Project 88 is pleased to present Lyric, Still - a retrospective of the reclusive sculptor, Sushen Ghosh (1940 – 2023), in collaboration with Galerie 88, Kolkata. Renowned for his colossal sculptural installations at Santiniketan, out here, viewers will encounter this ‘monumentality’ as it unexpectedly emerges in the late artist’s smaller, more intimate sculptures. With curated excerpts of the last ?ve decades of Ghosh’s practice, this exhibition will be the ?rst in-depth analysis of the artists’ oeuvre, one that has largely remained elusive to the public eye. Here, one will grasp the beginnings and making of Ghosh’s unique visuality, a language that unsettles existing binaries within the art historical canon; for the artist’s abstraction can neither be termed as emerging from ‘Western’ in?uences, nor purely from the ‘East’, rather, they become meticulous (and formal) interventions on concepts of universal signi?cance, thinking through science, poetry, philosophy, and most crucially, the lyricality of sound.
Born in 1940, Sushen Ghosh grew up in Silchar, Assam, wherein he received a Government Scholarship to pursue his studies in Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, in 1959. At this pivotal juncture, Ghosh trained under his illustrious mentors, Benode Behari Mukherjee and Ramkinkar Baij, paying careful attention to both materiality and notions of form, as well as the necessity for rhythm invoked by Nandalal Bose. Upon completing his studies, Ghosh was immediately o?ered a position to teach in the Department of Sculpture. In 1969, he was awarded the British Council Scholarship to study art at Goldsmiths, University of London – a crucial moment in his career, exposing the artist to stalwarts from the Western canon, as he learned from Henry Moore, and took inspiration by experiencing works by Matisse, Paul Klee, and Cezanne, amongst others, and remained speci?cally indebted to Modigliani and Brancusi. He soon returned to Santiniketan, where he continued to teach for over forty years, and a renewed force of abstraction took over, as Ghosh attuned his works towards the precision of geometry, a quest to grasp the movement in stillness, or the form of ‘formlessness’ [1]. As Dr. Anshuman Dasgupta notes in his curatorial essay on this exhibition:
“When noted sculptor Ramkinkar Baij mentored Sushen Ghosh, his works entered a new, abstracted phase. With these learnings, Ghosh grasped and conceived a unique essence – a new con?guration, apart from visuality, derived from what he knew best: music. Thus, Sushen Ghosh’s architectonic sculptures are deliberate, meticulous, and these deceptively simple forms emerge from a deep understanding of sound – more speci?cally, a rhythmic syncopation, or displacement, and simultaneous containment, building towards a harmonious cohabitation.
The lyricality of Ghosh’s sculptures is subtle, nuanced; what appears as straightforward objects, over time, become abstractions, demanding a cognitive reshu?e, prompting mediations on their contexts and surroundings. Resounding with the force of an aalap – sound with no words – of classical music, Ghosh’s lyricality is rehearsed in various forms, repeatedly, and ultimately frozen into a sculpture, a ?nal image in still time, yet movement lingers as a form of potential energy.
In this exhibition, three bodies of sculptures stage a compelling snapshot of Ghosh’s oeuvre across time: ?rst, the referential and illustrative; second, the geometric, con?gurations that become almost like a maze; and lastly, the horizontal, wherein space (the outdoors) becomes key to grasp the form.”
_______________
[1] To understand the ‘formless’, Sushen often quoted and studied Rabindranath Tagore’s poetry. For more details, read ‘Harmony in Dissonance: The Abstract Sculptures of Sushen Ghosh’ by Ushmita Sahu, 2016.