Alternating between memory and perception lies Asim’s pursuit as an artist. Born in Naihati (the birth place also of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay), his family had migrated to Bengal after the partition. But Asim has a distinct impression of his early childhood visiting the other side which was also once his home, that was surrounded by the nativity of nature and its surreal beauty. The progressive urban scape of West Bengal, constantly reminds him of the oscillations between space and form, between an open landscape into an enclosed and densely populated metropolitan. His large canvases are not just reminders of this constant flux but also a reminder of the subliminal impact of a ‘line’ on an artist. One line that connects and the other that demarcates.
Abstraction, as a concept of visual imagery in India predominantly derives from the landscape, be it Ram Kumar (1924-2018), Vasudeo Gaitonde (1924-2001), Laxman Shrestha (b. 1939), the muse is the landscape which is then abstracted to transform as colour compositions with varying subtleties. However, printmaker Zarina Hashmi (1937-2020), maps these landscapes with their borders. Her works echo a memory of displacement and notion of home. The agony of partition and the dividing line between geographies indelibly marks empty sheets with black-inked lines. Ganesh Haloi (b. 1936), another abstractionist born in Bangladesh having moved to Kolkata mediates this shift through his resonant gouaches on paper, with squiggles, dashes, symbols that define his poetic flux. The land being the agent of visual discourse for both Hashmi and Haloi, it translates into a language that reflects both accord and discord.
Asim’s practice negotiates between the landscape, land-boundaries and memory. His large canvases although painted in muted tones resound distinctly a cry for freedom. The bold strokes and uneven surfaces resemble a stormy desert or a gushy rainforest, intense and chaotic. But the frenzy is further layered with thick circular markings that bind the surface into a rhythmic structure. Reminiscing of the ‘bori’ layering on a white cloth by his mother and also the barbed wires and borders that enclose geographies—two contradicting impressions that in turn create yet another perception of a sublime rhythm. My first response to these canvases was that of a surreal cadence flowing as a musical composition on the canvas. Like stretching the frequency of a singular tone, with its intonations forming linear rhythmic impulses on the surface. Rhythm here acts as the neural transmitter, transforming the sensorial memories etched into his psyche as a synchronised surface, as a continuous oscillation between memory and perception.
A set of five large canvases set themselves apart from the above compositions, as fluid gestural compositions whispering a distant echo from another land. The crux of these five canvases is akin to the primitivity of sound and colour. Each reflecting an elemental colour that has its own resonating sound structure, like a medley of tone and timbre. The bold and thick strokes of the previous canvases are now fluid and translucent, with no definitive structure imbibing the composition and yet it emanates a sonic confluence. Impressions of the barbed wires lose themselves as free floating scribbles to merge into monotonal pigments of colour. The oscillations between memory and perception are here synthesised to form a resonant body of colour materiality.
The twenty-one ceramic pieces combine the impressions of earth burning along with the laying of the ‘bori’. The pristine surface is wounded with incoherent markings, completely different from the large canvases. Here the expanse of the canvases has been micro scaled to only highlight the textures of the surface. Textures as reminders of smouldered memories, abrasive landscapes and muddled squiggles. Asim’s abstraction is coherent with the linearity of nature and yet it expresses the anguish of being constrained by linear divisions.
Jesal Thacker
