Friday, August 2, 2013

Career graph of artist Prasanta Sahu

Artist Prasanta Sahu’s paintings operate as visible performative gestures that bring together the realms of art and society. For instance, if he deliberately disfigures its surfaces to point to the materiality of the canvas, the technique also alludes to the symbolic importance of the image thus blemished.

Violence is engagingly enacted on the pictorial surface. Art is not any longer the vehicle of seeking isolated intellectual pleasure, it’s an integral aspect of the immediate social and political milieu: both implicated in its aggression and a site for critique. The artist begins with bewildering blown-up reproductions of his body. He then paints over the grainy ensemble on canvas in a painstaking manner. Having trained in Electrical Engineering, the artist did his B.A Fine Arts (Painting) from Kala-Bhavana, Visva- Bharati University, Santiniketan (1993-98) and later completed his M.F.A. (Painting) from Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda (1998-2000).

His select group exhibitions include ‘Art for freedom’ courtesy Tehelka art & Aicon gallery, London (2008); a group show at 1x1 art gallery, Dubai (2008); ‘Image of one's own self" Gallery Kolkata (2008); The Harmony Show, Mumbai (2008, 07); an auction show by Asta Guru (2008); ‘Miniature Format Show-2008’ at Sans Tache Art, Mumbai; ‘A MAZ ING’ at Jehangir art gallery (2008); International Art Fair, Rome (2007); ‘Young guns’ at The Arts Trust Gallery, Mumbai (2007); ‘Emerging India’ at The Henry Moore Gallery, Royal College of Art, London (2007); ‘Generation Next’ at India Habitat Center, Delhi (2007); and ‘Vis(v)a’ at Aicon, NY (2007).

Among the awards and scholarships that the has won are gold medal from Department of Painting, M.S. University, Baroda (2001); Nasreen Mehmodi Trust Award, M.S. University, Baroda (2000); Camlin Award (2001); National Scholarship of the Human Resource Ministry (1996-98); an award Eastern Print Biennale Kolkata (1995); and Visva Bharati Merit Scholarship (1993-96).

He has been associated with the Dept. of Painting, Kala Bhavan, Visva Bharati University, Santiniketan. In fact, for artists like, Prasanta Sahu, Sanchayan Ghosh and Pampa Panwar, foundational presence of the Santiniketan as an institution has essentially become an inevitable model 'world concept', as they create amidst this enriching history, a facet underlined in a past group show, ‘Vis(V)a’, (2007).

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