High Modernism, the culture of the alienated individual of the mature capitalist democracy of West in the first half of twentieth century, had nearly succeeded in replacing the phenomenal word of objects and events by art-specific ideational constructs, in the non-performing visual arts. The ground realities, however, led the post modernists of various hues to rehabilitate the phenomenal world of objects (and events) in the arts with a vengeance; so much so, that the representation of objects in the contemporary art practice has taken on an iconic process, that endows an image with a signification of the artist’s intent. Object images are objectified to function as signifiers more than as representations of object per se.
Tensing Joseph having had his art education from the art schools of Trivandrum, Baroda and Santiniketan, the two institutions known for their emphasis on thematic rootedness and visual linguistic appropriation of the relevant from the wide world of art, does not seem to have been motivated only by the postmodernist doctrine of object-image, in his recent work.
Tensing Joseph’s overwhelming concern with iconic representation of agricultural and horticultural implements, has to be read with his close rendering of green fields, to realise to what extend his work is dependent on his experience of the lives of rural-agrarian sons and daughters of the soil. That Tensing is not making a doctrinaire statement, but visualizing a personal realisation, becomes perceptible with his mode of endowment of significance. The relative scale-wise relationship that he constructs between the images of agri-implements and the present or absent human user, often suggestively signify deeper than functional phenomenal relation. A relation in which the human user gets threateningly overwhelmed by the sheer numbers, sizes, and menacing shapers of the instruments and other objects he/she is supposed to use for living the life.
Apart from the relative scale and quantity-wise relationship between object images, Joseph also uses another configurational strategy to provoke thoughts on absurdity of human action in confusing situation. A number of his paintings appear as compounds of disjointed situational episodes, with no sequential connection. The only commonality between them is some kind of eerie absurdity. This makes these paintings remind one of surrealist preoccupation. His simpler sketches of human faces under stress, confirm his interest in study of human distress. And Joseph’s distressed humans are not just an abstract idea. They are real sons of the soil. And the real soil is so important for Joseph that it enters into his work as technical input that also functions as potent metaphor.
Pranab Ranjan Ray is one of the most celebrated art critics of this sub-continent. Educated at Shantiniketan, Kolkata University and with a degree from the Indian Statistical Institute, Ray does not have an academic background in the arts.His fondness for the arts developed during his university days as he viewed exhibitions and through interactions with artists, which soon overtook his penchant for active politics as a member of the communist party and he started to write about art when he was studying for an M.A. He gained recognition as an art critic when he started to write for the Lalit Kala Academy’s journal in 1960s. Ray visits Bangladesh once every two years to spend time with his friends here and loves the warmth of the people. He holds workshops and discussions whenever he is in town. He talks highly of the Bangladeshi artists, mentioning those he considers to the best in the field.