NYAB Event - Abir Karmakar “Uncanny Space”

Abir Karmakar “Uncanny Space”

Aicon Gallery

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“….Karmakar’s psychological realism is profounder than Degas’ psychological realism: Degas’ rooms symbolize an adult’s internal world, as the unhappy adults in conflict in them imply, while Karmakar’s rooms symbolize an unhappy infant’s internal world, as their emptiness implies. There’s no warmth in them—no feeling of empathy.”
Donald Kuspit, “Abir Karmakar: Uncanny Space”, 2015, Aicon Gallery, New York

Aicon Gallery presents Uncanny Space, an exhibition of new works by Abir Karmakar dealing with issues of voyeurism, privacy and paranoia in a post-Edward Snowden world. A world where one man disrupted his life to give us a voyeur’s vantage into institutionalized voyeurism by the state. But also a world where that vantage may be on the path to obsolescence, as people on the inner sides of keyholes throw open their doors and share their most private moments with the world in graphic detail, voluntarily and for no apparent gratification other their own desire to exhibit. This is the world that Abir Karmakar inhabits - in life, in his head and through his paintings – in his Uncanny Space.

Paintings from Karmakar’s newest body of work take his audience into confidence. He is no longer giving us a script, but instead urging us to write it ourselves. The quiet of seemingly ordinary scenes has a lingering disquiet as the viewer witnesses them not through the frame of natural vision but through the filter of a camera lens. Why is there a camera spying on domestic idyll? Is it because we are no longer confident of ourselves? Can we not be assured of normalcy in our homes and in our lives without the reassurance of an electronic eye conveying the far away scene to us? But is that really reassurance? Can disquiet and danger lie right outside the frame?

We live in a world where we need a selfie to prove our very presence; where joy, anger, curiosity and knowledge all need visual validation. It is world where we will risk voyeurism by unwanted eyes, whether of the state or of digital paparazzi, in order to preserve an image on the cloud. In this world of hyper documentation, Abir Karmakar drags and drops us on the very thin edge between real and unreal. A step backwards and we are no better than the state which doesn’t respect the privacy of its citizens. A step forward and we are the meat upon which voyeuristic sharks feed. But right where Abir Karmakar has us, we are suspended in-between, with only our imaginations to help us.

Abir Karmakar was born in Siliguri, India in 1977. He studied at the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda (2003), where he was awarded the Gold Medal for Fine Art, Painting, and at B.V.A. Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata (2001). He now lives and works in Baroda, India. He has exhibited widely in India – De Tour at Gallery 88, Mumbai (2005), Fusion at Baya ABS Gallery, Baroda (2004), Birla Academy of Arts and Culture, Kolkata (2003). His previous solo exhibitions include Interiors, Galerie Heike Curtze, Berlin (2006) and from my photo album, The Museum Gallery, Mumbai (2005).