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Aakriti Art Gallery is going to celebrate its fourth anniversary to mark the beginning of fifth year of its activity on 1st October 2009. The activity will start with the Gen Next IV exhibition featuring works of young talents below forty through out the country. Like previous years we take this occasion to look back at the art activities of Aakriti in the context of art performance in different galleries through out Kolkata during the previous year. In our last chronicle published in Gen Next III catalogue we tried to present the art activities till July 2008. Here we start from August 2008 and come up to July 2009.
Though during the last one year there have been a number of important exhibitions, yet gallery activities in general has turned a bit bleak due to depression in art market. Excepting 'Studio 21' no significant new gallery has come up. However 'Experimenter' has come up at the cost of 'Kanishka' gallery. The gallery 'Eye on Art' is also a new venture. Some of the active galleries have curtailed their programs. A few have ceased functioning. But beyond the commercial gallery circle there have been no dearth of display of art for public viewing. Those who prefer to delink art from commerce, particularly the young and upcoming artists, have worked and exhibited with sincere effort. Decline in market could in no way squeeze their enthusiasm. This has been a good effort to confront the bleak market.
Other bright feature of the last year was the publication of two quarterly art journals in English language. Kolkata was lagging behind in this field. Akar Prakar gallery published 'Varta' in April 2009 and Emami Chisel Art published 'Art etc' in June 2009.
The art world mourned the death of some of the brilliant artists during the last year. Paritosh Sen (1918) passed away on 22 October 2008, Manjit Bawa (1941) on 28 December 2008, Reba Hore (1926) on 22 March 2009, Shailen Mitra (1933) on 20 June 2009 and Tyeb Mehta (1925) expired on 25 July 2009.
Among the exhibitions held during August 2008 a few of the important shows were as follows. Exhibition of Nilima Dutta at Chemould ended on August 2. She is a sincere artist working for a long time in neo-Indian style. Chitrakoot gallery showed till August 8 the graphic works of master artists of Bengal like Somnath Hore, Ramendranath Chakraborty, Chittaprasad, Haren Das, Nandalal Bose, Manindra Bhushan Gupta, Pran Krishna Pal, Dharma Narayan Dasgupta, Suhas Roy, Arun Bose, Amitabha Banerjee, Lalu Prasad Shaw, Sanat Kar, Shyamal Dutta Roy, Ganesh Pyne, Bikash Bhattacharya, K.G.Subramanyan and others. It could adequately highlight the evolution of graphic art in Bengal during post 1940-s. CIMA gallery showed recent collages of Shakila till Aug 8. Anant gallery displayed paintings and sculptures of promising young artist Rajesh Ram under the title 'Hybrid' till Aug 16. Like every year Birla Academy displayed the works of award winning artists at their annual exhibition under the title 'Svikriti'. The artists were: Bhabatosh Sutar, Bhaskar Lahiri, Gargi Das, Partha Dasgupta, Susnata Pal and Timir Brahma till Aug 17. 'Ideas, Images and Experiences' a curated show by Aniruddh Chari held at Mon Gallery displaying works of Arunima Sanyal, Bhaskar Chowdhury, Mahmud Husain, Ramu Das, Saikat Surai and Soumya Samanta till Aug 16.
'Manush', paintings, collages and mixed media by the renowned artist from Ahmedabad Haku Shah (b.1934) was displayed at Emami Chisel Art till Aug 14. It was a brilliant exhibition to show how folk forms could be transformed towards a modernist value. Sculptural installations by Nidhi Jalan titled 'Abol Tabol' at Akar Prakar displayed a flavor of non-sense in three-dimensional form. Spectram Artists Circle presented 32nd group show at Academy of Fine Arts. Karma Gallery presented a duet show of Partha Pratim Deb and Manas Roy under the title 'Boundless'. 'Eternal Varanasi' paintings based on landscape of Varanasi were displayed till Aug 21 at Gallery K2 featuring works of Ganesh Haloi, S. Pranam Singh, Subuddha Ghosh, Tapas Kanti Mitra, Giovanna Caruso and Tapas Ghosal. Members of Society of Contemporary Artists displayed their small works at their own gallery at Kasba till 30 August. Ganges gallery presented 'Constructing the Present' featuring the works of Manjari Chakraborty, Tapati Chowdhury, Chatrapati Dutta, S. Gopinath, Jehangir Jani, Mahbubur Rahman, Rajeshwar Rao, Partha Shaw, Deepak Tandon, Tanmay Samanta and Babu Xavier. Weavers Studio presented 'A Different Face', an exhibition of drawings by Prabir Sen.
