Artist weaves works of wonder

The colour scheme is very important in his art. Just as a dressmaker or a designer leaves gaps in his creations and sews the rest with threads on variegated fabrics, his paintings leave behind white spaces and fill in the remaining portions with colours on canvas or on paper. “But this attempt was deliberate,” reveals the artist in discussion, Anjan Modak.

“Like a weaver, I have intertwined blacks with whites like a net and added other hues too. The white and grey sections signify the elements that I have either overlooked or ignored but have surrendered to the courts of audience-judgment. My viewers must feel free to derive their own conclusions. That’s it,” he explains the title of his ongoing solo exhibition ‘White, Black and More’, at Kolkata’s spick and span Emami Chisel Art gallery. The show is on till August 22 from 11 am to 7 pm, except Sundays.

An array of 60 wood and fibre-framed art-specimens is grabbing eyeballs of discreet aficionados at the venue. Drawing appreciation from all quarters, Modak’s thought-provoking works invite a moment of true introspection about us and our socio-natural environment.

An exposition-cum-sale, the paintings are pegged between Rs 3,000 and Rs 60,000.Varying between a standard A4 paper-size to as big as 4and ft X 3 ft, the oeuvre comes in mixed media ranging from water tones, pen-and-ink sketches to graphite and pastel shades on paper. However, there are two acrylic works done on canvas.

Consisting of figurative compositions steeped in with semi-abstract elements, Modak tries to capture the reality-bites as well as the desirable, which is not always easy to attain. “We live in times of blind consumerism. Society belongs to brands and status symbols. But our purse-power doesn’t always allow us to enter those mushroomed plush malls and swanky stores to satiate out material wants,” says the affable painter who aims to arrest these disturbances in human life.

One of his titles, ‘Land Developer’, depicts the rampant promoter culture in cities with rapidly growing real-estate businesses everywhere. A deified human figure standing right in the middle could be a distorted, modern image of a land shark who thinks himself to be great and almighty as God or no less than the iconic Vishwakarma, the lord of construction and architecture, according to Hindu mythology.

Bestowed with multiple hands, his two hind limbs are like coiled serpents upholding tools of tilling and labour, which are like an axe, hammer and a spade. One of his forehands lifts up a mound of muddy soil with pillars being erected from its surface, thus denoting high-rise buildings. The other front-hand rests on a pet tiger’s head sitting beside him. The carnivore could be his consort or an aura of royal awe and swagger that he purposely spreads around him.

With knee-high zipped boots, tight breeches, a full-sleeve torso-hugging top, a French-cut beard and a fixed gaze, he seems that ever-zealous hunter, ready to strike hard and make the kill. “A sense of greed is evoked through promoter-raj in the minds of prospective purchasers and investors in the property industry,” opines the talented alumnus of prestigious Rabindra Bharati University, where he graduated from the visual arts department with specialisation in painting and, later on, mastered in fine arts from the same varsity in 2009.

The dry, leafless tree behind him is like a halo and the carpet beneath his feet is like his pedestal. The tree, conjured up in grey tone with the help of graphite on Canson paper via an erasing technique, shows the fading away of greenery in the wake of deforestation to ring in urbanisation.

An earthen-oven placed on the foreground in the left corner reminds the viewers of our old method of cooking meals at home or at roadside eateries and in food-stalls. “Now here lies a vein of dichotomy. The choking fumes emitted out of a traditional desi chulha causes pollution on the one hand. So ideally, its usage should be stopped and the product eradicated from all manufacturing units. But on the other hand, every citizen can’t afford a gas-cylinder in his kitchen to ward off the harmful smoke issuing from an earthen oven. Hence, the suffering is inevitable and there’s a clash of conscience,” enlightens the artist on his profound piece of painting.

Another frame, ‘Picking Droplets’, shows a little girl playfully plucking raindrops from a mass of cloud floating overhead with a fruit-pulling stick. A dull barren hillock vacantly stares in the background. She seems to enjoy her innocent game. On a basic level, this is a gist of the painted tale. But if you delve deeper, you would discover a strain of satire flowing through it. The underlying essence gives way to droughts occurring from scanty rainfall, followed with farmers’ suicides across different parts of India. Therefore, water-conservation is highly imperative and the present crisis is still the tip of a massive iceberg.

The untitled painting portrays the recurrent tiger imagery with a well-dressed city-bred young gentleman sporting a spiky hair and a slim goatee, sharing music with the animal through his ear-plugs. The painting is done out of water tints on Brustro paper. “If you are connected to a wild animal, chances are that its ferocity may get transmitted into you. Instead of taming the big cat, you may get conquered yourself in return, who knows ” he warns. “Mankind is anyway enslaved by its seven intrinsic deadly sins. On top of that, the very congested and claustrophobic atmosphere that he dwells in, forces the depravities to crawl up to the fore. You see, our historical heritage evinces lyricism and rhythm in our art and culture. There is song and dance plus a spiritual quality witnessed in the relics and the excavated ruins of our ancient caves, temples, monuments and civilisations. If you visit the sites of Ajanta Ellora and Hampi, you would know what I mean,” he says.

The painting ‘Life in Noman’s Land’ talks about hordes of helpless people living on the periphery, who always struggle for an identity. They silently and stealthily sneak through the fences of barbed wires in the dark of night with a lantern in hand in search of an address, work, food or other desperate business which is most of the time labeled illegal. Often large groups of families migrate to another country with women and children pushed to the edge of peril. They are often called encroaching settlers. The picture is delineated on acid-free paper.

One work, ‘Flesh Eater’, truly reflects a devastating theme in consonance with its name. Two figures appear on the canvas, with the seemingly ‘goddess of universe’ riding upon an accomplice below, who resembles a poacher trying to dig into the earth in order to slay worms and insects with a scissored left hand. On the left leg is a sock of tiger-skin and the posture is that of a quadruped, a four-footed animal. The deity holds an inverted pigeon — a symbol of peace, truce and love — in her hand which two white-winged Cupids flying in the sky above, target to murder with their arrows. This is a true representation of the contemporary world where love falls prey to hatred, violence and jealousy.