Narrative stills

B. PADMA REDDY

Sisir Sahana's latest show of paintings and glass sculptures is an extension of his response towards encroaching urbanisation and dissemination of village culture today.

RUSTIC HUES 'Editing the Transformation', acrylic on canvas, (below) 'Transformation - The Warrior', cast and fused glass.

Sisir Sahana has been an artist giving expression to his agrarian concerns. Starting off as a painter, Sisir, a prolific figurative artist empathising with his rural background of Bankura district, for the last fifteen years since his migration from West Bengal, is identified with his evocative rural issues of the farmer.

Trained at Kalabhavan Shantiniketan, impeccably skilled in his academic oeuvre, Sisir's distinctly stylised and accounted figures extended into his sculptures when he started experimenting and specialising in glass sculpture later.

Unable to abandon the human element — physical and emotional, Sisir employed his new technology of glass sculpture and painting skills to portray the issues close to his heart. Decrying globalisation and commercialisation he made his stand clear all through the 15 years through his works of art which not withstanding the medium of execution have commended the human element and sentiment.

His latest show of paintings and a few glass sculptures put up for viewing at Kalakriti Art Gallery last week is an extension of his response and visual judgment towards the encroaching urbanisation and the dissemination of village culture today. His previous palette of sombre greys, greens and blues, exchanged with fresh pastoral greens, resplendent reds, oranges, a variety of virgin blues and conscious deliberations to bisect the surface canvas space in straight lines with human figures and organic metaphors enclosed in them, Sisir's account of these concerns aptly titled `editing the transformation' is an explicit visual description.

The modernisation of the rural milieu, visible not only in the changing attires of the people or the physicality of their appearance but also the rural terrain is what Sisir tries to edit, taking a stance as a regular concerned viewer of this transformation. Sisir Sahana's involvement with film making in the recent past has undoubtedly left its mark on the artist's way of working, as the paintings solicit one's attention as `narrative stills' frozen and captured as an artistic lens man would.

The exhibition is on view at Jehangir Art Gallery Mumbai (till December 19).

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