Home ›› 17 May 2023 ›› Show Biz
When I heard about the first solo exhibition of Aloptogin Tushar at Galleri Kaya, I was really astonished to learn that until his mid-50s no galleries and institutions had taken any initiative to host his solo exhibition. Needless to say that Tushar is a devoted and skilled painter who has done many outstanding paintings, and drawings in different periods with varied mediums and themes. Famed for his reserved and soft-spoken nature he lives the life of a recluse-- away from the crowd and noise that accompany prominence, which he never hankered after. Tushar is presently the chairman of the Department of Fine Arts, Jagannath University. The present show at Galleri Kaya is his first solo exhibit, and justifiably quite important in the artist’s career.
I have several times visited Kaya’s art camps and art trips where Aloptogin Tushar took part. During that time, I have closely observed his working processes and techniques. When he gets immersed with his paintings, he completely loses himself. He applies colours and creates figures, and images in his own way. He puts layers upon layers of paint and draws details continuously until he feels that he has achieved what he has been striving for. Most of the time, the outcome is pensive, distinctive, precisely balanced and the arrangement of colours and space does not fail to draw an art enthusiast’s eyes.
When I first saw Tushar’s paintings about a decade ago, I was very much fascinated by his figural compositions and their proper articulations on canvas. He had truly engrossed himself with his themes. Over the years, the artist has been intensely documenting nature’s picturesque beauty as well as alluring women in all their curvaceous beauty, he also portrays women of his surroundings. His work expresses the aesthetic beauty of our Bengali women and their varied moods. The artist has splendidly rendered attractive women in all their curvilinear beauty and he has been enthusiastically studying the movements of figures (female) and arrangements of compositions for a long time.
At different phases of his career, Tusher has also portrayed elegant women in all their shapely grandeur. His ponderings on portraits, especially women, involve a vast range of themes from reality to fantasy, imagination to imperfection. Sometimes the artist delves deep into a psychological voyage through his surrounding characters. The artist borrows some characters of his portraits from fiction and sometimes from his imaginative world. He also brings in romanticism to his portraits as well. He tries to synchronise colours, textures and formation of visages. His colours are often brightened and sometimes subdued to translate the significance of the characters in his portrait works. Then there are times when the shades appear dreamy and romantic. The artist has used charcoal, pastel, pencil, watercolour, acrylic and oil on paper and canvas.
Tushar sometimes concentrates on drawings of bulls and the evocative works delineate the movement of the virulent animal. The animal seems desperate to break free. Through the artworks, the artist wants to underscore liberty. In this segment, he has experimented with bold lines and has shown a great ability to give an appealing view to his works where one can get a taste of pure realism. Charcoal is a flexible medium for Tushar, because the medium helps him to provide a realistic sensation about his characters’ sensibilities, articulations and gestures splendidly. Charcoal sticks particularly force him to focus on large shapes and realistic contours because of their blunt ends. The artist has massively used charcoal which can bring a permanent imprint on paper.
Tushar has also done a number of still-life at different periods of his career with watercolour and acrylic mediums. He perfectly paints a number of fruits both collectively and solely--- pears, green lemons, bananas, and grapes; he also tints a number of vegetables collectively--- cauliflower, tomatoes, bitter gourd, pointed gourd, sweet pumpkin, radish, brinjal, onions and potatoes. He has also painted a number of prawns with awesome looks.
Realism is Tushar’s forte. He has also portrayed a vegetable vendor, a tea shop in a rural setting where people gather from different parts of the society, resting boats at the banks of rivers, juvenile reading and sketching under a mystic ambience, a devoted violin player, labourers’ toiling, people waiting at stations, poverty-ridden people, bauls, mendicants, working-class people and more. Disadvantaged people and their daily chores have also been demonstrated in his artworks with different mediums.
Tushar makes great efforts to leave marks of his intelligence and perseverance in every medium of his creativities. He has developed an aesthetic quality in his paintings that works on many levels from the visual to the subconscious. Many of his paintings seem to us outstanding and make us contemplate largely due to his acute seriousness and honesty towards his works. A workaholic and preservative character, the painter spends considerable time to go into details of the subjects and he never hankers after wealth and cheap popularity.
The artist’s solo show titled “Journey” inaugurated on May 5 at Galleri Kaya in Uttara. It will continue till May 19.
The writer is an art critic and cultural curator.
