An explosion of red

Sanchayan Ghosh’s ongoing solo exhibition, Reversed Perspective: 3 Conjunctions, assumes the form of an elaborate site-specific installation at the Experimenter gallery in Kolkata.

Experimenter is one of the few galleries in the country to have taken bold steps to promote art by emerging artists that is not only unconventional but also often elusive. Much of the language of modern and contemporary art has morphed, over the decades, into oblique symbols and suggestions that lie outside the grasp of language. In the more successful instances of avant-garde art, the work has managed to speak for itself, without having to rely on a theoretical apparatus to substantiate its worth. On the flip side, ideas have sometimes preceded the making of art, resulting in inauthentic and uninspiring work that can be paraphrased in a sentence.

For his latest show, Ghosh has filled the entire space of the gallery with scaffolding and bathed it in a spooky red glow. Spectral figures, scientific notes, diagrams and photographs appear on the walls and pillars. A laboratory has been set up to draw attention to experiments involving soil testing.

Social, political and cultural resonances run through Ghosh’s work and give it a thematic unity, though most of his ideas would not make much sense without the accompanying concept note. Ghosh, who is an academic, has spent the last 10 years working with communities in far-flung corners of the country, from Kashmir to the NorthEast. His previous work, which has travelled outside India, has usually been characterized by an intensely cerebral, and at times unyielding, quality.

The work in this show, with its fiery red hue, harks to the lateritic soil of Birbhum district of West Bengal as well as to the symbol of the Communist Party that held sway over the area for decades. More obviously, red is the colour of blood, with immense potential to allude to multiple histories of violence—political, communal and ideological. While there is a viscerally disturbing feeling to having to find one’s way through a labyrinth lit up by a red glow, it is also important for that feeling to grow into some form of knowledge that endures, and not lose its edge by becoming just another form of self-indulgence.

But the experience of the avant-garde tends to be uniquely personal. What seems like affectation to one may be deeply affecting to another. What better way to test this out than by paying a visit to Ghosh’s show?

Reversed Perspective: 3 Conjunctions is on till 8 February, 11am-7pm, at Experimenter, 2/1 Hindusthan Road, Kolkata (24630465). The gallery is closed on Sundays.