‘Not a Dream, Not Peace, Not Love’: Thought-provoking exhibition depicts humanity’s harsh realities through art

Arindham Chatterjee's exhibition, titled 'Not a Dream, Not Peace, Not Love', is currently being held at Emami Art, Kolkata until April 6, 2024. (Source: PR Handout)

Chatterjee, a Kolkata-based painter known for his highly experimental and critical works, reflects our fragile existence in a time of mindless violence, anomie, arbitrary power rule, and repression. (Source: PR Handout)

Initially a successful abstract artist, Chatterjee shifted towards figurative art around 2007. His paintings exhibit a highly experimental yet easily recognisable style, blending elements of expressive abstraction with powerful realism. (Source: PR Handout)

In contemporary art historical discourse, he aligns closely with a group of artists, writers, and poets who, in a highly critical-poetic manner, attempt to capture the true faces of civilization, often turning barbaric. (Source: PR Handout)

Using non-conventional and non-functionalist mediums on paper, Chatterjee's work addresses themes of bare life and Schimittan's notion of emergency and state of exception. (Source: PR Handout)

The exhibition showcases his extensive body of paintings, most never shown before, created between 2017 and 2023. (Source: PR Handout)

Richa Agarwal, CEO of Emami Art, describes Chatterjee's work as influential, depicting man's inhumanity and our fragile existence in a fractured world affected by war, violence, and injustice. (Source: PR Handout)

"Instead of representing violence and human pathos in any straightforward manner, he connects them to the core of social, political and even ethical life and existence through his unique style, figuration and medium use...I believe that art lovers, critics and students will enjoy the exhibition and enliven the artistic discourse about representing the pain of others in an image-dominated world," she adds. (Source: PR Handout)

Established in 2017, Emami Art is a leading contemporary art gallery and space for cultural production with a focus on a future-forward, complex, multi-dimensional approach that echoe South Asia's history, socio-cultural and geo-political narratives. (Source: PR Handout)