetic aspects. The works of some of the artists are gender specific and posit the feminine point of view.
 
 
'Projection of Disjointed Times'
Sculptures by Akhil Chandra Das. Aakriti Gallery. 15 November to 11 December.


Akhil Chandra Das, born in 1968, is one of the most important sculptors from Kolkata who came to limelight in the 1990s through his very original and unique forms. He made his graduation from Government College of Art, Kolkata, and his post-graduation from Vadodora. He works in multiple media, mostly bronze and wood, and constructs fantasy-oriented human and animal figures that turn out to be symbols of degenerating human values. In this present solo, all his works titled 'Phantasmagoria' are done in the same medium, that is the combination of bronze and wood, depicting fantasy within the existential dilemma positing his deep commitment towards the contemporary disjointed time.