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Strokes across the cosmos

Ali Imam's 2nd solo exhibition at Bengal Gallery

HARUN UR RASHID
Artist Ali Imam possesses a unique optimism regarding the cosmos. There is no element of decline or destruction in his art works. On the contrary, his paintings are a dynamic expression of human emotions derived from the elements he observes around him. Bold strokes and bright colours embellish his subjects and turn them into a unique assertion of the basic forces of the universe--light, speed and strength. The ongoing exhibition of Ali Imam at the Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts conforms to this optimistic approach to life.
Titled Cosmic Journey, the display contains 36 artworks of Ali Imam--32 oil paintings and four charcoal drawings. Besides the basic Cosmic Journey series, the artist presents some other series and solo works in the display, but all his themes and treatment of subjects correspond to the main the-
matic pattern of the exhibition.
Imam's Cosmic Journey series is a collage presentation of his creative imagination which is fed with the "intense, multi-dimensional and ever-expanding emptiness" of the cosmos. Human and animal figures and geometrical frames abound in his canvases along with the symbolic presentations of that vastness. But the human figures are just another way of his seeing the cosmos. For, he projects the beauty of organic bodies of man and horse in relation to the vastness of the universe.
The collective experience and passion of the human being is also depicted in a few works of this series. His expressionist brush strokes, often abstract, portray the essential relationship between the universe and mankind. On the other hand, the horses in his paintings are incarnate with the beauty of speed and the animal's fluid motion. Horses feature in another series
named The Horse and the Galaxy.
Another series of Imam has the bird as the central thematic symbol while female figures and Bauls accompany the creature. Especially the piece titled Baul and the Bird shows the mystery embedded in the freedom--both physical and spiritual-symbolised by the bird and the Baul.
The human face has been another favourite subject for Imam. The human face appears to him as a sort of a replica of the cosmos. And in this expedition of capturing facial expression, Imam has often chosen familiar faces like those of Albert Einstein, Kazi Nazrul Islam and Shamsur Rahman.
The whole display conforms to Imam's aesthetic nature nurtured by his architectural learning. And thus Imam becomes an important proponent of the modern perception of the human existence and the universe.
The exhibition is open till February 22.