The tray of bullets,standing amidst a multitude of Iron filings ,created a strring sensation .For a moment it felt as if the bullets were people, singing a chorus invoking Death.As if they were singing in unison a ballad of a blood -splattered time.Or servinga terrifiying reminder of it standing like resurrected zombies There! A noise ,a cacophony of strange sound......rat-a-tat a-t .....shrill cries...women wailing.....
Like all of us ,Jayanta Bhattacharya's is a troubled , wounded soul gasping amidst this mindless orgy of brutality. The all pervading violence has so much bruised our psyche.But Jayanta ,unlike many of us, has seen the face of death from very close range and since he was a child. The Artistgrew up at a time - the 1980- when his home stste Tripura was burning in community clashes.The ceaseless riots and bloodshed left a deep ,irremovable impacton his tender soul. The memories of those ill---begotten days are writ large on his works, .....The Alpins on Red Quilt' with a medley of alpins piercing the dark circular patch on a quilt,had similar physicality,giving the spectators a prickly sensation. In The Road' vertically displayed like Red Quilt ,Jayanta replicated a pitch road with actual materials , putting a covered manhole a trifle towards the left and placing bootprints as well as impressions of bare ffeet on the way.
..........One of .......untitled... like a pictorial monologue with the artist giving his thoughts and imagination a free run. The scribbles made on the canvas,the brushstrokes,the human and animal forms,the cell phone numbers, the electronic timings--all done spontaneously, without any prior planning...perhaps like 'psychic automatism' . The spectators could not have missed the heavy social content in the painting, conveyed with an element of humour.The whole canvas looked like a psychological plane with the Artist blurting out a seemingly endless soliloquy..........
