CIRCUS OF THE ABSURD

Solo Art Exhibition at Lalit kala Akademi, Delhi, 2010.


This is a series of drawings and paintings based on my experiences and the man kind in general. Here I tried to explore the strange relation between the inner soul (pure and divine) and our own dilemmas, influenced by circumstantial forces. Sometimes this feelings of despair overwhelms on us and sometimes our inner strength and truth wins over them. These elements of lust, anger, fear and envy has taken physical forms in various walks of our life and exist amidst us. In this series of works, there is a clown or group of clowns performing various acts in a circus, along with four tigers. This tigers personify, lust, anger, fear and jealousy.
The clown (clowns) and the tigers are in continuous clash with each other. The clowns have a divine soul and truth to save them. Sometimes they kill the tigers during the show and sometimes the tigers kill them. Its an ongoing show at the “Circus of the Absurd”, happening with a tinge of reality and satire, commenting at our present social setup.
The tigers are heartless, selfish and materialistic, although they have a royal presence. A duality of character is visible in this case. They deceive the society and the circus shows there various characteristics at various times. Whereas the clown uses his sword made of gold to kill the tigers during the show. We presume the tigers are divine, but they are there to deceive us.
Shown cities being destroyed, faith being plundered by the tigers. Its also a part of the show. They play with our innocence at every step of life. Sometimes impersonating the clown, to deceive us of reality. The imposter is shameless to play the role of a pure soul. But it didn’t last long and the clown takes back his reign of goodness after much struggle, with the help of the golden sword. The golden sword shows purity, truth and divineness. You need a pure golden heart and faith to kill the tigers amidst us. During this ongoing contradictions and power play, the circus in itself becomes enriched with various emotions. I tried my best to capture all that here in this series of works. It’s a panorama of human existence.
Characters of Skeleton (death), Sadhus, beggars, girl child, dogs, horses and snake will appear with the clowns during the show. Gradually the performance overwhelms the reality and in itself becomes reality. The skeleton and other characters have a certain role to play here. The skeleton personifies death and also the beginning. The clown wrestles with skeleton. Trying to overcome death and solitude, like we all do in our life time.
Skeleton also clashes with the tigers, showing an end to dilemmas of mankind. There is a boat, to show homeland and our place in this world. It is made of wood, showing vulnerability. Also have wheels, shows its unstable. I have shown flying daggers or daggers on trapeze, always hanging on our head. The uncertainty of life and the impending end to all life is shown that way.
At the end of the show, the clown overcomes the tigers and kills them with his golden sword. Although the entire city and his homeland is destroyed by the tigers, the clown overcomes his sorrow and faith wins at the end. Its victory of faith and innocence over our own various weaknesses. Goodness wins!
*Artist Statement : Soumen Bhowmick 2010.

 Coverage of my solo art exhibition "CIRCUS OF THE ABSURD" on Doordarshan

TAMASHA, Triptych, acrylic on paper



TTAMPLING BEAST, PROWL, DANCING ON THE BALL

 

OVERWHELMING EVIL, THRONE OF THE VICTOR, DAGGER SHOW

  

FACING THE DAGGER, DANCING ON THE BEAST and FLOATING HEAD

ON THE MOVE, Triptych, conte on paper

 



NO WHERE TO GO!, Mixed media on paper

  

Bed of Roses, Charcoal on brown paper



 

BINDAAS and DUEL

   

FOR THE SHOW, ON THE BOAT, SHOW IS ON and TIGER IN HAT




  

HIDING IN MY HAT and THE BIG FIGHT

 





JOURNEY, Polyptich, pen and ink on paper

Dagger ShowPen and ink on board

 

On the Trapeze, Pen and ink on board

  

While I was staying in India for the past few months, I had to watch the performance once in every two or three days. I am afraid to say that it was not funny at all. The more I watch it, the more I hurt and I had to turn my eyes away from it for the moment that I need to applause. Not because it was street performance different from the one in great theater. It is never because they are not good at it either. In the street where there are cars are stuck, it looks like girls younger than 10 year old do handspring and begging it is definitely street circus from anyone’s eyes.
Who can call it is a great performance when a little child reaches her hand to get the money from people in the car? It would rather be called survival performance. The reason why I can remind of this weird scene when I look at the Soumen is, it seems like reiterate to the subject of exhibit as Circus of the absurd. It has a similarity between them when it comes to visible real life and makes the audiences embarrassed. Of course, Work of Soumen is very different from that real Circus in India since it has hidden reality.
And the hidden reality of Soumen includes complicated psychology inside of human being, or parodies dilemma as a circus. The clown and tiger in that work appear as avatar contrast to structure of conflict, a golden knife of clown which symbols purity, sincere and divine uses for defeating the tiger who worships of devil for prosperity. The skeleton describes as for personifies death.
The scene of the clown and skeleton do wresting reflects our lives that try to get over death and loneliness. All the things in work can be personified or avatar. In the long run, a writer uses circus as allegory of life that is complicated and delicate. The painting of Soumen has a structure to show the heavy story of life. Therefore, text can be emphasized than visual language. Except for inner space that is called circus, it is hard to understand that work. It is possible to comprehend the illustration technique or simply used of cartoon technique. The size of work is tiny out of expectation. His work uses paradoxical approach to touch lightly for heavy materials.
It is good enough to get attention or interests from anybody. However, if we too focused on only for meaning of that work, text can be read before seeing the picture since it is possible to neglect formative conduct.

