brittle, durable. Strong, sturdy We accept these contradictory properties of paper, but since its invention in China in 105 AD by Tsai Lun, an official of the imperial court, paper has been used by artists, thinkers, writers, scientists and craftsmen as a medium for them. has been done. The creations, which are thus implied, have survived centuries of wear and tear, largely unfinished. paper politicsThe recently concluded exhibition at Emami Art, Kolkata, was a celebration of these apparently irreplaceable qualities of paper. At a time when virtual reality has almost taken physical reality out of our calculations, this exhibition curated by Usmita Sahu reminds us that art is a tactile experience and that our eyes respond to different textures like our epidermis. are sensitive.
All the participants – Adip Dutta, Anju Dodiya, Atul Dodiya, Chandra Bhattacharjee, Jagannath Panda, Jayshree Chakraborty, Mithu Sen, NS Harsha, Prashant Sahu and TV Santosh – used paper as the main medium of their work, but among them Four – Anju Dodiya, Chakraborty, Sen and Sahu – are more physically engaged with it than the others, gouging, lacerating and even mashing it with other media to create imagined textures or shapes. .
Poetry and Personality
Sen exposed the eerie beauty of death in his small, spare, delicately painted watercolors, conjoined twins And unwing, Creativity and the anticipation of her death was also the theme of Anju Dodiya’s three major works of watercolor and charcoal in vivid shades of carmine and black. Sylvia Plath’s hints of poetry and the use of screen prints and lithographs as well as looking glass fragments point to introspection and fragmentation of personality.
Chandra Bhattacharjee untitled – Charcoal and dry pastels on paper | photo credit: Emami Art
Dried vines, roots, leaves and flowers shine in Chakraborty’s work, inside a giant backlit palimpsest made with an overlay of rice paper, cotton cloth, tissue and cellophane. He created an intricate web, a living entity that represents nature untouched by human agency.
Mithu Sen unwing – Mixed Media on Kozo Paper and Light Box | photo credit: Emami Art
Sahu worked with both politics – his engagement with Birbhum’s farming – and his paper in Harvesting: The Untold Story,interacting with the land, White paper reproductions of the produce of the land were affixed with texts telling the stories of the farmers. It made a strong statement on our disregard for the hands that feed us.
It was impossible to miss Harsh reclaiming internal spaceThe 12 ft by 39 ft panel is made of aluminum and aluminum composite panel mirrors – common building materials – along with cartons, acrylic and a ‘herd’ of 1,400 wooden elephants. His other two works, a carton painted with innumerable small faces and a sculpture of replica packaging in stainless steel, were a scathing commentary on consumerism and the nature of ‘mall culture’.
In Datta’s work, the thrown and unknown objects found in street corners and sidewalks were endowed with a distinct identity of their own, as the fascinating life of creatures revealed under the microscope. Dutta reveals the hidden form in the chaos.
Atul Dodiya bon appetit 1 – Watercolor and Charcoal on Paper | photo credit: Emami Art
Three of Atul Dodiya’s works contained the recitation of Arun Kolatkar’s poem on paper, stained with crushed charcoal and sprinkled water, which added a visual dimension to the shock value of Kolatkar’s scathing remarks on Bombay.
Bhattacharjee applied liquid charcoal to paper with a brush to create a series of images where nocturnal plants, humans and mysterious extra-terrestrial objects appear to be combusted against the darkness of the night, the destruction of nature by predatory humans. suggests the artist’s concern about.
collision course
Globalization. consumption. Capitalism. Climate. These semantics express the concerns of Panda, which he shares with Harsh, although their ways of expressing themselves are fundamentally different. Panda used wooden paper, newspapers, flimsy wrapping paper and imagery from a variety of sources – classical, contemporary and mythological – for his suite of works, where these elements were on a collision course, although they were in the form of geometric drawings. were harmonious and elegant. ,
Adip Dutta an unknown sight Ink and brush drawing on paper | photo credit: Emami Art
Santosh equates paper with worry: One can never be sure of the result when applying paint to a damp sheet of paper. Unlike oil painting, watercolor is irreversible. The art of contentment is a protest against injustice, terror and violence. In one photograph, a man wearing a gas mask is lying on a bed, with a rat trap balanced on his stomach; In another image, a man with a mic was sitting at a table with a bundle and a crutch next to him; In another, a man with a limp back faced the audience.
Nature rioted in all three pictures. There was no obvious sign of violence other than an injury to the man’s back, yet it may have been a theater of war with its mines, animal testing, illegal chemicals and prostheses.
In all this, the medium of artworks – paper – came alive as a message, asking us to reconsider our relationship with this apparently inert object we come into contact with everyday.
The writer and art critic is interested in the fading heritage and culture of Kolkata.