Magic in the Square

The exhibition Magic in the Square – Mohan Samant, Centennial Exhibition, is a crisp exploration of Samant’s practice, which is also a tribute to the artist. Mohan Samant was part of the Progressive Artists Group (PAG) and carried the dynamism of the spirit of that age. Unique in his approach, Samant’s practice stood apart from the stylistic language of the PAG peers. Samant is one of the modern Indian painters to be trained in India and become successful in the West following India’s independence. He has been dubbed as “one of the few artists who has successfully made the bridge between Eastern and Western traditions.” Having spent most of his life in New York, Samant’s practice is a classic instance of the strong ingrained roots to the homeland despite having migrated to a different hemisphere, amidst a different culture. Revisiting Mohan Samant while reading his unorthodox approach in transliteration through a set of personal iconographies that would indicate a less-spoken chapter in the national history of art. He was one of the earliest examples of a transcultural person, freed from the incapacitating logic of stylistic doctrine through which often the modernist-nationalist narrative is studied, as poignantly termed by Homi K. Bhabha, he was a dweller of the in-between.

Growing up in the vibrant city of Bombay (now Mumbai), Samant was exposed to the realism of reproduction of Ravi Varma’s paintings at a tender age alongside his mother’s efforts in the crafts. Later on, training at the JJ School of Arts, and tutelage under Shankar Balwant Palsikar, introduced him to indigenous art styles like Basholi which left an ineffaceable mark on his creative subconscious. Simultaneously the Abstract expressionism that emerged in the 1950s and 1960s in New York, opened new approaches to experimenting with methods, language, scale and medium. Samant For Immediate release configured a style that incorporated and experimented with possibilities of materials, apart from regular paint he started using cement, plastic, sand, and thread, eventually layering his pictorial ground with cut-out forms and figurines. He raised these cut-outs from the primary surface, thus giving his paintings a three-dimensional effect. They are neither relief nor flat, this in-betweenness, perhaps is an adroit extension of his skills as a Sarangi player. The abstract nuance of classical music is translated in a subtle daintiness on his canvases.

The exhibition Magic in the Square is a nonliteral elucidation, drawn from the title of one of his artworks. With 20 works of Mohan Samant from the KNMA collection and other collections, synchronizing with the poetic deliberations of Amitava, the exhibition explores the ‘intermediary’ transmissions in consciousness that flow freely from one creative field to another, from poetry to image to music.

KNMA Chairperson and Founder Kiran Nadar said, “ We are delighted to present Amitava and Mohan Samant with their solo shows at KNMA. For viewers, this will be a rare opportunity to engage with the under-represented but extraordinary practice of Mohan Samant in his centennial year. Samant moved to New York, but his art created a stir wherever it was displayed. The exhibition for the first time also displays the four works that were gifted to the museum by the generous gesture of Samant’s family, especially his wife Jillian Samant. The second solo is of Amitava whose artistic practice is an exciting one as it collapses boundaries between artistic categories and creates a distinct visual language that is cryptic and contemporary.”

Roobina Karode, Director and Chief Curator, KNMA adds, “The solo exhibitions of Amitava and Mohan Samant’s at KNMA are conceptualized around their artistic preoccupations of disrupting the long tradition of medium-specific practice that they were initiated in, freeing themselves to expand their consciousness to divergent conceptual ideas, materials, media, discard /trash, playing upon assimilations, both coherent and absurd, creating multiple layers within a single frame. Amitava and Samant in different contexts and locations tend to converse around inventing a language of pictorial construction, collaging, armaturing and assemblaging, creating extra dimensions through cut-outs, paper shreds and threads, fragments of objects, toys, markings along with color pigment, pencil scribbles, inks and markers. While Mohan Samant excavates sedimented memory, fossil-like forms and totemic imagery from his sand, dust and gravel layers, Amitava restores his journey having archived the self, gathering mementos and ephemera across geographies, histories, poetry and literature, juxtaposed with scribbles and colours, in tune with sounds and silence.”