All in an another way

All art enthusiasts can head on to Kumar Gallery as it brings to us the show Confluence of Consciousness, the recent paintings of Shampa Sircar Das. 

Das uses philosophy and aesthetics, encompassing a layers of consciousness and realised awareness through individual and shared journeys. The work is based upon imagination, fuelled and inspired by mythology rich and complex in Buddhist and Vedic pantheons. As in sacred or spiritually based art, the image assists a viewer, creator, and participant, to shed his/her separateness and join in a broader cosmic dance of realisation.

Th canvases are over-laid with adapted Himalayan imagery which although resonant and in parts quite beautiful lacked a cohesion and sense of wholeness which appear in these paintings. Das creates layers of paint with brushes and rollers upon her canvas. Abstract particles and symbols of the belief she refers to as many hidden things as in life. 

In her words, form later emerges and blocks of colour assume shape, to reveal a fluid, tangeld work of intricate dimension. Of plural existence, such has become fused, these worlds retain shared essence, as in the Vedic maxim, Aham Brahmasmi (I am Brahman), base of the principle of adavaita (nonduality), and the fundamental belief in the inherent residence of Buddhahood in every living being. Transience and a sense of movement in these paintings touch the viewer with the play between form and emptiness. The patterned textures resemble delicate sutras on silk, with glimmers of concrete reference and beneficent beings.

Parts of world both known and perceived, such manifestations question what is equal in this embrace of immanence and naturalism. Her work of vajras, golden deer, mudras and mandalas, ephemeral beings and textile-like patterns like continuous energy, reflect the limitations of conceptual reality. 

One work in this exhibition bears accord with a Chinese Tang dynasty Buddha has been documented over the last three years by the most highly developed 3D technology to depict the intricate carvings across the body of the life of Buddha.  As a distinct voice, Das visions are replete with shunya, purusha, and the five elements (tattva), denoting the natural powers which surround one, and the myriad levels which guide one to higher climes.