Far away from hustle and bustle of the big cities, prominent artists are giving expression to their creativity by conjuring up amazing images on canvas at an ongoing four-day art camp here.
City-based ‘Off the Wall’, the art gallery in Sakchi inaugurated the third edition of Confluence with 20 artists from Jamshedpur and other parts of the India participating. The camp will continue till December 13. With an aim to make art popular and affordable in the steel city, Off the Wall carries year-long activities.
The participating artists include Bijay Biswal from Nagpur, Brajmohan Arya from Jabalpur, Sanjoy Banerjee from Calcutta, Vl Mevada and Chandrasekhar Kale from Ujjain; Ravi Shankar, Anil Kumar and Sunil Vishwakarma from Varanasi; CR Hembram from Gumla, Paban Roy from Deoghar and Haren Thakur, Sharmila Thakur, Praween Karmakar, Tarak Shankar Das from Ranchi. The participating artists from Jamshedpur are Mukta Gupta, Prabir Shaw, Santanu Dinda, Sunita Dinda, Raja Mukhi and Swarup Kumar Dutta.
Divya Taneja owner of the gallery said, “Confluence presents yet another opportunity to bring practitioners of art and art lovers on one platform, to create a deeper engagement with art in this industrial city.” “At Confluence - III, all mediums, themes and genres, find enthusiastic and admiring acceptance. There’s only one yardstick — quality — which our curator and participating artist Prabir Shaw has been particular about,” she added.
She went on to say that from Indian mythology to contemporary abstract, complex themes, from expressionism to minimalism, from landscapes to figurative works, expect everything on display to mesmerise the audience.
At the show, one can catch Haren Thakur’s pithy, witty and minimalist takes, Bijay Biswal’s definitive “Wet Platform” series, Brajmohan Arya’s complex depiction of man-woman relationships, Ravi Shankar’s passionate works on human desires and endeavours, Anil Kumar’s expressionist vision of Varanasi and landscapes, Sunil Kumar’s skilled imaging of human figures, Mukta Gupta’s geometrical yet lyrical human figures, Sunita and Santanu Dinda’s Indian style paintings and many more. As in themes, so in mediums, from watercolour to ink to oil to mixed media, expect diversity in colour and texture.
A parallel exhibition too will be started from Friday. Curator Prabir Shaw said that for four days of colour and imagination, the artists will emerge out of their creative cocoons of isolation to engage among themselves and with visitors at large to showcase their internal monologues and dialogues. For visitors, including art collectors, art lovers and the masses, it will be a rare experience of seeing some of India’s finest creative minds at work.