14 Sculptors and the Aesthetic of Silence: Samokal Art Gallery, Kolkata, 19th May-2nd June, 08

22nd May, 2008, Kolkata: Paul Virilio, the Director of the Ecole speciale d’Architecture in Paris wrote: “Silence no longer has a voice. It LOST ITS VOICE half a century ago…The voices of silence have been silenced” (Art and Fear, Paul Virilio). This aesthetic of silence which Virilio classified as a standard feature of contemporary modern art has much to do with the scientific development of multimedia generated aesthetics of disappearance. That contemporary art is pitiless was foreboded by Camus even in the 20th century before the gizmos and the interactive feed-back of virtual reality hit the market. (This pitiless century, the twentieth.- Albert Camus). So, Virilo’s scathing criticism of contemporary art in general arose from a feeling that artists have traded themselves into an endless freedom of artistic expression which is anti-nature or counter nature in its character. The gradual elimination of nature as the theme of contemporary art is more a cause for deep concern than a mere pronouncement of art for art’s sake. Had Virilio visited the art exhibition at Samokal Art Gallery which has brought together works of the best sculptors of Bengal, he would have found real delight in the aesthetics on display amidst white walls symbolizing piety. Right from Bipin Goswami’s Bird sculpted in bronze to Niranjan Pradhan’s mytho-poeic Ganesha sculpted in wood to Gopinath Roy’s Face impression experimented in synthetic oxloid to a more iconic Mother and Child in bronze by Subroto Paul ending with a mise-enscène- of Shankar Ghosh’s Waiting in bronze, all these works are more about the natural relations of existence and the artistic experience it offers. The themes range from mythical to secular and domestic with a penchant for natural simplicity and harmony. Chandan Roy’s Symphony in bronze has two characters oppositely faced but bound to each other by harmony and cadence of stylistic expression and architectural ideation. Similarly, Somnath Chakraborty’s Card Player is a museum piece – its sculpted like an old artifact that gave it a dimension of a historical time. Such an aesthetic display is ethical in value- it revives in us the fire of a living life at the heart of nature because we must put out the excess rather than the fire as heraclitus has warned. The works of sculpture remain silent; this silence doesn’t disappear into a meaningless abstraction of meaning and its crisis as in modern art. It appears again and again as the “thisness” (haecceitas) of creation through which both the artist and the viewer could know directly the individual and particular objects. That Manik Talukdar’s Lady-I sculpted in a coyingly standing posture is different from the same feminine subject of a reclining women in Chandan Roy’s Relaxing, tells much about the differentials of artistic experience and its stylistic expression. They are all about what Gerard Manley Hopkins’ coined the inscape and instress of creation, the former being the characteristics that give the object its uniqueness and the later the impulse that holds the inscape in the mind of the viewer. All these works silently correspond to the beauty of human creation and the grace of nature.

The exhibition “14 Eminent Sculptors” takes place at Samokal Art Gallery, Kolkata from 19th May, 2008 to 2nd June, 2008, 4-8 pm daily.

For more info, please contact Joy Roy Choudhury at artvantage.uk@gmail.com
Or call at : +44 75073806595 (UK)/ +91 9830067159 (IND)