Contemporary art is required to remind that visual imagination of human is on bottom line. I hope it can be progressed as circus lies in it.

*Written by : Insang Song, Independent Curator and Art Critic, curator of Seoul Arts Center.

Genesis of Life

Morning till night I try to
solve the misteries of life, like
a man possesed.
Every new day throws a new challenge,
bringing me near to myself.
Life keeps asking for more.
New dreams comes to me, with new
hopes of attaining the plateau
of eternal life.

Running after my life's creations
has now become my obsession
and I do so without any failure.
Disputes of heart remained to be
solved, to be asked and given a new hope.

All things begin with a
sleepless night,with heart full
of questions and a lot of fight.

By Soumen Bhowmick
©Soumen Bhowmick 2000

The Unknown Soldier

I am fighting my battle alone,
with words and ideas.
Leaving a life of faith and solitude
the sky is my limit, the ocean is
my path, for my battle is without
boundaries and shades of blood.
I keep on pressing myself to the end,
keeping my hopes tied up in my sweat.
Every day I think of taking on new
grounds, alas it never happens.
For the world has much bigger
walls for me to climb.
I keep banging to that wall, with
new vigour and faith.
Knowing I can succeed at the end.
Voices of despair cannot divert me,
for I am the unknown soldier
fighting a lonely battle of my own.

By Soumen Bhowmick
©Soumen Bhowmick 2000

The Clown

Every day after the show ends,
he sits there in the corner
gazing eternity,
thinking what's in store
for him tomorrow at the show.
People are clapping,cheer him
to death make him laugh at himself.
With dignity and hope he sits there,
eyes closed and murmuring to his soul.
Night comes and he is still
sitting along with his tired soul.
He doesn't feel any pain
for he is the clown.
Everything stops, only the
heart beat of a tired man.

Next day the crowd is waiting
the clown is still there sitting
in the corner, cold as a dead tree.
sitting there in eternal peace.

By Soumen Bhowmick
©Soumen Bhowmick 2000

The Bleeding Monk

I bleed to death
for you for nothing less
or nothing more.
The blood flows to form
a mark of faith.
The blood keeps flowing.

Those were the bodies
of my fellow beings
denied of any human feelings,
lying there.
Feeling the wrath of
god on their naked body.
There lies the monk among us,
burning with the
hope of nirvana.
Lush green ground
supports his body.

He is still bleeding
lying dead with a glow on
his face.

By Soumen Bhowmick
©Soumen Bhowmick 2000

Divine Scum

Call it the existence of mediocrity among us, the so-called-civilized scums of this world.
Who and how this divine scums came to life….it’s a crucial question for all of

us - the so called sane, civilized, bohemian, snobbish, ultra modern, techno beings.
I am not asking you to join this discussion…but if you could spend some time reading this stuff, I promise, to reveal the real identity of this alien-or-not-so-alien being among us.
Not so long ago, when things were sane…and we used to call ourselves humane, there, one fine day or moment came to earth a heavenly body from a land unknown ( I am still working on it). He was fine looking, just like, we humans, all features were same. Not to say…he was more humane, than all of us.
Gradually as time passes by and we became more-and-more sensible, this human looking heavenly self took a new form…at first it was horrible. Believe me…you will, I am sure.
Oh,! with his features getting distorted, gradually he took the shape of a sub-human.
Sorry! my mistake…more than a human.

We all got so fascinated by his new looks that we started calling him ‘Yummy’,
to start with…later on it sounds like Scummy. That’s bad, really bad, to play around with someone’s name.
Too bad! but that alien started accepting that kind name of his. To be precise got used to it. He was pretty thrilled to be called scummy or scum (short name, with love).
But there was an issue to be solved, he had an infectious mode of conduct and that was a real big problem. His goodness or precisely…his scummyness started to surf around among us, the human’s. Day passes by and we all got infected by this diseased moron from some damn place.
Now the surprising part of the whole story…we all fell in love with this divine scum. Each one of us, except for a few, who are not listed among…human’s.
The love was so blind, it just accepted the divineness of failure to be real, as the truth of existence.
Now-a-days scums are found at every nook and corner of this planet.
What an achievement, of one little moron from outer world. He actually changed our perception, of living an honoured & ideal life, as a simple idealistic human being.
Three cheers to him!
We should all bow to this great divine scum among us…to him we owe our soul. This is not the end of the story, it just got spicey from here…!!!
Fellows, can you name this divine being???

