The exhibiting artists focus on representing life once thought to be conventional. Their work makes us realise the conscious replacement that we have carried out in our lives. An Alternate Lifetime is shared by all of us , artists often attempt at its illustration by drawing deep narratives in their work. The narrative of those who aren’t represented in popular culture , a subaltern decolonial presence erased behind the veneer of normalcy is what Virendra Maurya and Dipankar Pramanik unearth with their practices.

Among the diaspora of internally dispersed economic migrants in India the village or ‘Gaon’ is endearment of belonging and placement of identity. Idyllic memories betray truths of casteism and denudation of land and natural resources. Born in 1993 in the hills of Dadra Pahadi in Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh, Virendra Maurya is a multi-faceted visual artist, whose practise ranges from luminism, installation, material, to paintings, prints, etc. Virendra completed his BFA from Benaras Hindu University followed by his MFA from Hyderabad Central University. He was brought up in a family of farmers, surrounded by nature, which connected him to the values of the environment, an experiential inspiration to be seen in his practice. A sense of ownership that we hold to nature be it our villages, to land , our states and geographies is what Virendra illustrates with his complex canvases that traverse various surfaces.

Virendra’s oeuvres are often inspired by the surrounding landscapes of wherever he may be. His experiences have given him the opportunity to observe nature upfront and close – the constant cycle of life and death or rebirth. Similar to Jackson Pollock’s vigorously spontaneous drips, also called “action paintings”, that feature spontaneous movement through seemingly chaotic marks. Virendra’s works also feature a similar sense of constant movement and motion. Every stroke and action carried out consciously conveying his emotions of pain, violence, etc. Virendra is inspired by artists like Anselm Kiefer and his use of innovative and unconventional use of diverse materials that he combines according to the emotions that stir in him; also influenced by Arte Povera. Maurya’s materials which composed his art are drawn from his long observational walks which oft ended as a spree of finding art. His installation work often comprises found object, wood, stone, paper pulp, industrial material, etc.

A unique individuality in Virendra’s practice is his use of organic material, by providing them with a purpose to convey his inner feelings. His practice stretches to the exploratory surreal concepts of time, its non-linear movement, man’s changing interaction with his surroundings and our relation to space. Here we discover his ability to animate games, in a post-internet scenario we see an artist from Mirzapur contesting ‘Time and Space ‘ where linearity is lost in speed and the landscape lost in multiple planes of vision. His journey in art did not start in Benaras or Hyderabad rather it began in Mirzapur , a mofussil provincial town now ‘AmazonPrime’ famous through a popular series on crime . When your geographical belonging in a country of 1.3 billion is immediately associated with feudal mafias and murder , like a Colombian instantly connected to Cocaine in a social setting , the humour gives away to deep insight. Virendra first studied science in a local college in Mirzapur where he enrolled to learn Visual Art. A strange choice , but the art teacher in the school was famous at teaching visual art and preparing students for the Benaras Hindu University. Art transformed his surroundings and his sense of self and beyond the influences of other artists his surfaces narrate his story.

Virendra also established a company, “GoGo Art Studio”, working on projects with Hyderabad Central University, Telangana Police Academy, etc, giving himself the opportunity to explore and work on bigger projects. He currently resides in Benaras continuing his exploratory art practice. An illustrator for Online Games , he is what we could call a conceptual artist , a traditional painter and a participant in the labour for the Digital.

Until the establishment of Colonial Art Schools, Indian court painters made side profile portraits. Often in the Mughal Courts its painters would make copies of prints of Flemish paintings brought to the court by emissaries and missionaries in miniature style. The side profile portraits of emperors were then copied by Rembrandt in the form of engravings referencing copies of miniature paintings with portraits of Mughal Emperors. The study of anatomy began with visiting European painters. The British painter George Chinnery & Lam Qua from Hong Kong actually introduced portraiture to the Bombay elite , and the one of the first patrons was the Opium Baron Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy who established the Sir JJ School of Art in 1858 , which today is the world most profilic institution for portrait painters having produced the likes MV Dhurandar , PA Dhond , KK Hebbar , MR Achrekar , Bose Krishnamachari and Prabhakar Kamble. Indian’s actually excelled at portrait painting and soon it became the sole idiom of artistic expression. It is common in India to ask and artist to draw a portrait to judge their skills. Many JJ graduates set up photoportrait studios across rural India where they would paint and touch up portraits of those departed as a vocation. The portraits of politicians such as BR Ambedkar , Mahatma Gandhi and Indira Gandhi were painted and spread wide making those artists famous. The vocabulary that marks sub-altern visual culture in Modern India today is indeed portrait painting. Dipankar Pramanik is a current day.contemporary practitioner.

Born in West Bengal in 1988, brought up in New Delhi, Dipankar Pramanik is a Delhi based artist rendering portraiture. He completed his BFA and MFA from the Lalit Kala Mahavidyalaya, New Delhi. Dipankar began drawing at a young age but went to art school only with the encouragement of his High School teacher, Manoj Naik who guided him to explore various art schools, thus facilitating a sudden realization to pursue art. A defining moment in his early career was a moment of appreciation by a teacher towards his displayed art at All India Art & Cra􀀨t Society, who knew him by name but not by face, praised his work displayed at the gallery.

Like many well-known artists of portraiture, one being Sudhir Patwardhan, whose work primarily tells of the cityscapes, with its constituent of people in their diurnal activities, particularly comprised of dramatis personae. His oeuvres centre around human figures as a representation of subjects set in a controlled environment, depicting the performance of chores on busy city streets or at suburban construction sites. Similarly, Dipankar’s work is a mesh of human figures and quotidian moments alongside lush green landscapes of West Bengal, simplicity being his central focus. He observes and illustrates the personage in all their individual likeliness – skin tones, details of faces, facial expression, et all.

Like his contemporaries, Dipankar captures snapshots of people as they go about their daily lives – whether on the busy streets of a city or the quiet village life. Compared to the likes of the Pakistani artist Salman Toor and the Mauritanian artist Saleh Lo, whose theme centres around societal issues tackling street children, interbreeding and slavery, intimate scenes set to glorify young fictional brown men highlighting moments of passivity to convey nostalgia and / or alienation, respectively. Dipankar’s work is of a painter who depicts non-glorified visuals of India on the street. This is due to his proximity to its people, as a young artist he eats with them , buys his groceries with them and moves with them in transportation. He observes emotion and human facial motifs , making him an interesting artist. The fact that Salman Toor, Saleh Lo and Dipankar Pramanik have ventured back to portraiture to portray contemporary society without filters in an age of selfies and a timeline of art history where once video art was the only way forward is an example of how art history when allowed to be free from the cudgels of discrimination does not serve the interests of forms, formats or materials but rather the people.

Dipankar Pramanik has displayed his works at Gallery Navya, Saket Triveni Art Gallery, India Habitat, All India Art & Cra􀀨t Society and Art Heritage. He resides in Delhi continuing his practice of homegrown depiction. Virendra and Dipankar exhibit through their works these quiet moments that pass us by, expressing through their works the passage of time when compared to the past in the context of our relation to surrounding and the uncertainty of the future. This is the Alternate Life to which we are privileged an audience. In times of pandemic economic misery we present human life as an antidote to our anxieties and traumas , its non-linear timeline and its ability to display varied emotions among them hope and happiness.

Curated by Ananta Singh ,
Bombay , 2021 .