Kala Sutra at Singapore unveils magic and caprice

Time of India

15-05-2025

Critic and Curator Uma Nair has been writing for the past 35 years on art and culture She has written as critic for Times of India and Economic Times. She believes that art is a progressive sojourn. She learnt by looking at the best shows in Washington D.C. and New York. As author her most important books are Reverie with Raza and Meditations on Trees by Ompal Sansanwal. LESS ... MORE
Kala Sutra, contemporary Indian art exhibition held annually in Singapore, showcased works by prominent Indian artists. This collaborative event between Phi Events and Sanchit Art Gallery had within a multiple mediums and materials and compositions that regaled. The 2025 edition, titled 'The Lineage of Light,' held at The Arts House in Singapore had two distinctive famed masters – Dipak Bannerjee, the pedagogue of Benares Hindu University and Neeraj Goswami, India's meditative Guru and modernist master. With them was the young figurative fantasia specialist Nandan Purkayastha.
Mystic symbolism of Dipak Banerjee
Dipak Banerjee's mixed media on canvas world is worthy of scrutiny. Banerjee was influenced by tantric symbolism and his understanding of geometry gave his works a cohesive formula of perfection which withstood the formulae of time and space.
He wove into his work the principles of 'Purusha Prakriti' and the traditional nuances of Indian miniature painting. His work Kali created in 2013 is a veritable masterpiece of magical elements in mythic rituals. The work is reflective of deep symbolism.
Banerjee graduated from Government College of Art, Kolkata. His first job was to collect different cultural motifs which he used to copy from the walls of temples in Kolkata. He went to Paris in 1965 on scholarship. He studied printmaking under William Hayter of Atelier 17 as well as the master printmaker Krishna Reddy.
Modern mandalas
This Kali painting looks like a modern mandala, a medley of geometry and symbolism. The tantric elements and the motifs of Indian miniatures are all meshed into meticulous variations that exude a deep spirituality within and without.
His command of a free fluidity of lines and the warmth of colour zones all become a precise permutation of in-depth accuracy and balance of choreography. His second work Vishnupada, has about it an antique aura that is unseen in today's world. This is a reflection of his understanding of cold and warm tones, the fluidity of lines and their linear graphics.
He said during one of his shows in Delhi in the 1990s, ' I am not a practicing tantric but I gradually moved to the tantric mode of self-realisation during my many explorations. In my collection of temple motifs, I was unconsciously gaining an album of tantric symbolic motifs like Purusha Prakriti, Vishnu, Sahasra, Nathji and Kundalini, which presented the spiritual dynamics of content in ancient Indian art. So you could say that the journey which began in Paris got its final direction through the lanes of Benaras.'
Attention to detail and the earth-toned colours talk about the spiritual and the sublime. Ornamentation in linguistic alphabets was the norm in his work. Miniature divinities settled into the cosmic realm of his design dynamics. These variations make his works iconic. Within the dictums of tantric symbolism, we see an intense expression of evocative elegance. His work was a quest that transcended beyond space and time, and was a communion with the Absolute.
Neeraj Goswami's meditative symbolism
Neeraj Goswami's canvases reaffirm his brilliance as an artist of rare timbre and compositional classicism. Goswami is a voracious reader and his work is born of contemplative idioms. In his early years in the 1990s he would speak of Kant's empirical analysis and philosophy. 'Kant wrote that reason itself is structured with forms of experience and categories that give a phenomenal and logical structure to any possible object of empirical experience.' But when we speak of the transitions in art these categories cannot be circumvented to get at a mind-independent world, but they are necessary for experiencing their natural behaviour and logical properties.
Bhraman a stroll in red space is about the treatment of the form. It brings on the fascinating facet of transcendental meditation and the underlying harmony of empirical experience. The second work is Musical Float. In both these works we see a certain sophistication of quietude, an intuitive intent, that tells us that the artist's gaze can be one of admiration and appreciation and deep attention to details. Goswami has over the past 40 years presented the allure of gesture as well as the perfection of poise in his manner of fusing form and colour in prismatic indices to tell us that the human form is an enduring and eternal form which is also deeply powerful as a visual lexicon. The manner of divisional dynamics as well as the fragmentary felicity both become imperative studies in precious observations in the hands of this contemporary master.
Nandan Purkayastha's earthsongs
Detailed and stylistically nuanced the canvasses of Nandan Purkayastha are an integration of a contemplative practice of drawing from imagination as well as his own proficiency in techniques of controlled contours within the frame of his own fantasia. Botanica and The Eternal Cosmos are two top notch creations that grab your gaze for form and fervour. These two canvasses exhibit the arduous labour that entails the cultivation and refinement of his own sensibility. We also observe the totality of an artist's passion for drawing as well as painting muralesque works that celebrate human and ecological hues.Botanical and biological elements come floating into his frames. Humans and animals and birds and textural terrain all flit and swim freely in his aggregation of beings born of the spirit of harmony.
This pair of paintings exudes a visual as well as intellectual vibrancy and attraction which, by far, exceeds their modest scale. Last year during his solo show in Delhi at the Bikaner House, Nandan said:
' Drawing as well as painting for me is more than intuitive as a journey, for me it is a deep rooted quest where my figures of humans as well as animals and birds are not just literal figures, but they are imbued with an essence of being or meaning born of mythological moorings .'
These three artists at Kala Sutra in Singapore, used a configuration of intuitive embellishments, deciphering and adjusting their own observations and experiences into expressive paintings, born of years of thought as well as contemplative idioms.
Images: Sanchit Art Gallery
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