"In this contemporary political scenario, Chaos is my best man. He strikes us with wonder and deception; he is an avenger as well as a magician. Chaos has no definite face, body or structure. It is ambivalent and elusive to the senses. His subjects are perversely grotesque and unpredictably mild.
This series of paintings portray the many dimensions of chaos, its subliminal, historic and metaphoric influences in our lives. Hope you all enjoy these paintings as much as I did while working on them over a significant phase of my life."
- Albert Ashok
Chaos in Wonderland
Solo exhibition card
AduurI ( sweet heart) 18 x 24 inches acrylic on canvas
The Floating clouds 30 x 36 inches Acrylic on canvas
"You will not see the sweet blue sky always. How we see different kinds of clouds in the sky; black and white, heavy and light, opaque and luminous, some are murderous and assaulting as well. This thought moved me to paint a woman lost in appreciating the uncertainty."
Blood River, Acrylic on canvas 5 x 3 feet
Blood River! Time is changed. and has been
changing. War torn cities gushing and flowing blood like rivers. The menace of
terrorism and religion based politics from middle-east Asia appears in the
global platform. The aggressive nature of authoritarian country with leftist
last straw hits all the civilians in most countries. The Boko haram, ISIS,
Taliban as terror outfit with their guerrilla style - butchering innocent
people. Human rights are divided on murderers, some advocate impunity some want
punishment. We human beings are killed politically religiously and economically
like cattle, and are frightened. Like rust in the iron scrap, our existence are
waiting for to be dumped. Where is Humanity? What is future of this planet?
Bull Head 18 x 24 inches acrylic on canvas
Fowl Play, Acrylic on canvas 5 x 3 feet
Life means achieving something. Wherever you go
whatever you do you always wanted to some achievements. But do we really
achieve something? In my wonderland, I find
in reality we are happy
after geting some fowl. In most cases, common people – are reluctant to catch a
big fish, It never matters to them
whether they are naked, or they have any shelter. They never incensed by the
life that plays foul with them and cheating them from achieving big something.
Fruit bearing tree, 24 x 30 inches acrylic on canvas
Liberation, Acrylic on canvas 5 x 3 feet
Liberation! Sexual aggression on female is the
basic instinct what male acquired from evolution.it resides in every male being
and this aggression is an immense force for male to win the hostile
circumstances and from other species, If you remove this property from male
being the human race will be at stake.No physical strength will be found in men
and human race clock will be stopped. But this sexual aggression is a utmost
fear for woman. Woman want a world where she has no fear from man. This is her
liberation. Through the human history, we saw women are protected by the same
man force she fears, from animal attacks, natural calamities,catastrophe and
warfare. Still, woman want liberation, and liberation is her born rights.
Midnight talk II, Acrylic on canvas 5 x 3 feet
Midnight Moon, 24 x 30 inches acrylic on canvas
Otherside of the fence 30x 36 inches Acrylic on canvas
Pink Horizon 5 x 4 feet acrylic on canvas
Sound from a Lifeless Guitar 30 x 36 inches Acrylic on canvas
Sound from a Lifeless Guitar! A guitar is made of
wooden body and steel string. It’s a lifeless thing, it cant generate sound
unless a living soul touches it. Human life is also like a non-living guitar.
It cant strum the right note. A few men women are worth the earthly living. And
the rest appear and disappear with time. No footmarks or sound you will hear
from them.
The wonder and excitement of Nature 30 x 36 Acrylic on canvas
Troubled life 18x 24 inches acrylic on canvas
Salvation: (two musician) 60 x 48 inches acrylic on canvas
When life fails to deliver you from suffering,
Music does.
Happy Moments -III
The
Terrible and the lyrical
The
Paintings of Albert Ashok and Samarendra Kumar Datta
Diversity
of form in contemporary painting is extensive, as it contains all the legacies
of the past not only of our country but also of the various trends through out
the world. An artist builds up his own form through selection and synthesis of
various inheritances according to his/her own motivation and world out look.
Our modernity started with assimilation of western naturalism during the middle
of nineteenth century. The second trend of the modernity grew out of the
rebellion against such foreign invasion that prompted the artists towards the
search for an indigenous identity out of a nationalist ideology delving deeper
into the legacy of our classical and popular past. The forms of neo-Indian
school thus generated. All the subsequent developments till modernist and Post-
modern have grown out of these two basic structures.
The
present duet show of the two artists Albert Ashok and Samarendra Kumar Datta is
based on two basic trends of the initial phase of our modernity, that is
western naturalism and indigenous heritage. The trends are naturally diverse.
But the variation endows the show with a different charm revealing how the
contemporary life contains the stresses growing out of its complexities and at
the same time sublimates the same towards an enchantment and divine beauty.
Albert
Ashok is a self made man whose artistic faculty has developed out of his
struggling interaction with the life. Born in Agartala of Tripura in 1961 has
lost his mother at the age of one and half. The struggle started there. When he
was eight or nine, he felt he had an indomitable urge for artistic creativity.
But finding no way out he fled from his home at the age of seventeen in search of
art. He learnt painting through strife with this life.The life was very much
real to him. He might have felt that he could express this dissension through
realism, and the reality could best be captured through naturalist form. After
conquering a good grasp on naturalism, he deviated. Naturalism has its own
limitation. But if it can be energized with subsequent trends of distortions
and geometrical innovations, It can delve deeper into reality and also
super-reality. At a certain stage Albert converted his realism into fantasy to
reveal the deeper mystery of life, of love and sexuality. Out of this fantasy
and a mystery a different kind of beauty was revealed to him. He could extract
beauty out of struggle of life. He endowed his naturalism with cubist geometrical
structure. The synthesis revealed the contradiction between the beauty and the
horrid and also how the terrible can be resurrcted towards the pleasant. The
present series of paintings shown in this exhibition is built out of this
philosophy. Where pastoral cows contain the metropolitan violence and
complexities, and the ‘bathing woman’ reveal within her lyrical and bucolic
charm an intricate strife with this life. He has made a successful admixture of
urban and rural ethos.
