‘Bengal Trail', a painting exhibition organised by Abhishek and Anais Basu of the Calcutta Arts Club, will showcase works of five West Bengal artists — Partha Sarathi Pan, Madhuchanda Majumder, Pradip Das, Debabrata Hazra and Subir Dey .
A fresh vision
The works have a freshness of vision and creative edge, making them exuberant, versatile and dynamic. The abstract, quasi abstract and figurative works cover mythology, landscapes, flora, fauna and reminiscences of childhood. As varied as the theme and vocabulary is the medium — oil, mixed media, acrylic and watercolour.
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The works of the artists are interesting. Debabrata's paintings have a luminosity, and the flora and fauna portray his interfacing with Nature and voice concerns about the environment. Debabrata effectively conveys his conceptual vision through potent metaphors and symbolic colours.
Madhuchandha's quasi-abstracts bristle with a kaleidoscope of colours, and is a surreal fleeting world celebrating the plenitude of Nature.
She creates titillating tactiles to offer the vision of Nature through trees, a fragmented human form or derelict architecture. She says: “I use many textures, resulting from dissolution — the dissolution that gradually swallows our body, mind and society”.
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The quality of timelessness manifests in Pradip's abstracts that have a poetic and lyrical quality. Not surprising though, as he has rhythm inscribing his concepts, constructing linear architectural forms that essay a drama of shape and movement. His forte is colours — oranges, blues, yellows, blacks and white. There is a strong underpinning of design that conditions his works — translating as metaphor of design that offers many vistas of moods and emotions.
Partha, whose paintings inflect a quality of different spatial dimension, says: “In a timeless space, my work aims at building a background full of texture and consciousness, through a mixture of significant forms.”
The geometric fragmentation of background space offers spatio-temporal reading, in which he foregrounds different forms and objects of independent existence. There is a surreal ambience as the musical instruments morph to posses human qualities, and juxtaposed with floating flowers and tap with running water. A sense of alienation also becomes apparent as his various objects do not connect, and are self-absorbed.
Subir has engaged with mythology and primitive forms in his Pattachitra or Madhubani paintings.
Then and now
The transparent layers in his works offer reading of tradition as memories to reinvent through contemporary sensibilities. His paintings with images of deities and saints as well as decorative motifs display Indian pictorial traditions.
The show will be on at Vinnyasa Premier Art Galery on September 3 and 4.