Contemporary artists on view at CIMA annual art show
We take a look at artists like Ganesh Pyne, Debraj Goswami and Rm Palaniappan
Ganesh Pyne
His small tempera paintings are rich in imagery and symbols. Ganesh Pyne is one of the stalwarts of Indian painting today. So much so that he is termed as ‘an artist’s artist, a philosopher’s philosopher and master fantasist of them all’.
He acknowledges the influence of great painters, such as Abanindranath Tagore, Rembrandt and Paul Klee, but he states that his exposure to Walt Disney’s cartoons as well as his own experience as a young animator in Kolkata finally liberated him and helped him in developing two important stylistic features, distortion and exaggeration, which he uses to explore the deep recesses of his fantastical imagination and create uncanny images of some disquieting creatures.
Kingshuk Sarkar
When he finished his course at Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, in 1999, he went to the Kyoto University of Art and Design for training in the Japanese style of painting. Kingshuk Sarkar mastered techniques of Japanese calligraphy as well as Sumi painting. This art practice/philosophy has profoundly influenced his visual expression deeply rooted in Asian sensibilities.
Debraj Goswami
Bachelors’ education from Kolkata and then Masters at the M.S. University (Baroda) Faculty of Fine Arts is the preferred option for most young art students these days! Young Debraj Goswami is a perfect example of the fusion of these distinct two creative centers on two sides of the country.
Dilip Kumar Samanta
A graduate of the Calcutta Art College, he strongly evokes the traditional Japanese landscapes in his extreme economic usage of pictorial elements.
Mayank Kumar Shyam
The involvement of artists like him in the traditional practices of tribal/folk cultures tells its own story. It brings the subaltern perspective to the country’s colonial past and its freedom movement. Mayank Shyam is one of the finest practitioners of the ancient Gondi painting native to Madhya Pradesh. He seamlessly transfers an indigenous art form in a contemporary mode. The narrative aspect of this art has been retained in his paintings, but the tale is of the modern city.
Rashmi Bagchi Sarkar
East meets East in Rashmi’s art. A student of Kala Bhavan, Santiniketan, Rashmi had a stint at Saga University of Fine Art, Kyoto, Japan, and became proficient in the Nihonga style of traditional Japanese painting. She is currently working on a rare, untouched mode of tempera painting (made of crushed semiprecious stones, at times) mixed with layers of plated silver and gold.
Rm Palaniappan
He has said in an interview: “Man has always wanted to fly as flight was a kind of release from space and time. Also, numbers interest me because they are both finite and infinite.” The juxtaposition of the static, freedom and limitations and the mobile and words and images are not new to art. But the manner of his presentation is novel. His works can be interpreted to contain Western connotations from an indigenous Indian perspective.
Shakila
Shakila has no formal training in art, but the skill of her collage-making is something to marvel at. She does not go in for the textual richness and surface relief that motivated constructivists and cubists, to introduce collage into their work as a technical innovation. Nor like pop artists, she is interested in the new ‘syntaxing’ of whole printed images for an apparent inversion of meaning. An introductory note mentions: “She does construct new images by assembling bits of already printed images, but totally changes the original in the process.”
Uday Mondal
Born in 1976, he completed his graduation from Kolkata’s Rabindra Bharati University and his Masters from Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University. He works in acrylic, and ‘batters’ photographic images with many tools loaded with color for a painterly effect to them.
Lalu Prosad Shaw
A master of both printmaking as well as tempera, he expresses his modernity in printmaking, both in terms of imagery and technique. His imagery is sourced from everyday life, depicting simple events and objects.
