Reviews by art critic Keshav Malik

ENERGETIC PRINTS

September 17th, 1991
LTG Gallery

These are energetic prints, often lithos but also monos as some other media. There is much quickness in the line, as if the artist flourished a pencil in the air fast, to cull out a shapes which registered whole, remaining intact in the beholder’s eye for a good while. But other works are more solid, dense black, as those of the Min-outer. These are among the best, like number 22 (Intaglio). Of course here are echoes of a Picasso in theme and style. Nevertheless the printmaker’s pluckiness is evident in still other genres of work, as the Mem Sahib or City Girl, where you have a feel of the frescoes, as it were. All in all, a printmaker to watch.

KESHAV MALIK

FLOWER POWER
November 2009

Unless l am entirely critically blind, I do believe that the present body of this artist’s work has on it much meat. My taste buds warrant that opinion. Critics can be biased folk, nothing wrong in that in away, except when they are not biased about the health of the art fare they consume, but dwell over long on aspects peripherally aligned to the arts.

Avijit Roy serves our eyes three or more order of fare: his beast-based drawings and after that the redoubtable athletic sculptures at moment almost levitating, and then finally, the paper on canvases couched cases of knives or rows of them framed or scrolled. And these works are not only craft wise precise, but they lend a sweet bouquet to his overall repertoire.

The artist’s pugnacious bull series is the continuation of an earlier phase and yet little repetitiousness is observed in it. It the present display on a superficial plane appears assorted, the anamoly all the more adds glow to his show. This genre satisfactorily fits in with the other’s so full of pep it is.

It complements the artist sculpture’s. This medium in his hands, carries the same conviction. Wounds though the athletic human form sports. It appears to rise above its misfortune without ado.

In other words, the elan of the bull is equally shared by the human. But how has this become possible? Thanks to the artistic acuity. The artist does not seem to do things by halves. So these particular offerings affect us, quite as the artist’s other works do. Avijit Roy is purposive, not a dilettante as some recent artists in a hurry are wont to become. By design the above noted works are not dainty, but fibrous and the which the viewer has got to masticate by his own minds muscles, for profit.

Now we turn to his knife’s series, he works on paper and canvas. Well, if only we closely look, these are not sophisticated sitting room ornamentation. But nor are they sharp implements to twist in the stranger’s belly!

And despite their numerosity, they are not an army on the march, but gentle pleas. Here the artist is seen turning swords back into ploughshares. Seems to me that the very softness, as the mellow coloration of each of these knives is an avowal: to shed the hardness of the heart. In a sense the knives are equally hard as bull and muscled man, but this time by virtue of their empathy and communion with their fellows. So orchestral is their sound of harmony. The visual pleasures of the eye in these is enhanced by their stance of femininity. Yes, the knives are defenseless, outwardly, but yet still really making a firm, silent evocation for peace.

Now’as I already said at the start, a critic’s are biases, and declare my own for these knives. The simplicity disarms us.
So do joy in the work.