Experimenter is pleased to announce The Thinking Forest Is Not A Metaphor, soon-to-be Civitellian Rathin Barman’s third solo at the gallery. Barman has long been exploring the nature of built structures and what lies beyond the visible. This exhibition is a continuation of this exploration as Barman probes how we live and finds deep connections between forests and the old homes he visits – both sustaining and nourishing those who inhabit them. Applying an anthropological lens in sculpting and drawing, Barman forms long lasting relationships with inhabitants of these old homes in North Kolkata, which are in various stages of disrepair, demolition and have long lost their past grandeur. Much like the forest, these homes are in effect, polycentric. They have multiple roots, trunks and branches, all of which are interlocked and inseparable and so are its people and their personal histories and relationships with each other. Barman explores this polycentrism of relationships and their built environments in this exhibition.
The Thinking Forest Is Not A Metaphor is about the kinds of spaces that Barman researches and spends time within, their transformations and paradoxes they represent. It is about the different ways in which these paradoxes can dissolve and the challenges this poses for its inhabitants living in that coiled ecology. Barman is interested in the precise conjunction of the disembodiment of the built form and the simultaneous renewal of future possibilities.
22 Feb – 06 Apr
Opening Preview: Friday, 22 Feb, 2019
6 pm – 8 pm
Experimenter – Ballygunge Place
45 Ballygunge Place, Kolkata 700019