A medley of recycled books and artistic creativity

Known as a painter in the Shantiniketan tradition, Tanmoy Samanta’s third solo show, ‘All I have learned and forgotten’, at Gallery Espace is a medley of artistic creativity that draws inspiration from items of everyday use like clocks, keys and recycled books.

Tanmoy’s new body of work expands into 3D materials and the conceptual territory of magical realism. The objects he uses most often are maps, clocks, books, keys and locks.

Tanmoy collects old keys that open no locks; locks that are no longer capable of securing anything; watches that keep no time; old books that have spent the knowledge contained in them in flea markets and street shops and transforms them into motifs that appear often in his work.

Tanmoy’s latest offering includes old books, their yellowing pages glued together and layered with rice paper. The paper is then transformed into shapes with more objects added to compliment it. However, the final product remains a surprise until one opens it, only to discover that there is another, magical world held within it.

In the artist’s words, “This new body of work includes three-dimensional books. I see these books as a form, both as artefact and as medium. It becomes a process of metamorphosis as their old identity and content no longer exist.”

Tanmoy uses fragile rice paper and gouache, materials that bear traces of their history in Shantiniketan and in the work of Rabindranath Tagore. He uses pigment instinctively and for its potential to render visual poetry. Working on more than one painting at a time, he creates layers of colour. One could view the compositions in terms of negative and positive spaces; areas that occupy and others that contain. However, every part of the image, the backdrops as it were, are as integral a part of the imagery as the objects that are composed within them.

Tanmoy’s latest collection ‘All I have learned and forgotten’ is being showcased at Gallery Espace, 16, Community Centre, New Friends Colony from December 12 till January 12.
DHNS