Dr. S. Manzoorul Islam
Dhaka University
I have never met Niamul Bari – who has been living and working in New York since 1998 – and have seen only a few of his paintings that were on display in his last solo exhibition in Dhaka in 2010, but I can understand why he is considered one of the most exciting artists of our time, and why his forthcoming exhibition at the Bengal Gallery here is creating such enthusiasm both among art lovers and fellow artists. For, he appears to be an artist who likes to constantly experiment with materials and techniques, forms and style, texture and shape, and strives to give both a meditative quality to his canvas or sculpture and a feeling of speed. The last apparently contradictory statement is a bit difficult to explain, but looking at his work, one would certainly notice a journey towards a still centre where a range of moods and feelings coalesce, and bring momentary resolution to the conflicts and contradictions that shape our daily life and reality. Yet, his canvas, even at its most meditative, gives a feeling of movement, of speed, as layers of paint merge into each other and line, colour, texture and objects – even found objects – overlap to create a sense of dynamism that gives meaning to his meditation. His works – increasingly paintings – may appear from a distance to repeat colours, even a certain formal aesthetics – but on close inspection, reveal a rich formal diversity, as well as compositional variety. The colours too, appear subtly, but purposefully, varied. As he puts together elements of his composition with a sure hand, Bari’s texture sings the final note of his work’s uniqueness. What impresses me most about Bari’s works is the range of thoughts and feelings they evoke, the uniqueness of their composition and the sureness of their execution. He is surely an artist who knows what he is doing, and where his art aims to reach.
Whatever questions I had about Bari’s development as an artist – in particular his phased evolution as a painter from a ceramics artists and a sculptor – were answered by the transcript that was sent to me of a Skype conversation he had with a fellow artist and two Bengal Gallery operators. In the conversation he talks freely about his practice of different media, the constraints and challenges he had to face and the possibilities they offer. He also talks about the different realities he had to live through – in Bangladesh, India and USA – and how the experiences had shaped his philosophy of art. Working with ceramics, for example — which was his first medium — needs a sound knowledge of the technique – the ‘science’ of the art, so to say, and patience. The same applies to sculpture. Painting, on the other hand, can accommodate feelings and thoughts of the moment, and its execution can be swift. As he grew from a ceramics artist to a painter, Bari also consolidated his knowledge and experience of the two earlier mediums and their techniques and transferred the insights he had gained on to his canvas. In doing so, he has given a new interpretation of time and space. Sculpture is usually a work of scale and its experience is uniquely material and spatial, whereas painting, particularly of the modernist kind, engages more with the experience of time, interpreting and reinterpreting it with any emerging crisis – whether material or existential or whatever. Bari has a solid way of looking at space, and accommodates the shifting perspectives of time in his canvas. This explains the meditative quality of his canvas, and his desire to go for ‘permanence’ as far as his materials are concerned. As he explains in course of his conversation, his use of stone dust is meant to ensure that his colour and texture do not fade or wear out. It was quite natural, given Bari’s predilection for experimentation, that his paintings would retain an imprint of his experience with sculpture which according to Bari, is also distinguished by a constant interplay of surface and texture. His paintings have a sculptural quality which comes through in their textured execution and in his use of different objects that he often glues to the canvas as well as his thick application of colour with the help of knife and spatula. He believes that texture also incorporates drawing, and certain elements of his drawing, in turn, also add to the texture. Years ago, the maestro Safiuddin Ahmed told me that for him, texture was eminently reducible to a simple interplay of light and shadow. When I read Bari’s account of his visits to the caves of Ajanta and Elora, and practicing painting in the dark, I realized why his sense of texture is so overwhelming. By learning how to incorporate shadows in his drawing he was consolidating his texture.
Bari is an avid museum hunter and likes to see works of eminent artists – from old masters to contemporary artists. His days spent in Santiniketan taught him to go beyond the academic approach to reality and respond differently to the various movements and trends of art. His exposure to the masters has imparted a sense of discipline to his work, just as his Santiniketan experience has helped him find his own style. And then, working in New York, he has been in the middle of an ever shifting art scene and seen from up close the emergence of new media and the diverse use of new materials. What Bari does is incorporate new ideas into his work without sacrificing his originality. His work, as the interviewers rightly point out, has a Bangladeshi ambience, and Bari readily agrees. His childhood experience, his exposure to different religious and cultural traditions, remain as a backdrop to his creative pursuit, as do the years of training he had received in Chittagong and Dhaka which honed his skills and formed the core of his philosophy and aesthetics.
The 2014 exhibition will be different from the 2010 one, Bari informs his interviewers – his work will be smaller and much more compact. But a few things, I am sure, will also distinguish this exhibition: his penchant for experimentation, for depth charging, and for creating a multi-layered, dynamic art work where the boundaries of sculpture, painting and the new media overlap to create new media art.
For an artist living away from home for more than a decade and a half, the exhibition will also be a much anticipated homecoming as well as an exciting journey forward.