The Journey of a Solitaire
The journey of a ‘solitaire’
Javed Jalil
Ronni Ahmed is having his solo exhibition at the gallery of Alliance Francaise, Dhaka, where his work is hung up against the white wall as a question, a journey towards the infinite numeric visualization of the mind and thought- capturing the world of imagination.
His expression as a picture-maker is masked with satire and socio-political aspects of man's earthly political urges, while the soul of a man seeking emotional and primitive desires to reach for the essence of ones existence and ones self, remains incognito.
He uses comical characters to protest against, what he feels, a world of laughter and cruelty, and also of inhuman intellectuals for whom the altruistic journey is a mind game to create destruction- using knowledge as a weapon and means for power and greed.
Ronni Ahmed remains in the game of the social-orthodox, seeking to find in his deepest core the human spirit and how to see and survive the techno-political thresholds.
He used different media for his visual expressions.
In his dry-point drawings he uses different tonal values to create shades, an environment of an old wall in a cave, where the figures and varied forms interplay in a story-telling composition, which gives it a classical edge as well as primitive sensuality and also allows a play of the mind.
In the dry-point work 'My epical round world, please don't stop,' the notion is of an unconscious, rambling of thoughts, where there is a circle, and we are all pressed together, reaching out to each other and coming back to the same circle over and over again, to find nothing.
We are somehow trapped in a self-obsession of our hollow understanding and self-imposed limitation, and we enjoy it.
The story of this work could symbolize too many things if the viewer initiates his own journey with the picture. His figures are created with forms, relating to forms from the physical world which are transformed into the characters of his visual story.
The lines are sensitively contour, like a line from a child's drawing, but emotional in its execution. The drawings are further stylized with imperfection leaving the picture more alive and spontaneous.
The childlike play in his work is a formation of imagination and play coming together and reaching out for a complex story.
His colour works also compliments his 'black and white' giving it a touch of mystery and curiosity.
His work 'Caged friends are living happily and singing Lalon Shah' is a work of higher understanding where people take up spirituality as a trend, in search of freedom, but never looks within to reach the infinite. They end up in a cage of ignorance and listen to mystic music to rejoice in their freedom-seeking dramas.
Wanting to be free is being back in the cage again. Freedom is a word which only stimulates our desire to be free, only to chain us back to our thoughts again.
He used pastel to create shades of blue with black, creating a mystery of vibration and something beyond the tangible.
The composition has a sense of pressure expressing a story of suppression, of being caged. Figures, relating each other, are composed on to the main form: characters holding on to each other in promise of freedom.
Ronnie Ahmed not only tries to express his thought, but he does it with humor, to feed the world of intellect.
Collage-Kalpo: an art workshop
Rafi Hossain
Organised by Bengal Foundation and conducted by painter Monirul Islam, a painters' workshop, Collage-Kalpo, started on July 15 and will conclude today July 18. The event is being held at the rest-house of Bengal Jute Factory at Ford Nagar.
The aim of the workshop is to promote seventeen Bangladeshi artists, some renowned and some very young and promising and bring them together to work on a common platform. The Collage's objective is to encourage them to create artworks out of everyday materials. The artists are Hamiduzzaman, Shamshuddoha, Alokesh Ghosh, Md. Yunus, Dilara Begum Jolly, Ronjit Das, Shiddhartha Talukdar, Tarun Ghosh, Nilufar Chaman, Rafi Haque, Roni Ahmed, Shulekha Choudhury, Uttam K. Ray, Tayeba Begum Lipi and Shahjahan Ahmed Bikash were among them.
This is the first time that artist Hamiduzzaman is working on corrugated board. The themes and tones of his work in this workshop are different than his usual oeuvre. Artist Rafi Haque usually does etchings. This is also his first time working on corrugated board. The natural surroundings and ambience of the workshop locale has had an impact on the creative impulse of the artists. Rafi Haque expressed surprise at his own work, "After I had almost completed my work on the first day, I realized that the river flowing by the rest-house had found a place in my work." Young artist Uttam Kumar Roy has brought in the silence and living forces of nature on to his canvas. His work, completed on the first day, is dark red at the top, like a diminishing sunset, the greenery of ferns in the middle and the imprint of a single human hand at the bottom, as if signifying the existence of the human being within nature. Artist Ranjit Das spoke on how an artist must constantly redefine concepts and perceptions. "When I started off for the workshop I had prepared myself for water colours or working with acrylics. It was only later that I looked at the title of the workshop and realized that we would be working on a collage. I immediately changed my preconceived ideas. What I am doing now is tangentially related to my original conceptualizations but in a different form."
The workshop focused on the use of grey board. According to Monirul Islam, grey board is a cheap and locally available material. "Now we have to explore ways of making this material durable," he said. The artists have been working with corrugated boards. Local pigments, such as rice ash, organic gums, as well as acrymine colours are being used on the corrugated boards. Monirul Islam in his remark said, "I am pleased to see that our artists are enjoying working with these local materia1s."
Bengal Foundation has yet once again flawlessly organised a memorable event and all the participants including Monirul Islam have expressed their satisfaction and contentment in being a part of this workshop. A few of them felt that it was slightly difficult to produce four artworks within the four days of the workshop. However the majority appreciated the ambience they were working in and felt that because of the beautiful surroundings they could have actually produced more than what was expected of them. The artists were particularly happy to be working in a group comprising of all ages. They could learn about each other's style of work and the techniques and not just the finished products. This they felt creates a special bonding between the painters.
The participants were guided by Monirul Islam when making the collages, contrary to an art camp where there was no instructor. So a number of interesting works, created in their own ingenious styles, but on the same theme, emerged from this workshop. The artworks of this workshop will be on display at Bengal Shilpalaya Gallery quite soon.