The Art of an Artistic Life
When a human being is imbued with intellection and exuberance of life, when he or she delights in living life in its fullness, and revels constantly in gleaning the multifarious shades of diversities caused by the creative frenzy of Nature, his or her life and creative production become a part of the creative self of the Universe. This is exactly what happens in case of Zahangir Alom, a visual artist whose life as an individual and thoughts on life are no less than artistic. His relentless efforts have produced hundreds of paintings, out of which only a few have been selected for display in the exhibition titled “The Uncaged” at La Galerie, Alliance Française de Dhaka.
Eminent artist Professor Rafiqun Nabi will inaugurate the exhibition as chief guest today at 6pm. Professor Nisar Hossain, Dean, Faculty of Fine Art, University of Dhaka will be present as special guest while Mahfuz Anam, Editor and Publisher of The Daily Star will attend the opening ceremony as guest of honour. Bruno Plasse, Director, Alliance Française de Dhaka will welcome the distinguished guests and also preside over the ceremony.
The exhibition, open from Monday to Thursday from 3pm to 9pm and on Fridays and Saturdays from 9am to12 noon and 5pm to 8pm, will conclude on December 15 with closing ceremony featuring music and dance performances.
Zahangir earnestly feels the music of the innermost recesses of the soul of the earth, water and forest. He tries to embody that music in his painting. In his choice of language or theme, he is not confined to Bangladesh. He endeavours to capture the experiences of his extensive travels as well as to give imaginative expression to his intended journey across the world of natural beauties encompassing rivers, lands and waters.
In the early series of paintings capturing “Celestial view of earth from space,” he drew these paintings with thick coloured dots to focus on land from the view of a flying bird and to illustrate the panoramic landscape of rivers. He draws a lot of paintings with flowers, but they are not exactly like the flowers in reality. Here colour conveys the alluring capability of beauty. Driven by wanderlust, the artist celebrates the manifestations of nature, though it is not often a close-up view.
Though the paintings displayed in this exhibition belong to different series of paintings, each of them has been named separately by the artist; and the narratives of their place, time and artistic feelings have been specifically recorded. In most of his works, he has used black with red, blue, yellow and orange colour in the same brightness.
In a word, Zahangir's paintings have been able to create a separate world in which the beauties of Nature are observed with great passion and extolled in an absolutely uninhibited way.
The writer is Associate Professor at the Department of Oriental Painting in the Faculty of Fine Arts, DU and is the curator of the exhibition. The translator serves the Government of Bangladesh as Senior Assistant Secretary at the Security Services Division, Ministry of Home Affairs.
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