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The opening of Art Exposure's new space marks the quickening of the spirit of the contemporary in the city of Kolkata. Playing upon the binary of presence and absence, of the self and the other, the inaugural exhibition draws on the sentiments, images and energies that course through the vast metropolis, its galis andparas,and beyond.The theme of the exhibition draws from a line from the great Urdu poet Mirza Ghalib, written in the lengthening shadows of the nineteenth century:The miracle of your absence is that I found myself while searching for you.A witness to the brutal dismantling of the court of Bahadur Shah Zafar, and the withdrawal of royal patronage as a court poet, Ghalib travelled from Delhi to Calcutta in search of work. In the two years that he stayed writing poetry in Persian and Urdu in a haveli in the Simla market area, he grew to love the city, writing in his letters of its freecultural ethos.As a modern figure who's poetry is enjoying a resurgent popularity, Ghalib exemplifies the role of the artist in periods of a fractured polity and social turbulence. The representational dilemma that he speaks of, defining presence and absence through the prism of self reflexivity is depicted by the artists in a number of ways.Taking recourse to a metaphysical viewpoint and the tantalizing use of light and linear abstraction, or examining ordinary figures in their everyday habitat and loci, or recalling the innocence of an untouched, pristine nature, the artists create a shared language of address. Some of them, working from outside the city of Kolkata return to their roots even as they address the city itself, its beauty, its sensuous poverty and its inherent if fading grandeur.The exhibition then becomes a means of passage, as in the words of Jibanananda Das:“I shall return to this Bengal, to the Dhansiri's bankPerhaps not as a man, but mayna or fishing-kite;Or dawn crow, floating on the mist's bosom to alightIn the shade of this jackfruit-tree, in this autumn harvest-land...”
-GAYATRI SINHA
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UNTIL YOU UNEXIST I - A SET OF 4 UNCOLORED HAPPY PRICK DRAWINGS, 2022
(zarina, metallic paper, watercolor ink, acrylic and intentionally ignored emotions and muted violence on acid-free khadi handmade paper,20 x 30 in each)
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7 Fallen Palm Leaves, 2023
(Iron, install size: 121 x 326 x 22 in each, one installation comprising of 7 pieces)
Miracle of Absence : The Embrace of Time: ART EXPOSURE - LAKE TERRACE, KOLKATA
Past viewing_room
