William Wordsworth’s statement ‘spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions’ holds meaning for any work of art. And this was once again proved by all the painters participating in an art exhibition being held at the Lalit Kala Akademi here as a tribute to prolific artist late Byomakesh Mohanty. The exhibition, held on the occasion of his third death anniversary began on Thursday.
Organised by the Artists Association of Odisha, which was floated by Byomakesh, the exhibition sees participation of artists from within the State and SAARC countries like Sri Lanka, Nepal and Afghanistan.
On a patch of dry land with deep cracks, sits a small aquarium with fishes and other living creatures in it. The aquarium has a large tap through which, a little sparrow tries to drink a few drops of water. The gloomy yet colourful piece of art ‘Misutilisation of Water’ is artist Soumyaranjan Pattnaik’s take on depleting water sources in the environment due to faulty polices of human beings.
Sudhanshu Sutar’s untitled work in watercolour explores the struggles, aspirations and disappointment of a large rural population of the country as they face urbanisation. Biranchi Sahu’s large acrylic canvas on ‘Blackbucks in Odisha’ is attractive and so is Parameswar Samal’s creation based on giraffes. Many of the paintings carry a subtle sarcasm taking a dig at the laidback attitude of people in reacting to social issues.
Violence on women is a subject that Lipishree Nayak depicts. Using the colour red, she portrays the increasing number of rapes in a society that has failed to protect its women. Senior artist Sangita Patnaik in her work ‘Blue Mood’ uses motifs of Patachitra to draw a relationship between modernity and traditionalism. Another interesting work is that of Pratap Jena. Titled ‘Division’, he tries to show the boundaries made up of plants and dry twigs to create a partition between houses in villages. To add colour to the green ‘Divisions’, he has used Pipili motifs in his painting.
Works of senior artists like DN Rao, Siba Panigrahi, Baldev Maharatha and Dipti Prakash Mohanty are also on display.
An interesting section in the exhibition is paintings by students of Arena Multimedia, New Delhi, and those from SAARC countries. While youngsters like Sandeep Kumar, Deepak Singh, Vikram Singh, Anuj Singh, Animesh Kumar, Nikhil Kumar, Sumeet Saxena work on youths and their varied interests like bikes, social media and even the various shades of Delhi, an interesting take on environment is presented by Kuku Miri, all students of Arena Multimedia. Kuku draws a dry dead tree with little umbrellas affixed in every branch waiting for rains. His work is titled ‘Still to come’. Similarly, Milan KC from Nepal draws Buddhist flags and Mansoor from Afghanistan depicts the Bamiyan Buddhas that were destroyed by Taliban leader Mullah Omar in 2001.
‘’Art is always considered to be a weapon of liberation and it is vividly explained through the paintings of these artists. But the pitiable factor is that the artist does not get the same recognition as his or her paintings do. Our attempt is primarily to pool in all the creative elements and provide a platform to express,’’ explains artist Meenaketan Pattnaik, who has also exhibited his work on ‘Monkeys’ in the power game.
The exhibition continues till June 24.