The exhibition If We Knew the Point - Amitava draws from an array of styles and references which are emerging points of Amitava ‘s images. Cruising between a wide range of mediums from graphite, ink, ballpoint pens, watercolour, and collages to making burnt marks on paper, he treats the illustrative ground through the poetics of materiality. Often unwilling to rationalize the meaning behind art making, he emphasises the statement that ‘art is to be experienced’ and not reasoned out. Recalling Federico Garcia Lorca’s poetics- In Search of Duende, and the related notions portrayed by Lorca as a forceful energy containing irrationality, earthiness, and a heightened awareness of death, Amitava’s images flourish on the abstract edge of creative balance between visual art, music, cinema and poetry. The interplay of forms, from liminal figures of humans and animals, appropriations from nature to the geometrics of urbanity, populate a wide range of surfaces, from sketchbook papers, and canvases to handmade rice paper, that Amitava chooses. With more than 150 artworks the exhibition will explore the diversity of forms, colours, textures, and surfaces that evoke a multitude of emotions. The exhibition title is both a somatic and rhetorical coinage, drawing from the eponymous poem by Roberto Juarroz. The term ‘point’ comprehends an array of meanings, on one hand, it means a particular fact, idea, or opinion that somebody expresses, or a primary piece of information, while it also means a statement or an objective. On the other hand, ‘point’ or a dot is an essential unit of making art, which reminds us of a range of art terminologies from ‘pointillism’ (art movement) to the dots used in various indigenous art forms. Amitava uses these elements (dots or points) with precise objectives to impart definitive volume and impact in his forms. One finds thousands of these dots or points that make his images incisive, providing them with both formalistic and conceptual advantages. Filigree-like entwining, minimal geometric space formations are a few signifiers that mark his signature style. Speaking of poetry, and space making while involved in exhibition designing and his general inclination towards design elements, Amitava uses curious objects like price tags, bus tickets and other ephemera on the artworks as reminiscences of his travels, a mnemonic archive, and as take-off points for his imagination to excavate formalistic possibilities in his art. The exhibition will unfold elements of surprise on display while unfolding Amitava’s varied and subtle interpretations of cultural stigmata which are interwoven within a collective cultural identity, something, he has absorbed and released.

About the Artist –

Amitava was born in New Delhi in 1947 and raised in Shimla. Interested in art at a young age the artist would eventually join the College of Art in 1965. Leanings towards the works of poets and philosophers like Jibananda Das, Rabindranath Tagore, Garcia Lorca, Jean Paul Satre and Albert Camus brought twists in his work evident in the way he assimilated humans and created works of art with minimal elements and assemblage of mediums. Through the years, Amitava has showcased his works at Kunika Chemould Gallery, New Delhi (1969); Dhoomimal Gallery, New Delhi (1978); Galerie Stienmetz, Bonn, West Germany (1981); Jehangir Art Gallery and Sakshi Art Gallery, Mumbai (1995); Delhi Art Gallery (2006).  In 2013 a retrospective on him, Amitava: The Complete Works, A Retrospective was held at Delhi Art Gallery. Amitava has been conferred with the Lalit Kala Akademi award in 1976 and the Sahitya Kala Parishad award in 1982. The artist lives and works in New Delhi. 

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