The Poets and The Pain
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Georgina Maddox
As we enter the exhibition we are first greeted by a canvas by Pratul Dash. It is a touching portrait of a little boy, wearing a mask and a pair of shorts with its drawstring dangling. He stands out in high relief against a sky full of stars, surrounded by exotic flowers and two little ducklings that cling to his heels. If we were to go by Roobina Karode’s catalogue text, then this image is redolent with nostalgia for the artist’s boyhood. When quizzed about this, Dash laughs and indicates that this is possible, “Roobina ji has known me since my days as a student at the Delhi College of Art, when she used to teach there. Hence it is a valid reading. However, I am also making a bigger statement here. The boy is more emblematic, he represents all the children who will soon be deprived of certain species of flowers, birds and animals, since many are on the brink of extinction,” says the artist whose keen sense of eco-feminism underlines the pageantry of flowers and attractive wild animals that parade across his canvas.
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In another large work, that took him months to complete, is a thinly veiled self-portrait of the artist holding a giant bouquet of flowers. Here is another attempt to make a universal statement, since he conceals his identity by wearing his signature mask. It appears that the protagonist is trying to gather up all the flowers and present them in an everlasting bouquet for his audience. In another canvas we see him, with his back to the canvas, followed by his faithful companion, a big shaggy dog. Both man and dog are contemplating the night sky filed with stars, set against a field of wild flowers. Interestingly the flowers have been arranged in a manner resembling a bouquet, as if it is designed by nature itself.
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Dash’s canvases are seductive in their hyperrealist, glossy appeal, but they have a certain melancholy buried beneath this seductive surface. He has a serious message that examines the impact of urbanization on our towns and villages. The man-versus-nature conflict is a recurring concern for Dash. Born in the small town of Burla, in Odisha, Dash is often concerned with issues of migration and displacement. Living in the city for decades he often yearns for the simplicity of rural life. “Over the years, I look at the painted surface as a window through which one can slowly rupture and fragment the viewer’s ideal of realism,” says the artist. Change is always accompanied by the duality of desire and anxiety and it is this aspect that Dash underlines in his works. The rural and the urban are in constant dialogue, if not opposition with each other.
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Another aspect that Dash explores in his work is the duality of the self. At some instances he paints himself as a little boy playing with a spider-man mask in a field of flowers and in another, he is a man contemplating the universe. These two selves appear as constant reminders of his journey from innocence to adulthood. In the painting titled ‘Sometimes we eat ourselves’, the artist plays with the idea of consuming several selves, the wooden armatures of puppet-like dolls that symbolize this, enter the mouth of the artist and his younger self. It is a disturbing image that moves you to think about what we are doing to our environment has a direct impact upon the self and that mankind’s endless quest for consumption can only lead to his own annihilation.