CHENNAI: Contrast, an exhibition of paintings, sculptures, installations and products, will surely make one think about aspects of good and bad, light and darkness and the concepts of binary opposition. The exhibition is an assimilation of novelty, art and design, as the artists Ketna Contractor and Shakti Rane Bhattacharjee have shown a blend of their artistic fervour, coupled with the knowledge acquired from their education in Lifestyle Product Design from National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad.
Ketna says, “Contrast refers to the kind of rich tradition that we have and the kind of crimes that you see, which are really shocking. From the time a girl child is born till the time she becomes a woman, the kind of hardships that she goes through is what I have portrayed through my art work.”
Taking a different route from the conventionality of making sculptures in bronze and wood, she has incorporated steel, ceramic, fibre, coil and others. The artist has brought works which take one through a journey of haves and have nots, gruesome reality that girls and women face, and the reality that could have been. However, streaming from the first painting to the last, one realises that the portrayal is not completely pessimistic, a sense of hope and brighter future also is expressed in his works.
Shakti’s artworks are a reflection of her interaction with nature which is manifested in different ways. Her paintings are more of the abstract realm, using pastel colours and textures using acrylic on canson paper and other artefacts made of ceramics, clay and metal, which have nature as the inspiration.
The exhibition is on at the Lalit Kala Akademi, Greams Road, till December 21.