Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | Friday Review | Young World | Property Plus | Quest | Folio |

Prints and imprints

An exhibition by two printmakers trained in Santiniketan offers nicely done but uneven works

Two artists, both in their early 30s and trained in graphics (printmaking), have come together to hold their exhibition titled Nostalgia in the city.

Jayanti Nasar, who teaches printmaking in Kolkata, has a penchant for filling his etchings and lithographs with colour, perspective and stark symbols. Using decorative cots and metallic railings along undefined passages and spaces, he tries to induce elements of passion, desire and eroticism in his images. Some of the etchings on display are very small — as diminutive as three square inches — yet they endeavour to make an impact. In fact, it is the larger works that quite disappoint with their undeveloped imagery and uncultivated decorativeness.

Jayanti, who is a Master of Fine Arts from Kala Bhavan, Viswabharathi University, Santiniketan, does manage to extend some interesting perspectives in works such as Irony of Fate and Relation V. But in several others — particularly those incorporating pretentious, sculptural, love-struck figurines — the outcome is not only confusing but crude even.

Moutushi Banerjee, also an alumnus of Santiniketan, holds two postgraduate degrees in printmaking: one from M.S. University, Baroda, and the other from Wimbledon School of Art, London. Winner of several scholarships including the Charles Wallace India Trust Award for Visual Arts, U.K., in 2001-02, she has participated in quite a few group exhibitions. Most of her works on display are digitally manipulated screen prints derived from old photographs. The artist herself figures prominently in these pictures and transforms herself into a personage of a bygone era.

Although this form of representation is not really novel, Moutushi could still be cheered for coming up with some technically interesting compositions of this genre. The quiet dignity she brings to Landlord's Wife, the expressions on the faces of the Street Nautch Performers of East Bengal and the power of a defiant posture in Madonna of the Masses are eye-catching. Curiously, one felt that some works would have possibly worked better in a smaller format.

The exhibition concludes on June 26 at Rightlines Art Gallery, Defence Colony. Phone: 25272827

ATHREYA

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail