Manan Morshed’s exhibition ‘Shut out of site’ underway

Prominent artist Manan Morshed's dual solo exhibition, "Shut out of Site", is currently taking place at Dwip Gallery in Lalmatia and the British High Commission Residence Project Space in Baridhara. Curated by art critic and artist Mustafa Zaman (for Dwip Gallery) and artist and organiser Teresa Albor (for British High Commission Residence Project Space), the show, which commenced on October 22, will continue till November 6, 2021. Sculptor, painter and architect Hamiduzzaman Khan inaugurated the exhibition at Dwip Gallery in the presence of contemporary artist Kazi Salahuddin Ahmed, executive director of Dwip Gallery Kazi Tahsin Agaz Apurbo and British High Commissioner Robert Chatterton Dickson, among others.

Born in 1976 in Naogaon, Manan developed an interest in art since he was in the seventh grade, expressing his thoughts through satirical pieces on magazines, murals, and political posters of the 1990's autocratic regime in Bangladesh. This indulgence in art and publication led him to complete a Bachelor's degree in Fine Arts from the Faculty of Fine Art, University of Dhaka, in 1999.

For more than two decades now, Manan has been working as an artist, illustrator, activist and entrepreneur. He is also a skilled photographer and graphic designer. Manan worked at The Daily Star for 19 years and is the Art Director of the art magazine, "Depart". He founded Dwip Gallery in 2018 to promote modern and contemporary art, curatorial practices and facilitation of recent knowledge on art and society. He has been providing art consultancy to Steps Towards Development and other NGOs since 2000.

In the process of all the work he did for others, Manan felt the need to showcase his own art. He realised that his previous paintings were directed at a certain set of audience, and left no room for development of his own style of expression.

In 2018, Manan began to break out of these structures and develop an abstract style, guided by his unconscious. This is evident from the lines of some of his paintings that are irregular but grant freedom to the ink in the mix as it pleases, which imitates the involuntary action of switching from one thought to the other. Some also accompany fluid brushstrokes and many even have abstract and semi abstract figures.

Although Manan had been busy with his professional and other commercial enterprises since the start of the pandemic, he dedicated some time to painting. When he had a good collection, Mustafa, Apurbo and Salahuddin insisted on having his own exhibition, which resulted in two of them. He has displayed acrylic, oil, and water based paintings in "Shut out of site".

They represent his past life, his surroundings and his mental state at the time he began to rebuild his relationship with paining. 

Special guests at the exhibition. Photo: Courtesy of Dwip Gallery

His paintings explore topics of the unfamiliar. They are based on a non-spatial matrix, which can be better explained as a space that we can or cannot imagine, but can create an image of it in our minds.

This image, however, does not look like the spaces we have occupied or would occupy, and it does not matter if we are in or out of space. Such an experience of the supernatural in a journey across the spatiotemporal reality is however not as special as the image, which has denied every kind of identification. It is non-communicative and can even signify the world before visual communication began, thus paving a way to return to the point of origin.

Such an image is non-referential and non-negotiating, where all knowledge-seeking processes are left to concentrate on the doing, which is, creating images. It may also offer some solutions to the problem of self-referential images in the art's historical context.

Manan feels elated and confident for having pulled off the exhibitions. They have given him the courage to paint, and display more of his works.

"Shut out of site" is open to the public from 4 pm to 9 pm at Dwip Gallery every day except on Mondays, while its parallel show in Baridhara is available by appointment.

The author is a freelance journalist. Email: farahkabirg5@gmail.com.