My name is Sagnik Roy and I am a visual artist. I was born on 9th April, 1998 in Kolkata. Currently I am practicing my art in this city. I passed Bachelor of Fine Arts from "The Indian College of Arts & Draftsmanship" in 2020 (Department of Painting). I passed Master of Fine Arts from Rabindra Bharati University in 2023 (Department of Painting). I am practicing my art currently in a multi-disciplinary medium and language. These area-based works bear witness to my long-standing abstract landscape practice. My painting is not Just a demonstration of competent application of paint. It offers a feeling of my homage to the subject.
These works of mine are metaphor or personification of nature itself. Structural forms, shapes, texture, surface are the chief parts of my painting. I create textures to map the architectural land through impasto brushstrokes and pigment. Processes of memory perception, identification and familiarization with textural bodies and eroded surfaces continue through tactile sensations. My landscape does not bear witness to any particular known place, period in meteorological terms. Surface forms and objects are formed through uncertainty, absence and accidental playfullness. The texture develops layer by layer through continuous repair and erasure.
My works create a lonely, quiet, rough or smooth place where time seems to stand still. Deserted, eroded surface, plateau, hill, dry branch, bark, rock, swamp----all give birth to old memories and emotions. I cannot resist myself from responding to their irresistible call and they become my chief objects of the work. Consciously I do not bring any living object in my work. Infact numb, inanimate objects exist in space and a visual dialogue is born between them. This very silence and solitude of nature is the soul of my work. In the midst of this vastness and emptiness of nature, the lost folk life seems to be a faint memory.
I try to evoken the inherent quality of light inside the melancholic chiaroscuro layer. Jibanananda Das's poems, Tarkovsky, Miklos Jancso, bergman- their films take me to the touch of a nebulous, ashy, dreamy, illusory surface in every moment of consciousness and subconscious. Most of my works take form on the land surface, the designs and meticulous draughtsmanship of ancient iron grills, railings as a symbol of memoir and past. The textural body consists of unexplored tracts of land, smoky heaps, scorched sufaces, the construction and deconstruction of mundane and extraterrestrial worlds. Apparently dead withered flowers and dried leaves evoke past associations with life. I want a viewer to try to identify these unseen objects and forms, unknown to him, mysterious, symbolic. He will try to reconcile his lonely, elusive fragments of memories.
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My work has been exhibited in numerous art exhibitions like, 55th Birla Annual Exhibition in 2022, West Bengal State Academy Annual Exhibition in 2023, Annual Exhibition of Rabindra Bharati University (2022, 2023), painting exhibition at "Jehangir Art Gallery" organized by Camel Art Foundation(2023), Annual exhibition of Indian art college (2018, 2019, 2020), group exhibition in "Gaganendra Shilpa Pradarshashala"(2019) named "Nandanik", group exhibition in "Academy of FineArts"(2020) named "Glance". Work selected in "Ami Art Festival" (2019 and 2020) organized by "Kolkata center for creativity" (Emami Art). Online display in “The Environmental Situation Room” curated by Helen Frederick and Kala Chapal Trust. etc.
I have participated in several workshops. As such, Participated in "Camel National Art Camp" at Ajanta, Maharashtra organized by Kokuyo Camlin.(2022) Participated in workshop on the "Life and Legacy" of Netaji on the occasion of Netaji's 125th birth anniversary organized by "National Gallery of Modern Art" and "Ministry of Culture".(2021) Participated in River Festival Painting Event under Laily Thompson and Sumantra Mukherjee.(2020) Participated in performing art workshop entitled "Science, Art, Life Choir and Conference" which was part of a contemporary event named "Five Million Incidents" under Shreyans Iyer in Goethe Institute, Max Muller Bhavan(2019). Participated in painting event (workshop) entitled "Virasat Se Jugalbandi" under artist Jraj Dassani in Indian Museum.(2018)
View Sagnik’s work in the Spring | Summer 2023 Gallery