A Material Turn In History & Aesthetics

Through a recently concluded two-part solo exhibition, artist Samit Das explores the tropes of urban growth and the cityscape, extending them to the vocabulary of personal histories through sculptural assemblages of archival material and found objects

- Sumesh Sharma

Samit Das is an artist, historian and archivist who weaves history irreverently with scholastic reasons to do so. Visual Art does not intervene in history in times where referential practice is reverential to other histories as source material is to concept. But how can we chart a history of the modern and the conceptual based on our own mitigations of materiality, perceptions of space and colour, and thus make forms that narrate our idea of climate and time? Santiniketan, established by Rabindranath Tagore, now comes to be known as a University. It is not that you learn basic anatomy or painting at the school, but forms of perception and an acceptance of history from a mannerism of discovery and acceptance. Nandalal Bose would advise a young Krishna Reddy to watch a leaf form, its foliage needed a certain degree of creativity in formation and sculpting. An artist needed to think from such starts to draw on his own art.