Order and disquiet

Aakriti recently featured M.F. Husain, S.H. Raza and Ram Kumar along with young abstractionists as the gallery’s homage to the late Badhan Das. Two works by Das give viewers a taste of his sensibility — subterranean disquiet concealed by deceptive order. Das must, indeed, be counted among the most individualist of abstractionists here.

None of the three Husains carried the artist’s stamp: a 1962 landscape, interpreted in terms of horizontal sections with tonal variations, and two casually modish watercolours (1995).

The works by Raza were possibly done before he began his meditations on the bindu. Two of them are seductively elusive, drawing the viewer into their furtive, and ultimately baffling, layers. The colours are sombre, with finely graded shades, allowing the shapes to fade into them. As for Ram Kumar, all it took him to present a kind of geological tandava in one of the acrylics was colour zones torn into rugged planes. Amitava Das has evolved a distinctive style — a dark ground teased with circular strokes that leave congealed arcs of paint. But the dotted lines in white, embroidering the corners, appear decorative. Sunil De’s muted canvases suggest drifts, corrugations, sutures and rips.

Yogender Tripathi’s acrylics speak of his urban moorings. Thin coats of beige overlaid with smudges and tattered bits of colour recall grimy city walls. Shamindranath Majumdar’s four canvases evoke grounds of light tone, embedded with the debris of broken images. Partha Shaw shows restraint in laying out the aerial topographies in black, grey and white.

Rita Datta

Sentimental journey

Asit Poddar’s Japanese Sumi ink-and-pastel works on paper at Chitrakoot gallery depict European cityscapes in the spirit of a travelogue visually told. He is well-known as a photographer who is gradually moving into painting, inspired by Henri CartierBresson who made a similar transition late in his life. This exhibition can be compared to the joyous festivity that follows a prodigal’s return. Sumi inkwork is based on calligraphic strokes that emerge from Zen Buddhist meditations on being and nothingness. He has boldly explored its possibilities to capture Christian themes and landmark architecture with remarkable success. This exhibition is a sentimental journey through France, Germany and Italy.

Sandip Sarkar