Adip Dutta

Adip Dutta is a prominent artist and faculty member at the Faculty of Visual Arts, Rabindra Bharati University, Kolkata. He holds a Master of Visual Arts (2000) and a Bachelor of Visual Arts (1998) from the same institution, along with a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology (1994) from the University of Calcutta. Dutta's solo exhibition, By Darkling Ground (2017) at Experimenter, Kolkata, showcased the realm of possibilities in his mind - reconsidering objects and sites, an ‘alternate-viewing’ of their meaning and value and an inquisition of their primitive state. His work has also been highlighted in group exhibitions such as Nestled (2021), a collaboration with Meera Mukherjee, and Shadow Lines (2019) at Shrine Empire, Delhi. Contemporary spaces, materials and themes continually transform in Dutta’s mind and his intricate study of form and freedom of imagination reflect strongly in his work.

Archaeology of the Present: Traces and Transformations

"Adip Dutta, a sculptor and academic, evokes not just material history but the history of our seeing and being...The sculptural objects are tools that time has almost rendered mute, their original purpose now dissolved. They have been reconfigured into something that speaks, albeit with the tension of glass-bound artefacts—silent yet suggesting stories if we dare listen. And the drawings, with their layered textures, engage in this dialogue as if transcriptions of an ancient language...a civilization we belong to yet hardly recognize...elements oscillate between the personal and the collective...a movement of inquiry, as if the two mediums speak back and forth, answering questions the other cannot. The viewer is invited to witness this dialogue, to feel the tremors of the past through metal, paper, and form."

--(excerpt) Curator's note; on Archaeology of the Present: Traces and Transformations of Adip Dutta