Life in lines - Gazing into the mind of masters at Galleri Kaya

It is difficult to pay homage to drawings, as it predates even civilisation.

Samin Sabababdnews24.com
Published : 26 Nov 2015, 03:56 PM
Updated : 27 Nov 2015, 04:17 AM

One may never find out what compelled cave-dwellers to draw. But it is somewhat understandable when seen under the light of the human desire to keep record of their lives as they see it.

Galleri Kaya has dedicated its latest exhibition ‘Drawings’ to this most primitive technique of capturing visions or fleeting thoughts.

Nine celebrated artists - Murtaja Baseer to Mohammad Iqbal - have presented 49 unique and contemporary works, “going beyond what we traditionally understand as drawings,” said its Director Goutam Chakraborty, whose own iconic works feature in the exhibit.

“Every media has drawings underneath, like blueprints, but they can also exist individually,” he said when asked where drawing ends and another medium begins.

Another beautiful fact appeared as a surprise when, State Minister for Power Nasrul Hamid, who inaugurated the ceremony, was introduced as a painter! “Some believe art and politicians cannot be a good match, but I’ve had the fortune of learning under a master,” he said in his speech.

“We politicians have to speak a lot, but we would like to see a lot too. Government offices used to house many works of art, but that has faded, I hope the practice will soon be revived.”

But the curiosity to know what the minister draws was unquenchable. “I do not practice art for art’s sake, I do it for myself. I do works in watercolour, acrylic … they’re in my house, never exhibited,” he told bdnews24.com. His subjects, he said, were “Any figures, human, it could be any figure”.

When asked about his source of inspiration, the minister in a flash said. “Van Gogh.” It is, then, natural to assume that Hamid’s works must bear brilliant colours of the Impressionists, but he seemed to be in between, “Dark but bright too.”           

Kaya has displayed five works by the master Murtaja Baseer, drawn in pen or ink on paper, one particularly striking to the viewer. Untitled and just called ‘Drawing-2’, it shows a woman. Baseer fitted her into his cubic form, as tightly as she seems to hold up her hair.

“He first drew her in 1960 and signed it the way he used to before. Then in 2012, he decided to improvise, and there is always room for that in drawing,” Chakraborty said.

He inserted light into the cubes and divided the paper by colouring her petticoat and the floor with shades of pastel pink and the wall behind her with shades of blue. “He signed it again, next to his old one, but this time with his new style of signature.”

Artist Chandra Shekhar Dey is oddly conscious of the lives of his unknown, urban neighbours, he told bdnews24.com. The subjects, drawn mostly as mixed media on paper, give testimony to that.

“Think of it like this … when you wake up in the morning, you have an unconscious knowledge of what people you don’t know but live around you must be doing or feeling.” Ornate and complex, Dey crowned the buildings of Dhaka’s Baridhara DOHS with massive female heads, letting his unconscious mind flow out into the paper.

“I like innocent mistakes,” said Dey, “The cups you’ve pointed out on the top of the women’s head and some buildings are meant to be containers for knowledge, like water tanks are for water.”

Sadly, there seemed to be nothing in them.

The preoccupation with the female figure and their many portrayals comes at a halt with Ratan Mojumder. Called Nature -5, two faces stare out of the white paper. A stiff, slightly irritated human figure, drawn in ink, stands with arms folded. The left half is female and the other, male.

“Both male and female figures are integral in drawing my idea of nature. There is security in my work as I’ve consciously removed anything that may be felt as violent.

A few translucent grass flowers orbit the androgynous human. Mojumder’s stress on security and less-is-more approach is soothing to the eyes. The outline of a huge breast with a dark nipple in the background of a female figure with a dove again ties her innately to nature in Mojumder’s Nature-2.

“Well, they’re inseparable,” says Mojumder.

Ranjit Das, on the other hand, has skillfully portrayed female figures engulfed in poverty.

Artist Kazi Rakib has already admitted his love for water in any form whatsoever. He draws the surface of a calm river with continuous lines by pencil, knowing just where to bend, just where to stop. 

But the minimalist master’s mind is also bound by birds, appearing colourfully in all possible media – acrylic, glass or watercolour. They usually stare blankly or sit in solitude but his sketches now show a different aspect of his imagination over this beloved subject. Black with ruffled feathers, they were no longer timid or innocent, but ferocious and wild.   

It is somewhat in line with what Western art historians have been saying about what drawings mean to the artist.

Andrew Graham-Dixon says artists think in pictures. In a special series for the BBC ‘Secrets of Drawing’, he poignantly points out that drawings puts the viewer in, “direct contact with the conscious mind and sometimes disconcertedly with the unconscious one”.

“That’s one of the strengths of drawing, the way in which it makes us think about what the artist is thinking. It’s a media that speaks more fresh and directly; also immediately about what goes on in the artist’s mind … who can pluck beautiful things out of thin air,” he continues.

It does make sense of Chakraborty’s continual portrayal of elephants in various forms, as a symbol of strength or the saintly Mother Teresa by her historical role in taking the responsibility for the 1971 war children - ‘the most helpless in the world’- in the artist’s own word, has forever imprinted her deeds on his mind.

In broader use, drawing goes hand in hand with learning.

The anatomically detailed drawings and studies by Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci has contributed to modern surgery, paving the way for heart surgeons who call a life-saving procedure – Da Vinci’s cut, the series reveals.     

Shishir Chakraborty’s almost orange acrylic canvas reveals the artist’s strong hold over the levels of his consciousness. In one among the four drawings at Kaya’s exhibit, it looks as if two humans have been buried in the wilderness – with an astonished tiger or lion cub, a bird with a half-eaten fish.  

Their faces, however, are above the ground and foliage – surreal and drawn in his signature bold, uninterrupted lines. Pulled out of the unconscious, the subjects were arranged lovingly and consciously, or so it seemed.      

‘Drawings’, sponsored by the ADN Group, has been on display at Uttara’s Gallery Kaya from Nov 13 to Nov 27.