A repertoire of Kolkatta based artist Subhabrata Nandi’s artwork is exhibited in North Gallery, academy of fine arts, Kolkata from February 6 to 12. The exhibition, titled Silent Cacophony showcased a series of paintings, based on the disintegration of urban landscape. The exhibition explores the confusing states of mind of people living in overcrowded spaces and the complexities of urban life. The show was inaugurated in the presence of Samik Bandyopadhyay, Bimal Kundu and Jayanta Sengupta.
A visual artist with over 25 years experience Nandi’s style is abstract. As an expressionist, non-narrative paintings dominate his work, largely centred on urban and industrial imagery.
Through silent cacophony, he studies the nature of suffocating structural urbanisation and how it damages the finer sense of human qualities. His paintings view urbanisation as a monstrous apocalypse underlined by the muted colours like grey and black which dominates his paintings. City is viewed as a dystopian, psychological space rather than as a neutral setting.
Nandi’s paintings have dark, fragmented urban motifs, evocative of solitude amid the chaos of city life. By employing an oxymoron ‘silent cacophony’, the title underscores the inescapable paradox of city life— overflowing with movement and chaos yet still isolating at the same time— a contradiction reflected in his works. His compositions also evade a clear focal point, drawing the attention in a restless search across the space mirroring the titles quest.
Harbours, dockyards, city skylines, disintegrating or vulnerable building structures, construction monsters, industrial seascape share space in Nandi’s canvas. Instead of presenting a realistic image, Nandi creates a symbolic city that reflects the modern anxieties. The viewer is pushed into an uneasy, unstable and overcrowded terrain.
Even in the overwhelming presence of the ominous grey and black colours, the viewer can still spot an occasional burst of selective colours yellow, orange and red. It does not only augment the greyscale but also imply to the artists symbolic search for colour, for hope. Even in the crammed and inorganic spaces painted by Nandi, light emerging, often from hidden corners suggest the painters quest for meaning and hope within the urban life.
