Darkness and foreboding permeated Aakriti Art Gallery’s show, Etched Silence, with birds as harbingers of grim news, death and desolation. Atin Basak’s solitary crows and sparrows share space with tangles of gaunt bones, fleshless anatomies and fossil skulls, offering a constant reminder of how fragile life is and where it all ends. Sharp talons protrude out of the bones, time and again, like the Grim Reaper’s scythe while crows prey upon their own. It is also telling that the common house sparrow co-exists with nature’s scavengers.

In this mostly monochromatic and mournful suite of works, Basak uses charcoal, pastel, graphite and ink to veil the birds in a sooty miasma. It is as though toxic carbon emissions that cling to the air have corroded all colour and hang low in dense, horizontal bands, stubbornly occupying the atmosphere where the birds were once free. Credit must be given to Basak’s imagination, which does not get repetitive even though he persists with a similar set of motifs etched in the same media in almost all the works.

There is no doubt about the artist’s skill — the finesse of Basak’s penmanship and the smooth blend of his pastel work speak for themselves. But what is really striking is Basak’s awareness and use of positive and negative space — areas in a work of art that include the subjects and the area around the subjects, respectively. This is what creates the drama in Basak’s etchings. Moreover, his choice of black and white allows him to utilize chiaroscuro to stunning effect. Basak also cleverly exploits the texture of the paper to add dimensionality to his etchings.