Celebrating Asian Art

Nandalal Bose

January 27-February 28
Curated by Debdutta Gupta
Nandalal Bose was perpetually drawing on cards and postcards. However, the pursuit of this activity was not just limited to him. He had instilled, both in his students as well as fellow professors, this practice of postcard drawing. Thus everyone, teachers and students alike, would remain engrossed in this vocation.

Most of Nandalal's cards are executed in monochrome-free from the bindings of colour. This approach set him apart from his Guru, Abanindranath Tagore. According to Abanindranth Tagore, lines are the containers within which colors are held. He was of the view that it was primarily through color that a painting could be brought to life. Nandalal, on the other hand, was extremely inquisitive about the many possibilities of lines. He found validation for his search in his encounter with Arai Kampo-leading him further towards his journey of monochromatic works.

It was his travels to East Asia that eventually paved the way for his huge body of work in brush and ink and strengthened his belief that black and white contain within them the potentialities of all the other colors. The printmaking techniques which became integral to the pedagogic practices of Kala Bhavana were also a result of Nandalal's travels to China and Japan. He had brought back with him various ukiyo-e prints and wood blocks.

In this current exhibition, Akar Prakar attempts to highlight how cards/postcards bring out tangents of Nandalal Bose that have remained unnoticed otherwise. This exhibition brings to light Nandalal’s departure from the earlier influence of Abanindranath Tagore to the influences that Ramakrishna, Rabindranath and Gandhi had on his art practice. It also highlights Nandalal’s search for spirituality within nature and the establishment of the Asian aesthetic mode. The exhibition thus showcases how all these tangents are present throughout his works and some of the best can be found in his cards and postcards.

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The Architectonics of Form: Scrolls by Ganesh Haloi

November 23, 2022-Janaury 10, 2023
“Haloi’s architectonics derives from the process of integrality. To experience and express nature as a whole. Synchronizing its lyricism, rhythm, resonance, structurality and poetics into a coherent formula…The void/space impregnated with dhvani, gives birth to this pulsating architectonic of form,” writes Jesal Thacker, exhibition curator.

The scrolls by Ganesh Haloi, are cartographic mappings of the layered sensations that have impressed upon him for decades. Beginning with the steady lyricism of Ajanta murals, resonant whispers of the varying landscapes, rhythmicity of the alpana forms, structurality of manmade interventions and the poetics of space. The architectonics of his visual forms are derived from and yet not limited by these layered impressions and the scrolls presented for the first time in this exhibition extends the survey into the dynamics of space as sound.

There are two primary aspects that trigger the perceptive construction of the forms in Haloi’s scrolls. One is the aspect of space as perceived by the Chinese artist, enhancing the void with the minimalistic spontaneous brush strokes that exemplifies the Daoist ideal of being in harmony with nature, devoid of the self. Dhvani, a theory of suggestions and revelations is the other binding element in Haloi’s composite forms and relations to space.

Haloi’s architectonics derives from the process of integrality. To experience and express nature as a whole. Synchronizing its lyricism, rhythm, resonance, structurality and poetics into a coherent formula. This process abstracts the physicality of forms, and its psychological translucency of meanings and sensations into a sonic algorithm—enfolding, unfolding, and refolding the space-time flux into a continuous act of abstraction, until the self-image is integral to a visual formula of sonic symbolism. The void/space impregnated with dhvani, gives birth to this pulsating architectonic of form.

Ganesh Haloi: A space left behind

Online Exhibition
D-43, First Floor
Defence Colony
New Delhi
Ganesh Haloi (born 1936) is a Kolkata-based artist, born in Jamalpur, Mymensingh (now in Bangladesh). He moved to Calcutta in 1950 following the Partition of India. The trauma of displacement left its mark on his work as it did on some other painters of his generation. Since then his art has exhibited an innate lyricism coupled with a sense of nostalgia for a lost world. In 1956, he graduated from the Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta. In the next year, he was appointed by the Archaeological Survey of India to make copies of Ajanta murals. Seven years later, Haloi returned to Calcutta. From 1963 until his retirement, he taught at the Government College of Art and Crafts. He has been a Member of The Society of Contemporary Artists, Calcutta since 1971.

He has participated in several group exhibitions in India, Documenta 14 at Athens & Kassel, Greece/Germany; Architecture of Life, at Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archives at BAM/PFA, Berkeley, California; 8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, Berlin; A Special Arrow Was Shot in the Neck, David Roberts Art Foundation, London; and over the edge, crossing the line five artists from Bengal at KNMA, Delhi.