September started with an exhibition titled 'Concepts and Ideas 2008' at CIMA which continued till 13th. It is an annual feature of the gallery to highlight new and experimental trends of mostly young generation of artists. The participants of this year were Sanjeev Sonpimpre, Rm. Palanippan, Avishek Sen, Kingshuk Sarkar and Kabir Mohanty. Galerie 88 presented till 27 September the works of Sudhir Ranjan Khastagir to mark his birth centenary. Seagull presented the sculptures of Venkat Bothsa titled 'Second Skin' till 21 Sept. A show of Rebanta Goswami was held till 27 at Galerie Karma under the title 'Through the Glass Unbroken'. Ganges gallery presented till 27 the paintings of the artists from South India titled 'Beyond the Bindhyas' Paticipating artists were K.M.Adimoolam, Laxman Aelay, K.S.Chari, C. Douglas, S. Gopinath, K. Muralidharan, S. Nandagopal, Rm. Palanippan, Benita Perciyal, M. Senathipati, Surya Prakash, Thota Tharrani and S.G. Basudev. A new gallery 'Studio 21' started with a show titled 'The New Idyllic' featuring indigenous art of Madhya Pradesh, which continued till Sept 30. Bose Pacia exhibited paintings, installation and prints of Josh P.S. titled 'Alone In the Crowd', which continued till October 4. Gandhara gallery presented till Oct 1 an exhbition titled 'Fresh Marks' fearturing works of young artists like Anirban Mitra, Haraprasad Tripathi, Mrinmoy Debnath, Nantu Behari Das, Rajendra Pradhan, Rajesh Dev and Sajal Kaity.
Some of the artists of past and present like Basanta Kumer Ganguly, Gopal Ghosh, Sunil Kumar Pal, Dhirendra Nath Bramha, Ranen Ayan Dutta, Ramananda Bandyopadhyay and Krishna Bandyopadhyay were presented at the newly formed Gallery Sunayan at Lake Town which continued till 5 October. Galerie Karma presented 'Celebrating Life', a solo exhibition of paintings by the young artist Pintu Biswas. West Bengal Correctional Services presented an exhibition of paintings and sculptures by the inmates of correctional homes of West Bengal, which continued till Oct 19. Akar Prakar presented a show 'Three Masters Briefly' featuring works of F.N.Souza, Jagdish Swaminathan and Meera Mukherjee till Oct 23. Bose Pacia presented till November 1 the latest works of Rao Kodanda of Baroda and Basist Kumar of Santiniketan. Akar Prakar presented from Oct 27 to Nov 10 'Missed Call' an exhibition of recent works by C. Douglas.