Mrinal
Ghosh
29.05.2015
Wonderland-Fantasy
Recent Paintings of Albert Ashok
The title of the exhibition of the present series of paintings by
Albert Ashok, which happens to be his 7th solo is ‘Human,
Humanoid and Poetry in Wonderland’. He has some preference for the world of
grotesque and fantasy, which he calls ‘Wonderland’. He titled his last
exposition as ‘Chaos in Wonderland’. This wonderland is not far off from
his existence, from the environment he lives in, that is from the contemporary
times. But in the process of fantasizing, the known world and the present time
gets transformed. Elements of past and future, elements of myth and imaginary
world creep in. But the aim of the artist is to unmask the various layers of
reality that darkens the present state of existence. Albert is basically a
romantic rebellion. The absurdity of contemporary existence haunts him. He
tries to find a way out, some times in the form of anguish, often in the form
of apparent sobriety and lyrical transcendence. In this exhibition there are
works of both these trends,
Fantasy is an essential mode of expression in visual arts.
Literally or lexically the word means an imagined state of situation usually
pleasant and often to some extent caustic or sarcastic. In Greek aesthetics the
entire field of expression used to be classified in two streams: mimesis and
fantasia. Mimesis reflected the natural. When the image deviated from the
natural, it used to be categorized as fantasia. In Indian classical aesthetics
the term ‘chamatkara’ was devised by the aesthetician Visvanatha to indicate
the essence of fantasy. Abhinabagupta, another aesthetician assimilated
‘chamatkara’ with ‘rasa’ to give the term greater validity. However in Indian
classicism ‘chamatkara’ was elevated to the state of the transcendental. But
the situation of primitivist and modernist art is different. In both these
trends fantasy is a general and very significant trend of expression that tends
to enter deeper both to mystify and demystify the reality, to dissect it.
Fantasy is often used as a form of rebellion, as has been done in
expressionism, cubism and surrealism.
The forms of Albert Ashok are based on naturalism. He transforms
the voluminous illusionist three dimensional rendering into a state of comic
ridiculous situation to mimic the pseudo-valor and expanded egoistic ambition
of human being, often to find a pleasant situation to indicate peace and
tranquility. The way he transforms the natural is akin to the ridiculous
situation of fantasy. When he tries for tranquility his expressions reflect
some elements of ‘chamatkara’.
Albert Ashok is a self made man and self taught artist. From a
blank situation he has struggled hard to come to his present position of an
established artist. The struggle has given him an insight to look into and
realize the human situation and the state of affairs through which the
contemporary civilization is soaring high with a deep void within it. To him
the entire situation is ridiculous, a sort of wonderland and pulsating with a possibility
of annihilation. His fantasy grows out of this void.
In the present exhibition we see his large format canvases painted
in acrylic showing various forms of fantasy, vibrant and tranquil. In the
painting titled ‘Humanoid’ he paints a couple on horse back. Out of the
dynamism he extracts a sense of void. In ‘Happy Moments’ a couple sits
on a sofa, the man with a guitar in hand, the woman with a book. In some of the
other works like ‘Sohag’, where a woman takes a bath in a pond, ‘The
Blue Musician’ playing guitar, ‘Yellow Bird and a Cowherd’, a
pleasant pastoral scene, the artist creates different faces of ‘Wonderland’.
The myth is far from existing reality. ‘Wonderland’ is a tragic void.
MRINAL
GHOSH (Ananada
Bazar Patrika)
4 Feb 2016
১৫ ফেব্রুয়ারী ২০১৬, আজকালের ৪র্থ পাতায় সম্পাদকীয়/বারান্দায় প্রকাশিত
Below a review from widely circulated bengali magazine Kali O kalam
You can find here the detail of my paintings
Humanoid I, Acrylic on canvas 5 x 3 feet not available
Sohagi I (Bathing Woman) 24x 36 inches Acrylic on canvas
Sohagi II (Bathing Woman), 24x 36 inches Acrylic on canvas
Sohagi III (Bathing Woman) 30x 36 inches Acrylic on canvas not available
The Blind Musician 30x 36 inches Acrylic on canvas not available
Chaos in wonderland 24 x 36 inches naked king
The yello bird and cowherd boy 30x 36 inches Acrylic on canvas
Bengali bride, size A4 , acrylic on canvas
Chaos in Wonderland, 24 x 36 inches Acrylic on canvas
farmers wife, 18 x 24 acrylic
flute boy 9 x 11inches
grazing cattles 9 x 11 inches
Happy Moments I, Acrylic on canvass 30 x 48 inches not available
Honey night 12x 15.5 inches, Acrylic
horse rider 3 acruylic 24 x36inches
Horse rider I, 24 x 36 inches not available
Horse rider II, 24 x 36 inches not available
man and the nature, 24 x 36 inches
Midnight talk-I, 30 x 36 inches
Moonlit night 12 x 15.5inches
moonlit sky, 12 x 15.5 inches
mother child 24 x 28 inches
Sleeping Boy, 24 x 36 inches
sleeping woman 18x14 inches
two sisters 24 x 28 inches
widow life 18 x 24 inches