ADIP DUTTA

Fragmented and ever-evolving, the city is transformed into a layered archive, one in which the archaic and the contemporary, the natural and the constructed, coexist in continuous dialogue. A meticulously constructed, surrealist portrait, in the form of ink works—of the densely packed, bustling footpaths, strewn with transient architecture and shanties—acts as a point of entry into the exhibition. These spaces, all of which Dutta has witnessed over time, narrate the story of a city, constantly evolving, shaped by its people. Despite the absence of the human form, their presence is palpable in the pots and vessels, chairs and benches, the hanging clothes, and the wrapped-up goods, but most importantly in the space itself.

Much like these footpaths and streets, Dutta’s works on paper emerge organically. Each work is created painstakingly over a period of several months. They usually begin with a single fragment on paper, more recently on canvas, gradually expanding one layer at a time. Executed through fine brushstrokes under a magnifying glass, the densely packed marks resemble intricate stitchwork, lending the works a tactile quality that echoes the layered skin of the city. In Dutta’s hands, drawing becomes an act of excavation, patiently uncovering the traces concealed within the everyday.

Spread across his neighbourhood, the spaces captured by Dutta contain multiple temporalities; they are simultaneously archaic as well as contemporary. The weathered surfaces, the haphazardly placed, improvised structures, and dense materiality evoke a recent past while alluding to everyday life and labour. Extending his inquiry into sculpture, he casts obsolete construction tools, fallen trees, and branches into bronze, transforming these overlooked forms into archaeological relics that invite renewed attention.

Dutta’s archaeological sensibility is most evident in Ruptures and Running Woods. In Ruptures, construction sites are presented as archaeological plates, transforming spaces of development into sites where history, archaeology and excavation converge. In Running Woods, mundane construction scaffoldings are reimagined as an echo of the forest. Putting these two into conversation, he collapses the boundary between the manufactured and the natural. Moreover, remnants of trees, trunks, branches, and twigs, that recurrently feature in his intricate drawings and sculptural forms, extend this inquiry. To Dutta, these vestiges become a reminder of the forest that once occupied landscapes before yielding to urban expansion. His works explore the coexistence of the forest and the city, suggesting that the urban is layered with ecological memory.

In Skin of Elsewhere, an aerial vantage point emerges, providing a lens into Dutta’s mind where the city and its spatial, material and formal elements are constantly transforming. The exhibition offers a nuanced way of looking at both corporeal and psychological landscapes as terrains layered by time and memory, attempting to draw meaning from what surrounds us yet often escapes our attention as the world remains in a constant state of flux while re-evaluating how we find ourselves within a recalibrated environment.