A Dialogue Within & Ongoing| #conflicting322 with Milton B. , Kaur ChiMuk• Saturday, June 17, 2017 #showmustgoon
- Hi, Milton, intentionally avoiding the formal introduction here. We expect that viewer will find you out from their own interest area, if they want to know more formally…(smile) about artist Milton. so better come to the point… tell something about your daily routine, how you engaged yourself as an artist, especially where everyone trying to move to new media format, how will you get the energy to stick in your line making practice?Milton: Shifting from one place to another has become my daily habit and I mostly move alone. Although after quite a long time I’m in home, with parents, prefer to spend some time with them and helping them in the daily works of kitchen or else. I love to create test and fragrances for the people around, finding cousins from different part of the world and introducing them to my semi-traditional semi-bohemian home. Watching & responding the happenings around. A vital part is listening to sounds, words and music. Teaching art to students.The method of making or erasing marks is common to human habit. It is more physically made and generates physical experiences. Which I believe is more remaining and valuable in an under developing country like India. Touching a surface and experiencing the quality of it is a primitive gesture, which lead me to a new dimension where “viewer” can see+hear+smell+touch the art. Particularly making line is the way we count time where I get into the surface not only in a mental space but also in a physical level.
- as we know from your previous note, about your interest in the suburban area… as an curator I’m curious how that suburban experience helps you to make art or if I ask. is it really helps you to find new lines?
Milton: yes. My early practice of painting was about living architecture from suburban areas. That pictorial planes in a large scale psychologically guided me to enter into a space included a diverse experience of things around. After a longer duration of practice the images changed but the process of experiences are still same.
- looking at your lines, as an individual, always push me toward a query… are you really consider your painting comes from out the main frame of urban life? and do you admit your art process is somehow has a connection with subaltern ideas?
Milton: I do talk about the life who suffer from its habituated socio-political monotonous dissatisfactions and ethical ideology. As a part my case studies I found these dilemma more prominently in the suburban life, which has a linear connection with subaltern ideas and situation.
My work is a distorted reflection of urban-semiurban-suburban life. But the class position of my painting is completely open to the position of individual.
- do you think your lines are a political statement or is it some kind of tendency to trace the present state situation?
Milton: Un-showing the space inside a line which covered by the other line is a politics. It is a symbolical presence of the global politics.
5.the way we are losing motive from everyday life.. and the way city’s landscape changing so quickly, how do you continue your painterly activity?
Milton: In Howrah and even in India it’s happening slowly, so called Ecofriendly structures are arising, still motives inside lives are same, the bits are same. We have nostalgia of looking at the previous modernity in a restorer point of view. But as a developmental individual I prefer to paint the human values rather than modernist nostalgia, being in contemporary time.
6.why this boredom important Milton? is it artist pleasure … or it is more important to know some deeper side of life?
Milton: Yes, for me it is the deeper inside self. The conversation with me helps to decide the undone enthusiasm of creating things for myself and surroundings.
7.say something about reading interest …?
Milton: The beginning happened with detective stories, then Bengali classic literatures like Sanjib Chattopadhay, Sunil Gangopadhay, Rabindranath Tagore. Maxim Gorky, Franz Kafka and so on. Folk stories of Russia, India, Japan etc. During and after college days I move to move to theoretical studies of art simultaneously artist’s and political activist’s autobiography. Sometimes history of music and cooking.
- when did you decide to explore artist book format?
Milton: the making of complex images in my canvas was rarely communicating with mass, so mostly I faced the query about the fact behind and I am interested to engage viewer more with my art and specially with little more time to realize my images. The book format I choose to share my autobiographical visual novel which in the same format how I got engage to read stories. Almost 7-8 months back, after a long conversation with You(Chimuk).
9.please elaborate about the object choosing?
Milton: all the objects are personally connected to my everyday life. It explores the different time of the day and activity. The Jewelery box is an object to keep precious element where I kept subdued energy as bullet. “Kajol lota” to keep black colour to use in eyes to beautify and enhance the personality. The “Diplomatic Meter” is a modified object which defines the position between Political and Apolitical. The paper hanger is used to keep official memories on paper. The Niddl and thread is to steach design for beloved. The Conch is an object from the sea has been used traditionally to produce sound to declare a holy act. The Tea-filter is here to keep the unnecessary happenings and images away from viewer’s life. The bed is to filter and internalize the experience you get and start a new next day.
- 8 books, more than 300 pages…how come there is a drastic contrast in every book as if you turn yourself forcefully to break some self-made perception.. or how is it.. share some things….?
Milton: First of all I choose to push myself as extent I can with these paper quality and size. 8 stories, 1 life, different experience, different time and that’s why 8 different approaches. The whole is a novel and each is a different story. Its adventure for me. That’s all.
link: conflicting322 | conflictingspaces.weebly.com
kaur chimuk
artist: Milton Bhattacharyya(Howrah,India) sincerely with Meteor International(Tamara De Laval) in collaboration with Alta special thanks to Jens August Lindqvist and Matti Sumari
#conspa #publicart #malmonode #srinagarbiennale2017 #internationalexchangeart #indoswedishthoughtexchange
Milton Bhattacharyya 