Tangible and intangible
Acrylic on canvas
At a recent show Marks and Markers by Samindranath Majumdar at Gallerie Ganesha, the artist uses acrylic on silk on board and canvas to map out his tangible and intangible memories. One such large work is The Turn, that shows a lonely road with a curve in it turn on it, but which is going nowhere, merging into the landscape.
The Turn, thus, with its many promises of the many particular goals it could lead to actually leads to the universal. The painting is a skilful portrayal of an arid mountainous landscape perhaps of Zanskar or Spiti, in greys of all shades, with scree slopes climbing upwards.
Most of the paintings are done in brooding, dark colours that have been thoughtfully layered upon each other. This superimposition is interesting as each underlying layer reveals a little bit of the artist’s experience, both lived and creatively. Such peeling away can be seen in works like Documenter, where there is a suggestion that a page from a diary is decaying with age to reveal its deepest secrets.
Each painting is also deeply textured, with a juxtaposition of ethereal bubbles and earthy granularity against which various motifs and devise have been placed, each having its own signification. Old lamps, water bodies, boards, markers, of time, past and present have great import in his works.
Though the works can be read together as one narrative, each painting has its own story to tell, unfolding its own little drama for the viewer, in which there is no human agency. The old stones, bottles, rivers and paths share their tales of floods and ruins, of wars and desolation, of bridges and their destruction, of ballads and dirges and of eternal time.
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