Art Alive Gallery presents Santiniketan, a solo show by contemporary artist Chandra Bhattacharjee.
Over the years, Chandra Bhattacharjee has tried to capture and interpret his own understanding of Santiniketan, first with the help of his camera lenses, then onto his charcoal sticks and brushes with empathy with nature being at the core of his oeuvre. He has repeatedly returned to his home in Kolkata with the concept of Santiniketan, frozen in his high-resolution frames, dominating his mind. Examining and re-examining his images over time, he found his extremely personal, and sadly a shattering testimony, of change before his eyes of Santiniketan moving away from the near-utopia of the earlier masterpieces. Of asphalt and barbed wires visibly cementing the loose red soil ecosystem, eroding its resilient foliage. The visible mutilation is only an allegory of the insidious undercurrents that now roil the ‘abode of peace.’