Death of an Idea

Everybody likes to kill something or the other!
Some are fly killers, some like to play around with cockroaches or spidey’s, are some of the favourites.

Like for myself, I am an-idea-killer (or should I say us!).

Others like me do exist…I have a strong conviction for that.

It takes nothing to be like me. Just a few hiccups, few painful realisations, a lots of sweat & a little bit of practicality. You also have all the ingredients in you, to be the same as me, unless you want to be someone else. But I do have an idea…right now!
Want to see it the light of the day….alas some know-it-all dude kills it, right there in front of me.

It’s a painful journey for me, starting with the sowing to the reaping of an idea. They come in all forms & sizes….and at all times. Boundations they have none. For they are from the family of thoughts.
It takes seconds-to-months-to-years-time to germinate. But only a few seconds to terminate.

We all feel proud to kill someones’ ideas. With jest we do it, till the last sign of originality is gone. Ideas are plenty to be found on the streets of creativity, some are half born, some soulless, others want to cry for support & most of them are heart broken.
The fault lies with us, the procreators. Pardon me Sir/Madam, for we are unaware of the killer instinct of many of the CREATIVE jealots among us! Wow they love to hate us, the ideators. Seldom they miss out on the devilish pleasures of destroying ones’ ideas. I pity with them, I have stopped rolling the tears.

>Now realisation has taken its place<
IDEA’S are born to die, (cheers!) and what a nameless death it has to be. No my friend, no need to cry for your beloved idea, for it was good for that idiot to leave this world. It would have been unfair for that lonely IDEA to be among us and still breathing, knowing none of the realities of life. No matter what it looks like, good or bad, acceptable or not, it needs to be terminated with the utmost of sincererity.

And everybody takes part in the process with their heart’s closed, eyes shut & ears plugged. They are not to do any thinking before or after terminating that idea of yours.

Well, its pleasurable for every one of us and sometimes becomes our favourite pastime feature. I would like to invite the whole mankind known or unknown to me, to come and participate in this fair game of ours….the ideal idea termination game!

To hell with all ideas. Boooooowwww……!!!!

Have you felt good reading the above line of self low-denomination, I hope so!
If that is the case, then my friend you are a born IDEA killer. No pun intended, You are the chosen one (no Matrix stuff). So go ahead, take your killing shot on any God damn idea you come across right away…..

Hope you are feeling better by NOW!!!!


By Soumen Bhowmick
©Soumen Bhowmick

The Price of WOW!

What a big question to be asked by the creative fraternity.

What’s this WOW! factor? Lately came to be known as the ultimate sign of creative triumph, or so is it?

Not exactly an alien expression, to me or to any of you, the creative citizens. It expresses itself seldom-lonely. It attracts the utmost attention of the people around it. It’s a short form of cherishing our unfulfilled dreams. Say this short word and see the magic begin all around you.

Along came the reason to define some feelings or name it ….exactly that’s what WOW is. The urgency to express something unknown, with utmost sincerity. Come on…its as simple as drawing a straight line on paper.
It’s simple, yet complicated to spell. When the moment comes to say this word, we get a cold feeling of selfishness deep inside our heart. Something stops us to spell it. Maybe it will just rip off our soul. May be…

It took me some real good thinking, the first time I said WOW. My self exploration is still on, from that day. My first spell out was a bit early, that I realised later on. When someone real creative called it and displayed a sense of aloofness. What a performance of expressing ones true feelings, without touching your heart deep inside. He showed how to surf just a bit above your soul, while saying this WOW thing. I corrected myself that day. Now I am a more sensible creative guy, who knows the real way of saying WOW!

Timing my dear…is the real secret to all this. Just delaying a few words of appreciation can make a whole lot of difference to ones own image of self worth. WOW is in short supply this days. Reasons unknown to the creative fraternity. Maybe we have stopped saying this word out of compulsion. Just want to keep it shut within our heart, locked with our selfish attitude.

Now things are safe….nobody will spell this WOW thing.

But during all this, WOW paid a heavy price of failure. WOW is now a heartless, lonely old fellow. Looking for some solace among us. No body cares for him. I just heard we are now looking for an old home for his safe stay in this sane world. God bless this good old fellow, for he had served his purpose well, when I was in need for him. Thanks WOW! I will always remember you. You will always exist in my heart.

And I promise to spell you out every moment I get the opportunity to do so, till my last breath!