Through out November (1 to 30) Kolkata saw a brilliant retrospective of Suranjan Basu (1957 2001), the Santiniketan based artist who expired at the prime of his career at the age of only 44, but left behind extremely powerful and socially committed works of paintings and graphics. Seagull Arts and Media Resource Centre presented a very well curated retrospective show of the artist spread over two of its galleries with due honour and seriousness. Chitrakoot showed Arun Goswami's recent paintings titled 'Unheard Melodies and Choreographed Dreams'. Weavers Studio presented its first anniversary show of glass sculptures, paintings, photography and objects d'art. The show was titled 'Glasscapes' and explored various sorts of use of glass as medium of expression. The participating artists were Debashis Chakraborty, Tandra Chanda, Sanjeet Chowdhury, Partha Pratim Deb, Chhatrapati Dutta, Sreela Mukherjee, Shyamal Mukherjee, Chandrashekhar Patil, Anuj Kumar Poddar, Suhas Roy, Ketaki Roy Chowdhury, Sisir Sahana, Katayun Saklat, Sk. Sahajahan and Foram Thakore. From 5 to 29 November Gallery Sanskriti presented recent paintings and sculptures of Subhaprasanna titled 'Beyond the Dark'. Sudhangshu presented his abstract landscapes at Academy of Fine Arts till November 8. Wood engraving prints of Chandan Das were shown at Birla Academy from 4 to 9 November. Anant Gallery presented 'Fieldsoflabour', an exhibition of paintings of Pradeep I. Mishra till November 20. The entire gallery was turned into an installation displaying some sort of rustic rural environment within which the paintings were displayed. Galerie 88 presented recent works of Chandra Bhattacharya till November 22
On November 8 Emami Chisel Art opened an auction of art works, which was a new event for Kolkata. The preview and on line bidding took place on that day along with floor auction. Some of the artists whose works were under hammer were MF Husain, Paritosh Sen, Somnath Hore, Ganesh Haloi, Kartick Chandra Pyne, FN Souza, Bikash Bhattacharjee, KG Subramanyan and Jogen Chowdhury amongst others. Gallery Rasa presented deeply meditative paintings of a brilliant French artist Pierre Antoniucci till November 30. Birla Academy presented sculpture of KS Radhakrishnan titled 'Liminal Figuras Liminal Space', which started during last week of November and continued till 10 December.
December was vibrant with a show titled 'Review' at CIMA. With this show the gallery celebrated its 15th anniversary. 15 artists participated. They interpreted and recreated five masterpieces of world art according to their own temporal commitment and world out look. The masterpieces were Picasso's 'Guernica', Abanindranath's 'Bharat Mata', Ramkinkar's 'Santal Family', Husain's 'Zameen' and Bhupen Khakhar's 'Man with a Bouquet of Plastic Flowers'. The participating artists were Abir Karmakar, Alok Bal, Debraj Goswami, Farhad Husain, Jogen Chowdhury, Kingshuk Sarkar, Mayank Kumar Shyam, Mithu Sen, Paresh Maity, Samit Das, Santosh More, Sumitro Basak and Swarna Chitrakar.
Ganges gallery showed till December 9 a selection of Sunil Das's paintings from the collection of Juergen Fischer and the artist. The exhibition was titled 'Endless Night'. Paintings of the South Indian artist M. Senathipati were shown at Artists Circle. Woven, embroidered, knitted and stitched textile works of Santiniketan based artist Shrabani Roy were exhibited at Akar Prakar under the title 'Shrabani's Alternative'. Gallery Sanskriti exhibited the works of Baroda based artist Rini Dhumal under the title 'Mortal, Myth and the Divine'. She interpreted the folk tradition in her own way.
Chitrakoot gallery presented till December 13 'The Lyrical Images', an exhibition of drawings and sculptures of Shyam Kanu Borthakur. Seagull presented till December 15 the paintings of Kerala born artist Ray Thomas under the title 'From the Vanishing Point'. Society of Contemporary Artists presented their annual show of paintings, graphics and sculptures of their members at Birla Academy from 16 to 28 December. Society is going to celebrate its fifty years of existence in 2010.
