Metamorphosing art
10 Dec 2013 4:33 AM IST
Artiste’s current collection includes three-dimensional books. He uses old books gluing the pages together, layering it with rice paper, excavating shapes out of the paper, adding objects until the final object is a book only in that the covers are opened to reveal another universe held within them.
He collects old keys that open no locks, locks that are no longer capable of securing anything, watches that keep no time, old books that have spent the knowledge contained in them, in flea markets and street shops in lost alleyways. These objects are transformed into motifs that appear often in his work. While it may be that he attempts to evict ritualised meaning from objects, it is through the interplay of simultaneous remembering and forgetting that these images confound and seduce the viewer.
Samanta uses fragile rice paper and gouache, materials that bear traces of their history in Shantiniketan and in the work of Abanindranath Tagore. However, he uses pigment instinctively and for its potential to render visual poetry. One could view the compositions in terms of negative and positive spaces; areas that occupy and others that contain. Every part of the image, these backdrops as it were, are as integral a part of the imagery as the objects that are composed within them.
In words of Samanta ‘This new body of work includes three-dimensional books. I see these books as a form, both as artefact and as medium. It becomes a process of metamorphosis as their old identity and content no longer existed.’
When: Till 12 January, 2014, 10 am onwards
Where: Gallery Espace, New Friends Colony
He collects old keys that open no locks, locks that are no longer capable of securing anything, watches that keep no time, old books that have spent the knowledge contained in them, in flea markets and street shops in lost alleyways. These objects are transformed into motifs that appear often in his work. While it may be that he attempts to evict ritualised meaning from objects, it is through the interplay of simultaneous remembering and forgetting that these images confound and seduce the viewer.
Samanta uses fragile rice paper and gouache, materials that bear traces of their history in Shantiniketan and in the work of Abanindranath Tagore. However, he uses pigment instinctively and for its potential to render visual poetry. One could view the compositions in terms of negative and positive spaces; areas that occupy and others that contain. Every part of the image, these backdrops as it were, are as integral a part of the imagery as the objects that are composed within them.
In words of Samanta ‘This new body of work includes three-dimensional books. I see these books as a form, both as artefact and as medium. It becomes a process of metamorphosis as their old identity and content no longer existed.’
When: Till 12 January, 2014, 10 am onwards
Where: Gallery Espace, New Friends Colony
Next Story
