ABIR KARMAKAR, Within the Walls VIII, 2008, oil on canvas, 122 x 183 cm / 48 x 72 in
ABIR KARMAKAR, Within the Walls II, 2008, oil on canvas, 183 x 336 cm / 72 x 132 in
ABIR KARMAKAR, Within the Walls III, 2008, oil on canvas, 183 x 275 cm / 72 x 108 in
ABIR KARMAKAR, Within the Walls VII, 2008, oil on canvas, 92 x 122 cm / 36 x 48 in
ABIR KARMAKAR, Within the Walls VI, 2008, oil on canvas, 92 x 122 cm / 36 x 48 in
ABIR KARMAKAR, Within the Walls IV, 2008, oil on canvas, 183 x 228 cm / 72 x 90 in
ABIR KARMAKAR, Within the Walls I, 2008, triptych, oil on canvas 183 x 366 cm / 72 x 144 in
ABIR KARMAKAR, Line Drawing II, 2008, oil on canvas, 92 x 92 cm / 36 x 36 in
ABIR KARMAKAR, Line Drawing III, 2008, oil on canvas, 92 x 92 cm / 36 x 36 in
ABIR KARMAKAR, Line Drawing I, 2008, diyptch, oil on canvas 30 x 60 cm / 12 x 24 in
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Abir Karmakar's primary intention is confessional. He lures the viewer into a secluded world where attitudes of homoerotic desire are performed before our gaze. The domestic space or the lurid hotel room becomes for a brief period of time a stolen habitation.Let us briefly compare his paintings with the larger body of contemporary painting which tends to move up and out, from the private to the public domain, assuming a powerful masculinist view of cities, building sites, symbols of growth and the urban landscape in transition. The artist-to-subject engagement appears to be grounded in responses to mediatic information, global economy, social discourse. In contrast, among his male confreres, Abir Karmakar appears to move in and down, into a psychological space, a miasma of sexual fantasy and personal expressivity. While the (sexual) confessional photograph has gained currency ? the deliberated sensuosity of oil painting delivers images of psychological abjection and sensual assertiveness.
Gayatri Sinha