'Beyond Convention: A Glimpse of Contemporary Trends in Bengal Art' an exhibition of paintings and sculptures curated by Mrinal Ghosh was sponsored and presented by Anant Art Gallery from 18 December 08 to 10 January 09. It attempted to show, the new generation of artists of Bengal are in no way lagging behind in generating new experiments in art. The participating artists were Partha Pratim Deb, Janak Jhanhar Narzari, Goutam Chowdhury, Arunima Chowdhury, Chhatrapati Dutta, Paula Sen Gupta, Habibur Rahaman, Chandan Bhandari, Debashis Barui, Kazi Nasir, Mahajabin I Majumder, Amritah Sen, Rabin Roy, Nantu Behari Das, Nobina Gupta, Prabhat Basu, Samir Roy, Tarun Maity and Utpal Dutta. Bose Pacia presented the recent works of Bari Kumar titled 'Foreign Bodies'. Black and white works of the members of Painters' 80 were shown at Birla academy from 30 Decamber to 4 January 2009.
Birla Academy's annual show fills the art environment of Kolkata during entire January. The large exhibition covering five galleries of Academy continued from 9 January to 1 February 2009. Galerie 88 presented for preview a curated show of contemporary Indian painting and sculpture, which was scheduled to be shown at Palaise Benedictine, France. The participating artists were Atul Dodiya, Jayashree Chakraborty, Mithu Sen, Rias Komu, Vivan Sundaram and others. Calcutta painters hosted a solo exhibition of Rabin Mandal at Abanindranath Tagore gallery of ICCR from January 8 to 17. Gallery Sanskriti presented a solo show of Balaka Bhattacharya titled 'Sidesteps' till January 22. Galerie 88 presented recent works of K. Laxma Goud till January 31.
Studio 21 presented paintings of Gouri, Satya Dheer Singh and Gouri Shankar Soni till January 20 under the title 'Subliminal Images'. Seagull exhibited small works Nisreen Moochala. Bose Pacia presented a group show 'Analytical Engine' curated by Heidi Fichtner.
February started with a thought provoking conceptual show titled 'Mirror Image' organized by Gandhara Art Gallery at ICCR Jamini Roy hall. The concept was to unmask the hidden face of reality. Participating artists were Abir Karmakar, Chatrapati Dutta, Chandrima Bhattachacharya, Debraj Goswami, Debanjan Roy, Farhad Husain, Sanjeet Chowdhury, Kazi Nasir, Nantu Behari Das, Prasenjit Sen Gupta, Sekhar Baran Karmakar, Sovan Kumar, T.V.Santosh and Saikat Surai. The show continued from 2 to 10 February.
Emami Chisel Art exhibited till February 6 the works produced in a workshop held earlier under the theme/title 'Twisti-Twosti: Identities Migrating / Migrating Identities'. Participating artists were Abhijit Gupta, Aditya Basak, Archana Hande, Ashis Ghosh, B.M.Kamath, Chhatrapati Dutta, Gugi Scagin, G.R.Iranna, Kristine Micheal, Mithu Sen, Nantu Behari Das, Pradeep Kalita, P.S. Ladi, Samindranath Mazumder, Sharmila Samant, Surekha, Tushar Joag and Umesh Maduahali. Kanchanmala Ghosh showed her monochrome images of faces at ITC Sonar till February 12.
CIMA displayed recent works of Paramjit Singh under the title 'Shall Return Again' Mon Gallery presented a show 'Gods, Icons, Masses' curated by Aniruddha Chari. This year Academy of Fine Arts was late in presenting its annual show. Instead of usual December this year's 73rd annual was held in February 09, continued till 15th. 'An Inner Journey', a retrospective show of Katayun Saklat was held in Gallery K2. An eminent artist from Japan, Kouzui Shimoura showed his Himalayan mountainscape paintings at Jamini Roy Gallery of ICCR till 20 February. Gallery Karma presented first solo exhibition of Mallika Das Sutar titled 'Sublimity of the Grotesque'.
