Only five works from five young artists. This measured step of Emami Art’s first gallery show in months, Fluid Boundaries, indicates how Covid caution has wisely put on hold big, bloated art events for now. The work underlining this reality is Snehasish Maity’s photographic oil of a man wearing a mask printed with medicines. But Debasis Barui shuns obvious messages in his installation which, indeed, has fluid boundaries for multiple hints to combine with one another. Its forlorn chairs mirror desolate indoor auditoria across the world. But beyond lies a sly comment on subservience to power which renders human presence invisible and voices soundless. An ominous edge comes from the tall contraption in the rear that looks suspiciously like a guillotine: could it be what led to the empty seats? At a more intriguing level, the work also recalls the sad, farcical, chillingly disconcerting metaphor of Ionesco’s Chairs, and melds the three planes of connotation into a complex of contingencies that mocks human vulnerability and volition.
It’s tempting to read Suman Dey’s image of an object shaped like a boat — a symbol of journeys and communication — as a bandaged boomerang. After all, hasn’t man’s reckless “progress” boomeranged as a pandemic? Adroit in metal-casting, Tapas Biswas makes light-weight copper resemble hefty bronze but, despite its suggestion of hollows, this work lacks his usual spirit of spry chatter. Finally, there’s Bholanath Rudra who evokes Surrealism without being in the shadow of any particular European master. His landscapes, often suffused with a poetic melancholy at first glance, have insidiously sinister little details. That’s what happens in You’re Under CCTV Surveillance, as well. The dark hill in the foreground is debris from felled trees, while a tiny figure at the bottom is lugging a hacked trunk. This immediately transforms dawn (or twilight) into a post-apocalyptic environment in which mating canines try to hide from CCTVs while engaged in a desperate act of procreation amid bleak devastation.
