Asim Paul (b. 1975), born in Naihati, West Bengal, creates multidimensional work in both subject and form. His works are often expressed as abstract ideas, where isolated imagery functions in a metaphorical sense. He delves into an outpouring of conscious and subconscious memories drawn from a lifetime of experience, reflecting socio-historical concerns that reverberate through the continuous act of mark-making. These include the aftermath of displacement caused by the India–Bangladesh Partition. In his intricate monochromatic drawings, Paul often gestures toward landscape—flattened cityscapes, eroded terrains, or barren tracts—which may be read as traces of an oscillation between shifting social conditions and topographies across boundaries. His practice is inclined towards gradual mark-making and texture-building, revealing subtle shifts in direction, tone, and density through abrasion and accumulation. The act of mark-making is rhythmic, persistent, and meditative, emphasizing labour not as spectacle but as a condition of being with the material.
Culinary memories of laying bori are reinterpreted through his perception of abstract forms, absorbing both lived experience and processes of form-building that become central to his artistic practice. These primarily surface through instinctive collections of forms in his sketchbooks, which act as preparatory surfaces. This is followed by the final act of filling an entire surface, in an attempt to arrive at an “idealised form.”
Owing to his academic training in ceramics from the Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata, he has expanded his practice into ceramic sculptures and installations, alongside an array of other mediums.
Asim Paul lives and works in Kolkata.