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Rajiv Bhattacharjee’s ‘Spaces in Transition’ curated by Anirudh Chari
To quote the curator: “through this project, Rajib Bhattacharjee offers a highly diverse visual examination of the way artworks can constitute a symbolic resource upon which to draw in order to navigate the changing topography of our urban spaces.” Rajiv emphatically stresses: “we are living in an age of rapid transformation, this is an age of socio-economic, political, scientific, geographic and ecological transformation.” He is very convincing, because he believes he is here to “exchange dialogue” between art and society.
We literally see on the walls of Gallery Range that Bhattacharjee is indeed a part of the whole process of the changing scenario. He has engaged with an incredibly broad range of ideas and images relating to the city and changing technologies. But how did Bhattacharjee succeed? He has made adequate use of digital imagery and added acrylic, crayons and charcoal to convey his feverish excitement on to the archival paper. His strokes are not merely bold, they a frenzy of lines: diagonal, vertical and horizontal, all competing with each other in creating urban chaos. Within this chaotic and traumatic morass he builds as he destroys. His creation destruction is a gestalt of construction. There is a maddening calm that pervades the deconstruction of urbanization disguised to the viewer: a Shiva dances his ‘tandav’.
The fifteen-minute video film was very pertinent. The silent machines, the active cranes, the menacing jaws and jagged teeth that devoured masonry and metamorphosed the urban underbelly of a city were the hub of a continually changing topography. The relevance of Rajib’s work is obvious. We see construction all over the city, encroaching at a maddening pace and the mind that can add meaning to the chaos is a cog in the wheel of life like attaching a label to a plant in the horticultural garden and enriching the meaning of visual beauty.
"Spaces in Transition" at RANGE Gallery, 24th January-14th February 2017.
Address: RANGE Gallery, 54 Lower Range, between Beckbagan and Gurusaday Road. Ph: 9830049825/033-64990248. fb page : RANGE. rangegallery.in
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