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Aakriti Art gallery has from the beginning drawn both the connoisseurs and laity's praise for many reasons. As for me, I have nothing but admiration for it. It is true, I have known Vikram Bachhawat's parents , both his mother who is an artists and his father, a poet who writes Hindi poems , long before I came to know him, so it might be said that I have bias , inclination and predisposition towards the Gallery. But this would be an unfair judgement towards him and also for me. For the Gallery is here for every on to see. In Aakriti there is one large walled space paintings and another equally large one for sculpture. In most art galleries and even academies the spotlight is thrown on the paintings while sculptures are displayed in ill-lit semi darkness. In Aakriti, however both are kept in enlightened grandeur. Displaying paintings on walls is easier than placing sculptures on pedestals on the floor. The lighting arrangements for both are different. The latter requires more care to become illuminated. No other gallery has given so much thought for sculpture or cared for sculptors as Aakriti. Apart from this, on the ground floor, there is a large lounge were the visitors are entertained with lavish hospitality on the opening day of an exhibition. These set of things add up to the ambience of Aakriti. The exhibition I have seen in Aakriti particularly in the current second phase are too varied for one to formulate clear cut concepts behind them. What is being shown is the diversity of the trends , particularly the younger generation's attempts at a separate identity, both in the formal and content areas. Experimental adventures , non-conventional media used with great vigour, lead us o to unexplored continents that sometimes are fertile and other times icy wastes. Here what is important is not the arrival so much as the spirit of sea-faring in uncharted oceans. These exhibitions give one a Susanne K. Langeresque aesthetic sense which purports art-as-emotion. It steers clear of traditional types of expression and suppression of individuality on the one hand, and the accepted schemes of myth-making on the other. Symbol and symbolism is turned upside down or inside out. Sometimes the works, particularly the sculptures are by nature inherently constructivist and seem to be non-referential.
The laity maybe bewildered, unable to make sense of such non-symbolic art. The socially conscious section may find this new art to lack contemporary relevance. In the confusion, one thing is to be remembered, we are too close to situation and therefore and cannot see things in perspective at present. Secondly, a flowering mango tree sheds much of its flowers. The wind and storm destroys some of the fruit. Only, the fittest survive and become luscious fleshy flavoured fruit and end up on our plate. Many are called, a few are blest. Among the blessed some in future will be adjudged as minor artists, others as great minors and only some as major figures. From the major figures, one or two will emerge as great artists. The process is long drawn. In the meanwhile, we have to depend on our own tastes and liking and understand the trends as best we can and above all, madly collect what we like. Your sixth sense is a better guide than other people's opinion in collecting art.
Aakrit's other great achievement has been to get the shows curated by experts or artists. They are more integrated and cohesive and not just assembled anthologies of the annual expositions of the academic types.
The shows at Aakrit has not only been remarkable but memorable. Among the Next Gen Expositions , Oct 2006 is which one cannot forget in a hurry. There were three solo exhibitions that set the mind on a spin. The first one was the centenary solo visuals of Gobardhan Ash which had works from the family collection. It was a journey on a time machine, as it were. It made the viewers aware how contemporary art became modern. His portraitures, landscapes, folkish renditions, sketches, and paintings of famine affected people during 1943 and the works that he did till the day he died, showed us some seventy years of his output. How prolific and splendidly fertile his hands and mind were! The second one-person exposition that was a fest for the eyes was that of Patha Pratim Deb. He has kept himself aloof from trendy art and in retrospect has been a trendsetter himself. His plain drawings and drawings-within a painting, in whatever medium shows how lines flow, colours fly and freely mix in space, sometimes gracefully and often with a wry grimace. Even latent or exposed erotic acts become not only wanton but funny. He is an able chronicler of 'human comedy'. He is seen rising to the heights with 'chronique scandleuse' which are just charming for their audacity and humorous ridicule.
The third solo show was that of Gopal Prasad Mondal. It had 'Macro and Micro organic sculptures'. He has always been the odd man out and a recluse who has worked even when people have made crude remarks and been rough and rude. Mondal's works are mostly figurative but he is not averse to abstraction. There is a tactile quality in his odd rhythmic figuration as they finally settle in a composition. He is always striving for sculptural integrity in his work. The other sculpture exhibition had elective affinities with art history. It was called 'Glimpses of Modern Sculptures in Bengal'. It drew an outline of the history of sculpture of the region in a broad sketchy fashion. Among the painting expositions two stand out for their boldness. The first one, 'agony and Ecstasy' had artists born after the independence mostly during the 1 950s and 60s with the lone exception of Patha Pratim Deb (born 1943). Most of the artists in the show are figurative painters. Their works indicate the wide range of experiments that are going on in the field, starting from the startling re-interpretation of the Company School by Kanchan Dasgupta to gaudy figuration of Prosenjit Sengupta to fantastic realism of Aditya Basak and his contemporaries to the caricatures of shapes and form by Parth Pratim Deb. The exposition takes the viewers through the diverse sides of contemporary trends. The other exhibition that was called 'Freedom: what it means to me'. It indicates the tectonic shift of the younger artists. They are vaguely aware of the pre-independence period but for them the present is all important. In spite of its many pitfalls they are finding it full of splendour. They seem to go through the lures and the failures of the present. The latent content of the sculptures and paintings communicates on other levels too. The other fairly good exposition was called 'Landscapes in Modern Painting'. It had works of established as well as emerging artists. The artists look at nature in their own way and refashion it in their personal style. Their outpouring of energy, devotion and recreativity come out. They seemed to have created a fusion from what they have perceived and mixed the ingredients with he substance of their dreams . the result has been meaningful innovation.
The search for new talent goes on. To this must be added the artists who have been bypassed and not given the pride of the place in the system, because of artistic rivalry and revenge. Otherwise time will reshuffle the cards that have been dealt out.07
-- Sandip Sarkar
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