PALETTE ART GALLERY PRESENTS A SOLO SHOW BY APURBA NANDI
12 Aug- 11 Sep 2021
Concept Note by the Artist, Apurba Nandi
People moving in all directions; people going somewhere or nowhere
I was intrigued by this landscape when I was in the process of being part of the city like Mumbai. I was waiting for Mumbai to absorb me. Waiting becomes an act of ‘looking’ at this city. At times plainly looking at un-known people is cathartic. I kept looking at people till they got reduced into a pattern of heads, pattern of hands, of eyes, of sound; the sound that becomes a common humming.
Placing one figure after the other, the work morphs into a formation of people. For me these formations become an enquiry into the order of society and at the same time it enquires our own sense of existing in the social fabric.
Text written by Premjish Achari
The images of the multitude in Apurba Nandi’s solo show captivate the voyage of a mysterious collective of faceless masses, towards uncertain destinations. Multitude becomes the important protagonist of his new body of works. We witness the flow of innumerable human bodies on the canvas, concealing the markers of caste and religion, refusing to be categorised into any social and religious strata.
Instead of representing the plight of individuals or small groups of people, the artist uses the collective body as a significant visual element in his works to comment on contemporary urbanism. Nandi aesthetically translocates these mundane visuals of human confluence into a new painterly landscape.
As his viewers, it becomes difficult for us to pinpoint the exactness of this particular geographic terrain or location. This visual phenomenon of collective bodies huddled together and moving from all directions could be part of the urban life of Mumbai, Shanghai, New York, Sao Paulo or anywhere else in the world. It could be a repetitive daily experience from any of these places.
As a painter, Nandi has attempted to minutely represent this reality to reinforce the belief that despite our geographical differences, our urbanisms share certain universal characteristics. Nandi reconstructs the way we look at the urban crowd in his unique visual language. His images allow us to examine the received understandings about the crowd or the mob. In some works, we also see Nandi’s faceless multitude formed by the ordinary people, juxtaposed against the powerful, hinting at the perennial tussle of power. We walk through a landscape where faceless conjoined bodies lead us to stories of the lives of the many. His images present a vantage, over which the thoughts of each viewer can unfurl.
Each viewer can undertake their separate courses to uncertain destinations, along with the movement of the multitude, imagining themselves as part of the landscape.
This solo show of Apurba Nandi presents an excellent opportunity to ask the following significant questions on contemporary urbanism: How could we aesthetically negotiate the urban chaos? How do contemporary artists think about the multitude and its agency? Nandi’s concerns align with the inquiries of the long lineage of artists from both the modern and contemporary periods, who have attempted to grasp the fleeting experience of the city.
Image Courtesy: Palette Art Gallery
The Exhibition can also be viewed online at:
http://paletteartgallery.com/exhibition/future/works/details/6574
