‘Life after Dread’ is an inner dialogue artist Arijit Chakraborty had during the pandemic

Rajkumari Sharma Tankha

Nero Art Hub is holding a solo exhibition by artist Arijit Chakraborty, titled Life after Dread. Curated by the gallery founder Ranbir Rathi, this is Chakraborty’s first solo show, and has 11 works – mainly oil on canvas with some of the works having texture paste, oil pastel, water soluble graphite, waste recycled paper etc as supporting or base medium.

The artworks displayed at the show are a part of a bigger collection expressing all the things the artist experienced in life depicted with surrealistic and impressionist motifs. Each work took about a month to complete, except the work Ground Zero which, he says, took about three months. “On the other hand the diptych The Silencing took a long time to conceptualise but I painted those two in a total time of five days or so,” says Chakraborty.

Talking about how he conceptualised these works, he says, “It is all about the dialogues – personal, social, political and psychological – I had with myself for a long time but never could decide whether to bring those out or not. During the pandemic lockdown, I had my free fall and realised that nothing matters more than my own voice as an artist.”

Explaining the colours he chose to make these works, he says. “Black & white works are direct while the colours bear different meanings than those usually around us. Green doesn’t mean vegetation and blue necessarily doesn’t mean the sky or water.”

“Human lives attract me most, particularly the faces,” he says adding that he uses easy-to-understand motifs and anecdotes as these can give clear messages.

Visibly happy with the response his art is getting, Chakraborty says, “My idea of creating art is to keep it lucid and within the grasp of my audience in terms of concepts and their expression. It is a pleasure that most visitors so far have been able to understand the basic concept of my art.”

While the show will be over by this month-end, Chakraborty has already started work on his next set of artworks of landscapes in abstract format and also small sizes – all of which are based on the history of experiences of war and atrocities on human lives “in my family and my own fantasies of landscapes which I heard, read about or seen on documents or films”.

“This apart, I am also looking for an appropriate gallery for presenting my work on erstwhile Shahjahanabad, which includes photographs, poetry and written texts depicting the contemporary area of Shahjahanabad and it’s reminiscent of a city,” he says.

Interestingly, the artist’s introduction to the world of art is not a foray, rather a long hesitant process which began in childhood. Considering he is a Bengali, born into a family of ‘serious art practitioners’ this isn’t unexpected at all. Growing up, he learnt different art forms like singing, playing musical instruments, painting and acting while also completing his academic learning with a graduation in Economics and Political Science. In 2007, he got an inner call to delve into professional photography. After a few years of working as a photographer, he did a PG diploma in fine art and began his journey into the world of drawing and painting.

Chakraborty hasn’t looked back ever since!

The show is on till January 27, at Nero Art Hub, Amrit Nagar, New Delhi