SOMENATH MAITY
Born: 1960 in Darua, Midnapur.
The creative human mind has been on an eternal journey for self- expression over the ages. The senses, which help us appreciate the cosmic beauty, encourage us, reinforced by rationality, to respond to the creativity of the artist. This way, a unique metamorphosis of concrete beauty into abstract aesthetics takes place. Somenath Maity combines what he sees with the vision of his mind’s eye to trace the subconscious.
The city, which he has seen as a student of art who has come from a quintessential rural culture, became his subject. In a prehistoric way, so to say. Here, the urban infrastructure appears as an extension of the roads, sewerage systems or vehicular movements of yore. Its journey records the flow of a silent life under the surface.
His platform of expression becomes the canvas from paper, mixed media and line drawings. The urban structure, like termite heaps, very old transports or the wheel, has not yet been obliterated. Somenath’s main subject of resonance is the coexistence of the colourful outer shell of modern technology and the eternal human civilization.
Shapes and situations are built on the canvas by the application of thick paint, overriding some frames. The old inertia, the bird’s-eye-view, has given way to the simple ground vision, creating a collage of the known and the unknown, the fathomable and the out-of-reach. There are urban structures and architectures as well as the existence of a bottomless pit, reflecting the mysteries of the Nature. This is Somenath’s achievement, dream and reality. The illusive mystery of the old and the new takes us to a world of pure imagination. In the midst of abstractionism, we can identify the familiar. This ethereal universe of Somenath Maity beckons us to his works.