March and April 2009 in Kolkata will be remembered forever for the artists' spontaneous and serious response against worldwide terrorism. It was initiated as a direct reaction of 26 November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack, but was not restricted within that particular incident; the artists addressed the violence in general. Nine galleries jointly took the initiative of sponsoring the show. About 155 artists participated. The first show of 'Art Against Terrorism' started on 23 March at Aakriti gallery and continued till 4 April. The other galleries followed from the next day onward. At Akar Prakar the show was held from 24 March to 11 April, Gandhara 25 March to 7 April, Chitrakoot 26 March to 8 April, Gallery K2 from 27 March to 10 April, Sanskriti 28 March to 11 April, Seagull only exhibited films and books on violence and terrorism from 30 March to 1 April. Emami Chisel Art mounted the most unconventional show of conceptual works from 3 to 18 April and Khoj Kolkata presented their artists at Aakriti gallery from 8 to 21 April. This joint venture of the artists and art galleries could posit a serious concern against the wantonness of the human frailty that gives rise to violence and terrorism.
During the first week of March till 8th Birla Academy presented an exhibition of the teachers of Rabindra Bharati University under the title 'Imagism'. Bose Pacia presented an exhibition of the works of Balaji Poona titled 'Black Smoke' till March 15. Bronze sculptures of Tapas Sarkar were exhibited at Gallery Nakshatra till 28 March. Galerie 88 showed sculpture based installation works of Anindita Dutta under the title 'The Exit'. Samakal Gallery presented from 7 to 17 March 'Transcendental Bondage', fourth solo exhibition of paintings and drawings by Sumana Ghosh. A special type of collage works of Anita Gopal titled 'Fractals' was exhibited at Studio 21 till March 28. Tejas Gallery presented at Chemould the paintings of Dhiren Shasmal based on folk tales. CIMA exhibited recent works of Shreyashi Chatterjee 'Through the Eye of a Needle'. Her outstanding works were based on stitching on canvas and cloth with needle. 'Limitless Luminosity of Lines' was the title of the solo exhibition of the renowned octogenarian artist of Bangladesh Safiuddin Ahmed presented at Nandalal Bose gallery of ICCR. It continued from 23 March to 4 April. Bose Pacia exhibited the works of Hema Upadhyay till April 19. Seagull presented Chandana Hore till April 4.
'Art Against Terrorism' that started in March continued till April in different galleries. Apart from this April was significant for a show of Somnath Hore featuring his bronzes, drawings and watercolours. The show was sponsored by Seagull and was held at their gallery. Artists Circle presented one senior and one junior artist together, Anita Roy Chowdhury and Subhendu Sarkar till 25 April. Mixed media and guaches of Rokeya Sultana, an artist from Bangladesh, was shown at Ganges. Watercolours of Suman Kabiraj were exhibited at Art Walk, South City Mall till April 30. Solo show of sculpture of Sarbari Roy Chowdhury was held at Akar Prakar from 28 April. A book cum album on him by R. Shivakumar was published on this occasion.
Another important experimental show of April was held at the newly formed gallery 'Experimenter'. Curated by Dr. Paula Sengupta it was titled 'Tell Tale: Fiction Falsehood and Fact' It endeavored to present contemporary artists in narrative perspective. It was mounted in two phases. The first phase started on 4 April and continued through out the month featuring installation based conceptual works of Abhishek Hazra, Adip Dutta, Archana Hande, Debnath Basu and Paula Sengupta. The second phase started on May 2 and continued till May 23 featuring works of Amritah Sen, Anupam Chakraborty, Rajesh Deb, Sarnath Banerjee and Sujay Mukherjee.
Besides this on 3 May an exhibition of art works and photographs by renowned film director Satyajit Roy was inaugurated at Birla Academy under the title 'Rayimages', which continued till May 17. 'Narrative Movements' was the theme of another group show curated by Vivekananda Santra at Gallery with Difference. Again another gallery Eye on Art mounted a group show of young artists on 'Forms of Narration' featuring works of Arnab Mukherjee, Arpita Pradhan, Biswajit Mukherjee, Nandita Mukherjee, Shubha Basu, Sudipto Dutta, Sumana Biswas, Sumana Ghosh, Susmita Rakshit and Utpal Dutta
Prabhatmohan Bandyopadhyay (1904 1987) was an introspective artist of neo-Indian school. He was also a writer and freedom fighter in the same fold but was not much well known to ordinary people. Ramkrishna Mission Institute of Culture at Gol Park brought him to lime light through an exhibition of his paintings and literary works during May 09. A series of his paintings titled 'Glimpses of Ancient India' was a part of this show.
