Art Events Kolkata: September-October 2010

'Say Everything'

Experimenter. 18 September 30 October.

The five artists taking part in this exhibition, Bapisto Coelho, Pushkar Thakur, Sajad Malik, Shreyas Karle and Sukanya Ghosh, living and working out of urban India, examine the relevance of privacy in a social, political and personal context. The concept note says, 'Privacy may no longer be part of our individual or collective needs. It is probably one of several moral ideas that have become impossible to sustain owing to the transparent and porous characteristics of our communication technologies. … Now the power of the Internet has reversed the sets of values where intrusiveness is a perfectly acceptable behavior.' Despite this there is pain and agony in conscientious individual sensibility about this losing of privacy. The artists tried to explore that region of the void, with what measure of success the spectator is to judge. Moreover, till now it is an urban problem of the affluent. Does it in any way influence the marginal? Could this point be addressed? The artists could contemplate. However, the show is intriguing.

'Remembering Ramlal'

Gallery K2. 17 30 September.

The concept note of the exhibition says, 'Ramlal Dhar's (1953 2010) last body of work comprises visions which are at once filled to the brim with life and only too conscious with death; the traditional and the contemporary are dovetailed with one another, linking a passing world with an emerging one. … The crucial theme addressed in these works is love love of life itself which is almost ecstatic and transport the viewer to a magical domain.' Ramlal traversed in his imaginative space and created a symbol of transcendental beauty in human form through which he could reach nearer to the unfathomable divine.

'Integrated Nature'

Paintings by Debamitra Chowdhury. Academy of Fine Arts. 16 22 September.

Debamitra Chowdhury, through his paintings, seeks a union between life and nature. He has endeavored to explore tradition. In his modernistic structure he has subtly infused the forms and philosophy of neo-Indian school.

'20 Colourful Years of Art'

Gallery Sanskriti. 24 September 30 October.

Gallery Sanskriti celebrates 20 years of existence with the exhibition comprising of artists Sakti Burman, Ramananda Bandyopadhyay, Amitabha Banerjee, Lalu Prasad Shaw, Ganesh Haloi, shubhaprasanna, Shipra Bhattacharya, Alok Bal, Debabrata Dey, Bimal Kindu, Sunil Kumar Das, Niranjan Pradhan, Prabhakar Kolte, Paresh Maity and many others. The exhibition highlights on several important formal structures evolved in our modernistic sojourn since 1960-s till the first decade of twenty-first century,

GenNext V : Epitomising New Generation Art

Aakriti Art Gallery. 1– 21 October.

This is the fifth anniversary show of Aakriti. Like the previous Gen Nexts it has also projected the promising young talents below 40 though out the globe. 32 artists were selected out of which seven were from other countries like Pakistan, China, U.K., France, Italy, Craotia and Lithuania. There were 13 women artists. The participating artists were: Annabe Schenk, Arindam Sarkar, Arsalan Naqvi, Buddhadeb Mukherjee, Chandranath Saha, D. Dhasan, Debasree Das, Deepak Kanubhai Khatri, H.G. Ganesh Urala, Kaite Helps, Kasa Vinay Kumar, Krupa S Makhija, Laura Guoke,

Meenakshi Sengupta, Mithun Dasgupta, Mohan Kumar T, Mrinal Dey, Muktinath Mandal, Nabanita Guha, Prabhakar Alok, Franceska Ramello, Ranjan Kuamr Ghosh, Ria Chatterjee, Rupa Rani, Santosh D. Andrade, Sayak Mitra, Shatrughan Thakur, Siraj Saxena, Soghra Khurasani, Tisha Mandal, Vinita Dasgupta and Yu Zhaoyang. Apart from the exhibition as part of the 5th anniversary of the gallery there were seminars and symposiums at Emami Chisel on 2 and 3 October on the topics: (1) Globalisation: Dislocation, Disorder, Dehoming: Is art withering away? (2) Enquiry and Search for a Democratic Art Form. (3) Strech/Expand the limits of art and Public Domain. Eminent scholars took part in the seminar.

Drawings and Sculptures by Sridhar Mahapatra and Radhakahta Bandyopadhyay

At Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture, Gol Park, Kolkata. 28 Sept 9 Oct.

Due to lack of documentation, museum and art collection facility the past of our art even that of early twentieth century is gradually withering away. RKM Institute of Culture's endeavor in this regard is noteworthy. They regularly exhibit artists of the past who are not much remembered to day. The present exhibition was such an endeavor. Both the artists worked with sculpture in classical or traditional style. The exhibition showed, their meticulous perfection of execution was aesthetically of a very high standard. Sridhar Mahapatra born in 1902 came of a traditional craftsman family from Orissa. His father Giridhari Mahapatra was the teacher in sculpture in Indian Society of Oriental Art. Giridhari learnt from his father and gradually evolved as an important sculptor in traditional style. Radhakanta was his disciple. He took to art in 1937. Most of their works were mythical figures depicting images of Hindu Gods and Goddesses.

Solo Exhibition of Paintings by Tarun Ghosh

Academy of Fine Arts. 30 Sept 6 Oct.

Our modernist art movement has been greatly influenced by expressionism. Rabindranath was the first artist, who could enter deeper into the various nuances of this form and used it through transformation in the light of his life long philosophical and visual insight. Inspiration of his expressionist forms became active to the succeeding generation of artists since 1960-s. The inward contemplative orientation of the paintings of Tarun Ghosh, who came to lime light during 1980-s, has some subtle links with the art of expressionism and that of Rabindranath, but he has transformed it to contain the contradictions of contemporary reality.

'Calcutta, Kolkata: It Never Begins, It Never Ends'

Phographs of Raghu Rai at The Harrington Street Art Centre. 9 Oct 13 Nov.

The 52 photographs of Kolkata taken between1989 and 2010 unveil the heart of the city in various aspects. The camera moves through the streets at various hours of the day, focuses on the dynamic life and livelihood of the people specially nearer to the soil, stops at different ghats of the river Hoogly, shows people at their morning rituals and activities, catches different moods of the city during its festivity with special emphasis on Durga Puja and its connected rituals, the sculpting of the image and its immersion in the river is meticulously delineated. Above all the artist bows down to the celebrities of the city, enters their study or studio to hold a glimpse of their enlightened moments. Thus we find Satyajit Roy, Mrinal Sen, Paritosh Sen, Mahashweta Devi, Aparna Sen in various moods in their interior. There are both black and white and colour prints, where naturalness is transcended towards high order of aesthetic celebration.

By Mrinal Ghosh

Tags: art