debraj goswami

We live in anxious times. An era of unprecedented technological growth, end of the cold war, a new confidence in the future, the world becoming a smaller place, a paradigm shift in our material expectations and at the same time rapid spread of conflict and violence, emergence of unipolarism and fundamentalism, misuse of the very technologies that promised utopia, a general debasement of environment and the downward spiral of political ideologies.

Twentieth century art history looks like a sequence of close associations between formal experimentation and spiritual/political ideals. Awkward at best because artistic radicalism never quite translated into revolutionary action or perfected consciousness. It has become difficult even for those who remain sympathetic to such aspirations to fully share in the idealism of the earlier times, which from our later and generally cynical perspective almost always appears naïve.

Debraj like any honest artist with a social and political conscience is trying to negotiate the slippery terrain and in doing so has hit upon an oeuvre; imagery that are quite literal and yet visually significant.

Take for instance, the twenty small works that constitute 'My experiments with half truth'. Each one has a central image, floating in a space of undefined origin, that proclaims their unmistakable indebtedness to art history and the strategies of advertisement. There is a Debrajesque take on punning the title after Gandhiji's famous experiments with truth. What I find interesting is that each image almost begs to be verbalized and when you do it somehow the verbal equivalent is never quite as nuanced as its visual counterpart; hand grenades substituting eggs in an egg tray, a nuclear reactor station on the terrace of a middle-class tenement, a split gun with a velvety interior, Michelangelo's oft-quoted hand of god with a bullet resting on the index finger, blue lotus sprouting a microphone, a slice of bread with fire crackers and the list goes on. Each visual contain a narrative that is often layered.

The narrative is taken a step further in 'patho(s)logical painting', which has a definitive continuity from right to left in its six panels that is parodying the comic strip in the reverse. A series of transmogrification makes the carrot that enters an egg in the right most panel emerges as a clothespin in the left most one after undergoing a series of startling transformations.

Debraj's penchant for bathos is self-evident in 'Celebration of Thinker's day'. The reference is to the title of his favourite painter Bhupen Khakar's 'Celebration of Gurujayanti'. It is a double take on our proclivity to tokenism and hero worship and also our susceptibility to tinsel and popular taste.

The dark foreboding Rodin's Thinker wrapped in illuminated fairy lights ultimately reminds us of the power of the visual over words. It also marks out an artist acutely aware of his time. Debraj, surprisingly, manages to hold on to his romantic core despite his time, that is self-conscious, sharp, a touch cynical. He has found a way out of the limbo by reposing faith in the painted image.

Indrapramit Roy (extract from Debraj Goswami exhibition catalogue)