About the Artist & his works :
In Hindu philosophy, the ‘Antahkaran’ refers to the totality of two levels of mind , namely the buddhi, the intellect or higher mind, and the manas, the middle levels of mind which exist as or include the mental body. It refers to the entire psychological process, including mind and emotions.
Ghoshal’s paintings weaves an Antahkaran, creating structural spaces, sometimes meditative ; melancholic in nature. His contemplative mind, enters into the inner realm of reality, dissects it and extracts a kind of mystic silence.
Born in 1965, Tapas spent his childhood and early youth in the quiet idyllic environment of rural Bengal. The soothing lyrical landscape and the intrinsic mythical past within the rural life made a great impact in his inner being, which aroused in him love for beauty, spiritual in nature, making him contemplative and inward looking.
He graduated from Government College of Art and Craft with a first class first degree in 1989,working on both figurative and landscape paintings. Despite slight cubistic distortions in his figurative executions, he searched for an inward stillness of human consciousness through dichotomy of light and shade. His post graduation from Benaras Hindu University in 1992 transformed the course of his consciousness. The extant contemplative inwardness in him got charged with meditative spirituality through his association with this heritage city.
Benaras, started flowing in his canvasses both through landscapes and human faces. Since 1995-96 his Benaras paintings started transforming. Initially his landscapes contained reflection of naturalness transformed through melancholic chiaroscuro. Gradually the naturalness started disintegrating into expressionistic structures. At a certain stage during 2004-05 some of these structures yielded into abstractions shedding all the links with naturalness. Then again the sign-symbols integrated into geometrical structures reflecting traces of original locations.
In the present series showcased in this 11th solo at Gallery Kolkata , Tapas has painted faces which are emotionally charged and deep in contemplation, and cityscapes transformed into expressionistic and geometrical structures. So far as structural transformation is concerned Tapas has some indirect link with Ramkumar ( A leading Modern Indian Abstractionist) . But expressionistically they are different structures with traditional contemplative fervor.
