Texts: Shukla Sawant
“This first solo exhibition in New York by Amitava, one of the leading proponents of modernism in India, is a marked departure from the way art practices of our times are being viewed. For instead of a body of work that fits into the current rage for new media practices or neo-orientalist demands of many a cultural curator, we are exposed to a gestural style of painting, executed in acrylic/oil on canvas, vaguely reminiscent of Abstract Expressionism, yet completely unique in its visual form and conceptual underpinnings. Referencing at times the heroism and pathos of the poetry of Sakti Chattopadhya and Issac Bashevis Singer, the paintings are a manifestation of an elegiac sensibility, seeking solace in the act of painting. Drawing the viewer into their vortex through the sheer power of the forms brimming with passion, the paintings offer a way beyond the void of nothingness that afflicts one's existence in today’s time.”
(excerpt from the catalogue essay, A Passage Through a Two Way Mirror, by Shukla Sawant)