A relief from urban life

A group painting exhibition titled Obsession by artists Sayed Fida Hossain and Sultan Ishtiaque will begin today in La Galerie of Alliance Francaise de Dhaka (AFD) in the capital's Dhanmondi.

This exhibition is all about a journey. The journey begins within the artists themselves and then through their dreams, memories, perception, and feelings amid the urban life, the journey continues on. The journey acquires a voice of its own and tells a story of being obsessed with the daily happenings.

Bound by the mechanical life of tiresome drudgery, the journey reveals about the resultant suffocation. Artists Sayed Fida Hossain and Sultan Ishtiaque believe that the inner existence that defines the journeyer does not want to be strangled by this suffocation, and instead want to get obsessed with nature and be emancipated from the shackles of ennui.

Hossain's segmented portrait series previously showed verisimilitude of his subjects and at the same time their fragility. His goal there was not to attain a good likeness, but to keep pushing the limits of realism.

 However, for this exhibition Hossain is going to introduce a completely different style that exhibits the surroundings or the landscapes along with the portrayal of the subject's obsessed mind. Ishtiaque's canvasses used to depict natural beauty with all its glory, but now his approach has evolved to include in those landscapes the compelling presence of individuals and their dreams and hardships.

A massive shipyard now exhibits the raw emotion Ishtiaque felt for the shipyard workers who are in imminent danger on account of working under unsupervised and hazardous conditions.

After inauguration the exhibition will be open till August 30 from Monday to Thursday from 3to 9pm, Friday and Saturday (9am to12noon and 5pm to 8pm).