Explore Adip Dutta’s Darkling Ground

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Most artists look at objects and sites with an eye unlike others, and Adip Dutta is no different. The Kolkata-based creator has, since the past 10 years, been looking at found objects and sites as tools of labour and construction. In his latest solo show, By Darkling Ground, he illustrates his observations in a series of ink drawings and sculptures. Says the press note for the show, ‘A primitive exploration of material and an anthropological study of form, coupled with fantastical imagination of these sites provides an indistinct yet precisely close insight into the ways and processes of Dutta’s mind’.

4 Questions with the artist, Adip Dutta

1. Artistic Motivations “I have been trained as a sculptor, therefore my focus has always been sculptural objects. Dug-up, chaotic spaces provide me with a scope for fantasy, especially when I see one in a middle-class locality; it appears to me like a visual from a book on archaeology.”
2. Inspirations “My practice is situated in between an act of drawing and object-making. Since my drawings are based on fine lines appearing on paper like a filigree, I respond to Mughal miniatures and works of artists like Nasreen Mohamedi and Zarina Hashmi.”
3. Concerns that find a place in your art “Issues like reluctance towards history remain camouflaged in my work.”
4. If not an artist, you would be… “I enjoy teaching because it doesn’t involve one-way traffic. I get to learn a lot from young creative minds. I’d be glad if I make sense as an art teacher.”

By Darkling Ground is on display at Experimenter, Kolkata (2/1, Hindusthan Rd, Dover Terrace, Ballygunge) until July 8, 2017