Buddhadev Mukherjee
Man 45,
2013
Chinese watercolour, ink, and gold dust on chinese rice paper
8 × 8 in; 20.3 × 20.3 cm
Buddhadev Mukherjee was born on 4th August 1976 in Durgapur, an industrial metropolis in the state of West Bengal, India, located about 160 km from Kolkata. He pursued his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from Kala-Bhavana, Santiniketan in the year 2001 and went on to specialize in Printmaking from the M.S. University of Baroda where he completed his Masters in 2003. He participated in many prestigious group shows and art camps held in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bhopal and Baroda.
Having been acquainted with middle class society in the metropolis, Buddha constantly witnessed the predicaments of people, who are often overly obsessed with the material world. The plethora of imagery intertwined and overlapped replicates the subliminal desires in the mind. The ‘desires’ that overwhelm harmony, ethics, affinity and the socially constituted bonds are the chief concerns of the artist. His caricatures, physiognomies interpret the darker side of human relationships and the unchanged basic human instincts. The artist’s claustrophobic intentionality, reactionary to ‘Modernity,’ expresses his social hypersensitivity, often bursting with ‘politics’. Perhaps, his nostalgia is reflected in his visual compositions, where the childhood experiences growing up in Durgapur industrial belt undoubtedly led to the ‘complex’ visual vocabulary, which poses for the onlooker interesting queries about our mundane life. Having strong incongruity with the way art is practiced and produced, the artist sticks to the conventional basics of ‘Modern’ figurative language yet expressionistic in itself. His paintings do not retreat into a melancholy as his depictions of humor, which are manifested in his representations, evoke an alternative aesthetics. What keeps getting Buddha interested in painting is the playful assimilation of tones and textures, treating the canvas with impasto. His art reverberates with the ‘Van Goghian’ propensity to bring out the ‘expression’ of beleaguered souls of his forms. There is a candid effort to build up his language exploiting various possibilities of the mediums and materials throughout his practice. Budhadev Mukherjee lives and works in Baroda.
courtesy of artsy.net, imafoundation.com