Goutam Ghosh and Sujata Bajaj: Two unique languages of abstraction in art

The exhibition space at Project 88, Colaba, Mumbai, resembles a transit area right now. Sculptures are propped up against wooden crates while paintings featuring hieroglyph-like patterns have been stitched onto the walls. Makeshift display areas can be seen across the space. It feels as if the gallery has turned into a brief halting station for the artworks as they rest and breathe before continuing onto their journey. This unique display is part of Bite the Bullet, a solo exhibition by artist Goutam Ghosh, who lives and works across spaces in Jharkhand, Bhuj, and Kolkata. “Refusing any sedative, Bite the Bullet calls for a reckoning with this disjointed shadow of our contemporary: to register the inner rift (and depth) of our moving worlds. We are at the site of interrogation: how does knowledge—our ways of seeing—come into being?” states writer-curator Sonali Bhagchandani in the accompanying essay. Be it in the paintings or the sculptures, there is an interesting coming together of disciplines in Ghosh’s works. Geology, archaeology, and formal mathematical knowledge meet philosophy, music and tantra.

MEDITATIONS ON ENERGY

Meanwhile, at the Swami Vivekananda Cultural Centre, Paris, artist Sujata Bajaj is showcasing some of her new “spacescapes” as part of the Living Arts of India show, on view till 30 June. Science and spirituality make an appearance in her practice as well, as the “spacescapes” series marks the culmination of more than five years of exploration of images taken by the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes. A 2019-encounter with an image released by NASA, taken from the Hubble telescope, of the Andromeda galaxy, changed the trajectory of her practice. The artist, who spends time in Paris, Delhi, and Dubai, found an instant connection with the visual, and started to translate the enormity of the universe into vibrant abstract works. She showed a solo presentation of “spacescapes” at the Alliance Française Gallery, New Delhi, earlier this year.

“I was struck not only by the photographs’ scientific precision, but by their emotional intensity. These were not cold renderings of astronomical data; they felt alive, almost breathing,” she says. Thus her paintings, featuring nebulae-like structures, are charged with energy and emotion. In her “spacescapes”, Bajaj is not painting galaxies as they are scientifically measured but as they are felt. “The telescopic images became a catalyst, they expanded my visual vocabulary. The works are meditations on energy, silence, and the unseen forces that connect us to the universe,” she adds.

Both these exhibitions not only represent very distinct styles of abstraction but also two unique approaches to science and scientific data. In both practices, time plays a huge role in the subject matter as well as in the very process of creating art. In Ghosh’s works, narratives unfold in a non-linear fashion. “It is an urge to reconfigure the progression of time in a variable direction—future, past and present,” he says. The style of abstraction on display is marked by repetition and rhythm. In Ghosh’s view, repetition, in a way, is the very foundation of mathematics. “Abstraction marks a departure, whether it is in the field of mathematics or visual arts…calculus, equation, geometry, probabilities, and repetition have emerged as the aesthetics of mathematics,” he adds. Ghosh’s paintings are marked by repetition of painterly gestures—memories are recalled and then marked by the body. “A timeline—marked and coded—appears on the mental horizon…,” says Ghosh.

PATINA OF MEMORIES

In her essay, Bhagchandani states that Ghosh’s sculptural practice counters the extractive colonial logic of archaeology through a rigorous exploration of the intersections between geology, mathematics, and animism. “The ‘non-human’ is no longer a passive entity, nor is it subsumed into an anthropomorphic discourse of the self. The artist gathers clay from landscapes that he works out of, “awakening the materiality of fossilised remnants,” she writes. “And it is in their negative traces—residual surfaces—that we can fathom a former presence, be it through scorched ashen patinas or feral claw incisions, gestural leftovers in the aftermath of violence.” Each step has its own significance, from gathering of clay, understanding the materiality, and then layering those with the artist’s own memories. “The mind of our planet is a layered one—added to by the geological events and forms. These leave their own gestures and traces on the surface of rocks. Take, for instance, the texture of veins, bubbles and glittering minerals on the rocks. What are they all saying together? That’s how archaeology, geology and palaeontology come together with the patina of my own memories to create meaning,” says Ghosh.

In Bajaj’s work, the cosmic images have liberated her relationship with colour. At this stage of her practice, the vast expanse of the universe has come to stand as a metaphor for boundless creativity. “The universe does not obey the rules that we impose on earthly landscapes; it glows in improbable blues, burning violets, luminous reds. Studying these nebulae has allowed me to embrace a more fearless chromatic language,” she says. “Yet the colours are not merely aesthetic choices. They carry vibration and meaning.” Deep blues suggest silence and infinity; fiery oranges and reds evoke ideas of cosmic birth and transformation.

In her earlier exhibition at Alliance Francaise Gallery, Delhi, Bajaj had also shown a hybrid digital motion work, which emerged from a desire to extend the paintings’ stillness into time. Though her canvases often hold a suspended, meditative moment, the universe itself is never static. And she wanted to translate that sense of quiet movement into another medium. “The telescopic images, which initially inspired ‘spacescapes’, are themselves products of advanced technology. In that sense, technology has always been present in the conceptual foundation of this series,” she says. Bajaj collaborated with NewArtX, a platform for digital fine art, to explore how digital tools could reinterpret painterly abstraction through light, motion, and transformation. “The hybrid work creates an immersive experience in which the viewer does not simply observe space, but senses its pulse,” says the artist. “It reflects my ongoing exploration of how traditional and contemporary mediums can coexist, just as science and spirituality coexist within the same cosmos.”