HEAD TALE is my second solo art exhibition, held in Triveni Gallery of Triveni Kala Sangam, New Delhi. It went on for 11 days. From 15th to 25th March, 2014. All the works were done on paper of various size. They were mostly pen and ink on paper. One work "Celebration", was done on hand made heavy grain paper, using pastel and conte.
I started working on this series of drawings and paintings on paper based on my personal experiences. Street urchins forced to perform acts of jugglery in front of the public just to earn a piece of bread (roti). Even doing terribly difficult and fantastic acts of acrobatics. Small kids with an innocent smile on their face doing the impossible. Farmers committing suicide, with debt to follow up by the helpless family. Migrants with punctured dreams, homeless on the streets of our cities. All unsung souls who die, trying to achieve that minimum sanctity of humanness. They are my inspiration, my ‘HEADS’. And I am telling their tale of hope, despair, failure, struggle, deceit and tears. All these heads are reflecting the soul of our present society. The contemporary dilemmas of man kind are vividly portrayed here.
The series ‘HEAD TALE’ stands on an understanding of daily exploration of our soulless journey towards attaining the truth. “It’s a small world”, its an old joke, but you wouldn’t want to paint it. Or rather want to paint some crucial moments from its vastness. The ‘HEAD TALE’ is a visual traces of imperfect frameworks for negotiating the complexity (and perhaps meaninglessness) of existence – a symbolic vastness within the greater vastness of this physical world. It’s a galactic pile-ups of reality – meditating prisms to which someone, somewhere, is still clinging. The elements facilitate engagement at all levels of consciousness, being provocative in nature.
‘HEAD TALE’ series is based on our inner turmoil and its struggle with various elements, influenced my forces of society, norms of survival, rules of coordinated etiquette’s, economic pitfalls, political lies, back stabbing idiots, race to success…what not may be the right question.
One might ask why only heads…well, the head including the face is the real mirror of our soul. We read hundreds of faces in our daily life. Still we remember few, sometimes none. The head or face strikes you first and has its own story to tell. ‘HEAD TALE’ is an assemblage of strange contradictions of contemporary life. Some faces will remind you of the friend you just met on the streets or may be the stranger who just made you laugh with his uncommon acts. Among millions of faces, some are truly memorable, for reasons unknown to us. Just too hard to erase from ones memory. Why we treasure them, is truly mysterious. That unknown connection maybe known as human bonding, so prehistoric yet surviving the troubles of our time. This element of mystery make our life naturally lovable. That slight twist of eyebrows, that cunning smile, the pale look, happy faces hiding everything beneath them, the anger blowing hot faces, old and tampered faces and so many of them. Scratched, curved, chiseled, painted, pampered, injured, glorified and drowned in pain, faces unlimited. These ‘heads’ are common faces with uncommon stories carved on them.
Raw in appearance and bold to the core. The colourful appearance is deceiving to one’s eyes. Painted to hide something…mysterious. Most the heads appear like clowns. Clown paints his face to appear funny or appropriate for the show. The show is supreme for him, an every day challenge to survive. Here some accessories are part of the show, the golden swords, the trapeze, the umbrella, the bicycle, the arrows, the ball, the ladder, the golden daggers and the golden guns. They keep popping up here and there to test the clown’s faith and to make the show more thrilling.
‘HEAD TALE’, simply put are just spontaneous images of raw experiences. Hope and failure, life and death, are spread across the lines and colours of this series of work on paper. The material used is least important. The cause becomes supreme, transforming your routine space and time to a new level. The ‘heads’ have another aspect to them. The Buddha eyes with dream like aura make you think why peace suddenly. Well the clown is meditating, one with the self. He is vulnerable but determined. He is on the path of self exploration to explore the world in a more divine way. The void in him is taking a form of solace. The monk of his soul is questioning the meaning of worldly encounters. Ready to take on pain with very little effort. Finding the Shangri-La within oneself is the endless journey of all humans.
Date: 08/08/2013
Soumen Bhowmick