How would you describe Dhaka in five words or less? Chaotic, clamorous, teaming, intense, unharnessed. They all fall short. Many would be less kind in their accounts. And perhaps any description would be incomplete without mention of one of the most integral elements of Dhaka – the traffic. The rickety rickshaws, boxy CNG’s, swerving cars, monstrous buses and skeletal bicycles, are all actual characters with unique features and identities. They are the true owners and rulers of Dhaka. The city mascot is a vehicle.
It is a common joke that Dhaka is like an old orphan that has no chance of ever finding a loving, nurturing family. It is so easy to fall out of love with Dhaka, to ignore it and be cruel to it, to distance oneself and to dream of escape plans. It is much more difficult to try to love this city, to see it as if for the first time and to embrace it for what it is. To approach it unconditionally, without expectations or standards set by other cities.
This is what Jon Den Hartigh is offering us, an opportunity to see Dhaka anew. To see it deconstructed and interpreted. Jon shows us a colorful Dhaka, an absurd melting pot of people and machines, a city which barely strikes that perfect balance between chaos and functionality. The most remarkable thing about Jon’s works is that he managed to capture the ephemeral quality of time in Dhaka it is a fusion of lingering past (which must be physically deconstructed, as in the ship breaking yards of Chittagong) the squashed sliver of present, which is continuously (ceaselessly) pressured by the eminent future, which is just about to happen almost here it comes, just around the corner
It is a city which demands a lot from its dwellers. It is brutal in its honesty, and unable to be other than what it is. You can either love it or hate it, but loving it is much more expansive and gratifying. Where else will you see a van rickshaw loaded with a merry go round driving in the middle of the night down the avenue? Where else will you see a man standing on the trunk of an old Chevrolet riding it through the thick of traffic on a busy road? There are so many small, absurdities which slowly cast a spell.
The spectator can walk away from this exhibition thinking this was a show about graphic design and not what is considered to be ‘high art’. It would not be completely untrue, the works have a very strong aesthetic and are undoubtedly decorative. But there is more to it than composition and colour schemes, it is an artist’s attempt to understand the strange and complex world around him, by copying it, again and again.

Date: 29.03.2013 – 07.04.2013
Venue: Bengal Art Lounge
Organiser: Bengal Foundation