Exhibition Review by Suneet Chopra
LTG Gallery, New Delhi, 12 to 18 September 1991
This is the artist’s first solo exhibition in Delhi, after a show in Calcutta in 1987 and in Bombay in 1990. Also, while the artist has applied himself to wide range of techniques, ranging from drawing and watercolours to fresco painting, he has wisely restricted his present show to graphics: woodcuts, etchings and lithographs, which he worked on at the MS University, Baroda, from 1988 to 1990.
This allows us to study the creations of a contemporary mind using a particularly apt technique that is modern and well-suited to demands of a more accessible art. Avijit’s essential approach also lends itself readily to modern expression, as it is based on the understanding that behind all genuine creative effort there is material, and even physical, strength. Perhaps this approach is further strengthened by the fact that he has been a national level athlete. In its most basic form, this power expresses itself in the shape of a bull. However, the vehicle of expression is not the long-horned heavy humped Brahmi bull of the Mohenjodaro seals, it is the shorthorn bull of Spanish bullfights, familiar to us from the works of a number of modern artists ranging from Pablo Picasso to Peter de Francia. So, one can, see how the reality and the stereotype have an ambivalent co-existence in his most spontaneous expression, which may also be treated as his most youthful response.
However, once he comes to grips with reality, these illusions lose their hold and sway. At the same time his images become more complex. For example, in a series of lithographs entitled Childhood, he mocks at the simple solution of the victory of good over evil by picturing a child armed with a sword astride a minotaur with angles flying overhead. The association is obvious. On the other hand, there is the image of the child on a tricycle, questioning an equally simplistic belief that technology always works in the interest of humanity and remains in its control.
It is in this context then that we can understand composite images of the man-animal, like one of minotaur quizzically looking at itself or of men with animal masks. This is obviously the first stage of self-realisation: that man is essentially a part of the animal world. However, as the animal mask indicates, the basic animal origin of man is used to divert this process from self-realisation to self-abnegation by treating the man-animal as a deity. Here the animal part the man becomes his oppressor in the form of ritual and he is alienated from his very being.
The alienation then leads to the evocation of relationship, that would otherwise have been the most natural things to expect. One sees the image of the smoker who dreams of a girl; or the City girl who is trapped in a veneer of sophistication and is essentially a poser or the less fortunate circus animals and acrobats who have to contort themselves to meet the demands of society.
He realizes that the situation is asymmetrical and this is reflected in his studies of one woman and two men; a direct contrast to the traditional image of Vishnu and his two consorts which was first used in Souza’s powerful works. In a more personalised version of this, we get this image of a bull with a broken horn.
However, his real coming to terms with the concept of power is his most recent image, that of the motor-cyclist, the man whose machine is an extension of himself and propels him into the future. Here, power is seen as man’s hold over material force and not an evocation of inborn animal spirits. Man the technologist comes to the forefront here as opposed to supernaturals with animal heads, bird-like wings, or fish-tails. And though the dominant imagery of Avijit Roy is Western, or more correctly of the Bombay group of artists, with the stylized eyes of Bengal’s folk art intruding in on it, he has been able to use it to create an image of his own that is mobile and reflects a young, person’s search to express his inner energy in a rational framework beyond the spontaneous. That is the basis of his promise.
Behind playful titles
Suneet Chopra observes that an eye for a different colour scheme or the sequence that some works make collectively, is necessary to read the artist’s message.
It could be an image from Minoan create or from a seal of Mohenjodaro with a black silhouette of a figure jumping over a bull. The colours are from the cave paintings at Lascaux. But this primaeval image is none of these. It is an etching at the first exhibition of a young Calcutta and Baroda trained artist now on show at the LTG Gallery in New Delhi.
His later from Baroda, Jeram Patel, sees in these primeval images a “subconscious mind which comes to the fore and takes you to an unknown symbolism of strength and beauty and cuts across the symbolic art of the world within. Roy’s lithographs have a potential ground to make us believe in what we initially reject and forces us to accept them through the images of our own inner self.”