Jyotirmaoy Roy Chowdhury showed his bronze sculptures at Academy of Fine Arts from 9 to 15 May. An exhibition of Rock Art of India from Indira Gandhi Rastriya Manab Sangrahalaya, Bhopal was held at Indian Museum till May 28. CIMA presented its summer show from May to 1st August featuring works of renowned and young artists from across India.
Akar Prakar presented from 1 to 9 June the paintings of renowned water colourist Shyamal Dutta Roy from the collection of Pradip Bothra. The works of two young artists, Sandip Roy and Sudip Dey who received Shyamal Dutta Roy memorial award in watercolour were also exhibited along with Dutta Roy. Ganges gallery presented till June 12 recent works of Arghya Priya Majumder and Mahajbin Majumder under the title 'Outsiders Within' Galerie 88 presented recent works of Mustak Khan Chowdhury till June 13. 'Linear Turmoil and Tranquility' first solo exhibition of Ranjit Adhikari was held at Metropolitan Art Salon from 8 to 11 June.
On the occasion of K.G.Subramanyan's 85th birth anniversary Seagull Foundation along with Aakriti and Akar Prakar gallery presented 'Recent Works by K.G.Subramanyan', a collection of recent canvases, reverse paintings, guaches on paper and terracotta works from June 20 to July 19.
Experimenter presented till July 29 'SEZ Who?' a unique activism based collaborative art project lead by a group of artists exploring the impact and rational of setting up special economics zones in India. Sudipto Karmakar's water colours on the wonders of India was held at Gallery K2 from June 24 to July 15. Ganges gallery presented 'Trying to Make Sense of It All', an exhibition of recent works of Somit Gupta, Debjaj Goswami, Rajib Lochan Pani and Pampa Panwar. A solo exhibition of Manoj Roy was held at Birla Academy from 30 June to 5 July.
A duet show of Prabal Chandra Baral and Bishwa Basu was held at Chemould from 8 to 12 July. Galerie 88 presented an exhibition of the recent works of three artists, Amritah Sen, Sumana Jana and Santanu Maity till July 31. An exhibition of drawings by the members of Calcutta Painters was held at Chemould till July 27. Participating artists were Amitabha Sengupta, Anita Roy Chowdhury, Animesh Nandi, Barun Roy, Bijan Chowdhury, Bipin Goswamy, Debabrata Chakraborty, Dhiraj chowdhury, Dwijen Gupta, Goutam Bhowmick, Isha Muhammad, Jogen Chowdhury, Niren Sengupta, Nikhilesh Das, Pradip Mandal, Prakash Karmakar, Rabin Mandal, Ranjan Mukherjee, Shyamasri Basu, Shiba Prasad Kar Chowdhury, Subrata Ghosh, Sudip Banerjee, Susanta Chakraborty, Shubhabrata Nandi, Surajit Das, Tapan Ghosh, Tapan Mitra and Wasim Kopoor. 'Eternal Landscape' a group show of landscape art featuring works of Manisha Dey, Ramlal Dhar, Sohini Dhar, Gopal Ghosh, Mrinal Mandal, Surya Prakash and Sandip Roy was held at Ganges gallery fro 28 July to 15 August.
In the context of the art activities of Kolkata as described above Aakriti Gallery continued its own performances. Though it mounted fewer exhibitions during this year in comparison to the previous years, yet it could expand itself to other activities. There were two very important collaborative shows in which Aakriti took part along with other galleries. One was 'Art Against Terrorism' held in March-April 2009. The other was exhibition honouring K.G. Subramanyan on his 85th birth anniversary held in June-July 09. Apart from this Aakriri made another important venture. It opened an art shop within the gallery premises, where paintings, sculptures, books and other materials concerning art and decoration are made available in affordable price. Aakriti has taken up a project of publishing short monographs on artists, a few of which have already been published. This is a very innovative agenda, which will be beneficial for both artists and art lovers.
