Arindam Chatterjee belongs to the generation of Indian artists who began their careers in the last decades of the 20th century and attempted to create a new, more personalised artistic language of global significance. He started as an abstract artist and gained a wider reputation; however, around 2007, having felt the urgency for a more direct and communicative form of expression to respond to the conflictual world and its recent history, he turned to figurative paintings.
In the background of the city experience, Arindam Chatterjee’s paintings and drawings speak of a dystopian world, the fragile times of modernity: the death, wounds and suffering of human beings, animals and other creatures, real and imagined. Absent in the glaring narrative of neoliberalism, the dark faces of times can amply be found in the post-Tagorian modernist literature of Bengal. Inspired by them and other sources, Arindam Chatterjee’s neo-expressionist-like works create a bleak vision of the world, exposing culture’s dark past, unrealised potential and unsolved contradictions. Indeed, he moved away from abstract art; the shift has never been complete. Vestiges of abstract art are present in his figurative works, characterised by the rich handling of mediums and indeterminate figures and emotions.