So, the bulls, the minotaurs, animals, circus performer and portraits have a deeper significance and one has to follow subtle signs a slight change of position of different colour combination, or even the sequence that you begin to get the messages that hide behind playful titles and evocative images.
Particularly important is the sequence of works 12 to 15. Here we find a powerful bull, followed by a minotaur looking at his half bull half-man image of a young swordsman astride the minotaur, entitled ‘childhood’, followed by a man placing the bull’s head on a stand as a trophy.
In terms of imagery, we progress from animal force, to compromise (half-bull, half-man), to sub mission and finally to cooption as a trophy.
If we care to refer back to the words of Jeram Patel, we see ourselves confronted with an unpleasant reality. The whole process is exactly what a conventional being passess\ through in life. He compromises his powerful and vital self and becomes a composite being. Part contradictory part conformist, process which eventually can only take him to a total surrendered as in the childhood series.
And once that submission is secured then one is reduced to being trophy, a prized possession of an acquisitive society.
It is only then that the unpleasant truth dawns on one that this whole nasty process of emasculation of the human being is what the conventional call a successful career!
After going through the sequence of images even the most conventional person would feel an uneasiness, an uneasiness born of the irreverence with which Avijit treats our most acceptable ideals. But merely creating uneasiness is not enough. A deeper analysis of our relations must be made. And Avijit does it.
There is a series of works where he explores the relation of man with his environment. There are acrobats and circus animals trainers, figures who ride the half human minotaurs, oppressors whose debasement accompanies that of the creatures they oppress. Obviously they are not the solution to the problem.
Is there a solution at all, one asks? Yes, if we look at the highly original man motorcycle image, we see how man can extend himself far further with the use of technology than either by taming animals or enslaving fellow humans. Here, at last, is a form that allows one to extend oneself beyond one’s biological limits without involving coercive relations. This motorcycle rider does not need a chauffeur to be mobile. The man-motorcycle composite image is far more relevant to our present day life than the reproduction of elephant headed gods that goes on ad nauseum in our society.
The industrial image is emerging in the works of number of our artists. The names of Nalini Malani. Arpana Caur and Rummana Husain come immediately to one’s mind. To these one can add the recent work of Narendra Pal Singh from Bihar and Pramod Ganepatye.
But it is to the credit of Avijit that he has evolved and that is not man and machine but man machine and one can see the possibilities it opens up for an artist to explore relations that make man the master of his machine or those where he is merely instrumental in starting and stopping it.
However, it is not just the imagery that is worth notice but also flowing forms that pulsate in his work. He shows a facility with different techniques in graphic art. While lithographs predominate, there are fine etchings and woodcuts too, apart from a work that blends graphics and charcoal drawing. Also, he has worked on a series of glass paintings that he hopes to exhibit at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Bombay. The simplicity of his first show then, allows us to explore the nuances of expression, like the sequences we have analysed above and to know him as someone who has something to say. That he has chosen to limit what he exhibits here is far better than the sort of ploy that artists not so confident of their work use: blinding one with colours.
Also, as a contemporary artist he has chosen his medium well. Graphics are a medium that has made it possible to carry good art to a far wider section of people than ever before. And the acclaim the works of Anupam Sud, Kanchan Chander and Sukhvinder Singh have achieved in Delhi reflects how there is a climate of appreciation for this democratic form of art here. Nor was this accidental. Gallery owners like Dolly Narang of the Village Gallery, and now Siddheshwar Dayal of the LTG are working constantly towards getting good, inexpensive art into middle-class homes which seldom had more than knick-knacks to adorn them before. And now, a group of the Garhi artists themselves have formed a guild to promote graphics in the city. All these different attempts to make art a part of our daily lives reflect a climate of ferment in the city. Avijit’s contribution to it shows us that he is very much at home with the artistic upsurge developing in Delhi and that his powerful work will carry forward the momentum that has been growing over the last couple of years.