Analyzing metro-centric living in a globalized world

Among many other social and cultural things, Rathin Barman’s he looks to address the cycle of constant building-destroying and then rebuilding alongside the art-architecture intersection. It raises questions, in the process, about the potential value of detritus and the life of material.

Rathin Barman holds a BVA and MVA from the Faculty of Visual Arts, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata. His work has been featured in group exhibitions at Victoria Memorial Hall, Kolkata; Gallery Kolkata; and Frieze Art Fair, New York. His first solo, ‘And My Eyes Fill with Sand…’was shown at Experimenter, Kolkata in 2011. Barman has had residencies with The Why Not Place Residency Program at Religare Arts, New Delhi and Sandarbh Artist Residency in Rajasthan. 

Revealing his artistic ideas and thought processes, he states: “As we move into a globalized world, over dependence on our metro centric lives and need for material consumption has increased manifold. This in turn has given rise to new economic and environmental structures that are transforming both urban and rural spaces. Living in an urban setting has made me confront in my immediate surroundings the need to desire more. It has also made me work with materials that are urban, representative of our times and has made me recognize the definite unabated and unstable transformation of the urban landscape.

The artist reveals that his interest includes intervention in diverse urban and natural spaces in our immediate surroundings - physically or virtual spaces. He is very much interested through his interventions to highlight a subtle sense of humor and a wry helplessness in being located between reality and illusion through my sculptures, drawings and interventions and to redefine spaces, both visually and conceptually.

The various consequences of the transforming urban landscape owing to socio-economic change interests him to research more on architecture, the urban sprawl, development and human behavior. He considers the city to be a political phenomenon that reflects diverse ideology and socio-political points of view. He visits the cities that have either gone through transformation or are in the process of being transformed and create work that is relevant not only to that particular city, but a comment on our rapidly growing urban lives as well.