The fourth year of the gallery started with GenNext III show held between 1 and 15 October 2008. This year's Gen Next showed more expansion both in case of number of participants and variety of themes and forms of exhibits. Out of total 40 participants, 29 were from India and 11 from abroad. So this year Gen Next got an international stature. There were artists from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Jamaica, France, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Poland, USA and Italy. Among the participants there were 7 women out of 29 artists of India, and 4 females out of 11 from abroad. Indian artists came from different institutions and different background. There were 6 from Govt College of Art and Craft, Calcutta, 7 from Visva-Bharati Kala-Bhavan, 6 from Baroda, 2 from Delhi Art College, 1 from Khairagarh and 2 were self-taught. 3 artists worked in Indian traditional style and others projected international modernistic and post-modernistic modes. Among the Indian section there were 3 abstract paintings, the rest were somehow or other figurative. There were 2 abstracts from the foreign participants. In Indian side there were 8 sculptures, rest paintings. Among foreign participants there was only one sculpture. There was one artist from India who worked with photography and one with video. One artist from USA also worked with video. These data derived from last Gen Next show may throw some light on the state of affair of the rising artists of our country.
After Gen Next III there was a show of paintings of Kazi Ghiasuddin, an artist from Bangladesh in January 2009 from 20 to 31. Ghiasuddin was born in 1951 at Madaripur of Bangladesh. He made his art education both BFA and MFA from Bangladesh and took further education in Japan. His works are totally abstract, but the abstraction reverberates with serene and pulsating nature of Bangaldesh.
Art Against Terrorism was held from 23 March to 4 April. Participating artists at Aakriti show were: Rabin Mandal, Kartick Chandra Pyne, Jogen Chowdhury, Partha Pratim Deb, Asim Basu, Sunil De, Sunil Kumar Das, Tapas Konar, Amitava Dhar, Ashoke Mullick, Sekhar Roy, Habibur Rahaman, Mukulendu Pathak, Samindranath Majumdar, Akhil Chandra Das, Barun Chowdhury, Sajad H Hamdani, Tapas Biswas, Subrata Biswas, Apu Dasgupta, Apurba Nandi, Chandan Bhandari, Dhiraj Singh, Rajesh Deb, Bhabatosh Sutar, Sourav Jana, Ketan N Amin, P. Bardhan, Sandip Daptari, Mahmud Husain, Nantu Behari Das, Saptarshi Naskar, Priyanka Lahiri, Sanhita Banerjee, Tisha Mandal and Sanhita Ghosh.
From 20 June to 18 July K.G.Subramanyan's 85th birth anniversary show was held along with other two galleries, Seagull and Akar Prakar. Contemplative inwardness and sobriety of Subramnyan's work comes out of the synthesis of South Indian tradition with Santiniketan ideology of assimilating local with global. The exhibition has very successfully brought out this unique quality of his works.
From 3 to 14 August a duet show of the paintings of Kartick Chandra Pyne and Partha Pratim Deb was held under the title 'Leela' curated by Pranabranjan Roy. To club these two diverse artists under the concept 'Leela' the curatorial note states: 'Kartick Chandra Pyne (b. Calcutta 1931) and Partha Pratim Deb (b. Tripura 1943) are painters of different backgrounds and with so much different upbringing as are likely to affect their creative acts. Yet transcending all surface differences both their work convey to the discerning viewer, the feeling of self-absorbed play in which the artists engaged themselves to get disinterested joy from the play ending in creation of object d'art.'
From 31 August to 6 September Aakriti is sponsoring a show of the group 'Open Window' at Jehangir Gallery, Mumbai.
Between two GenNexts this, in short, is the outline of the activities of Aakriti Art Gallery.
- Mrinal Ghosh
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