Ganesh Haloi, Untitled 23, 2021, gouache and Chinese ink stick on Japanese scroll paper,
27.5 x 53.5 in.

The Architectonics of Form: Scrolls by Ganesh Haloi, Akar Prakar
April 23-July 16, 2022
On view at Akar Prakar, Kolkata and online

Sound encompasses both time and space, weaving the two into complex structures of material manifestation that we experience and express as forms through our sensorial perceptions (smell, taste, see, feel and hear). The scrolls by Ganesh Haloi, are cartographic mappings of the layered sensations that have impressed upon him for decades. Beginning with the steady lyricism of Ajanta murals, resonant whispers of the varying landscapes, rhythmicity of the alpana forms, structurality of manmade interventions and the poetics of space.

Ganesh Haloi, Scroll 7, 2021, Chinese ink stick on Japanese scroll paper, 53.75 x 13.75 inches

Ganesh Haloi was born in 1936 in Jamalpur, Mymensingh(in present-day Bangladesh). He moved to Calcutta in 1950 following the partition. The trauma of displacement left its mark on his work as it did on some other painters of his generation. Since then his art has exhibited an innate lyricism coupled with a sense of nostalgia for a lost world. In 1956, he graduated from the Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta. In the next year he was appointed by the Archaeological Survey of India to make copies of Ajanta murals. Seven years later, Haloi returned to Calcutta. From 1963 until his retirement, he taught at the Government College of Art and Craft. He is a member of The Society of Contemporary Artists, Calcutta since 1971, and lives and works in Calcutta.

He has participated in several group exhibitions in India, Greece/Germany (Documenta 14 at Athens & Kassel), California (Architecture of Life, at Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archives (BAM/PFA), Berkeley), Berlin (8th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art), London (A Special Arrow Was Shot in the Neck, David Roberts Art Foundation). He is represented by Akar Prakar Kolkata and New Delhi, and has had various solo exhibitions in Kolkata, Delhi, Mumbai, Dhaka and New York including Sense & Sensation at Akar Prakar Kolkata and New Delhi in 2021, Form & Play at Asia Week New York in 2020 to name a few.

To view the exhibition, click here