Behind the images is an acute and very sensitive artist, an activist who presents a world as he sees it
Meet Soumen Manus Bhowmick
By Colin Moore
I don't know what fears propel Soumen's new bestiary of the grotesque. I do know that in the past he has set down the wealthy, powerful and corrupt ruling elites of his country, the Modis and Adanis, as sick and violent walking corpses feeding on the living flesh of India. Behind the images is an acute and very sensitive artist, an activist who presents a world as he sees it, and it is not a pretty sight.
Not the clichéd inner light and vision so popular in stereotypes of the art of the subcontinent, but crystal clear in its intent. I believe that some people of note in his country have said they were sickened by his work, in which case they seem to have got the message.
I see his work as having timeless and universal elements, reminders of "primitive" art, traces of the demonology of Indo-Tibetan traditions, Heironomous Bosch, Goya, Redon, Grosz, Dix. A visual accompaniment to Karunatilaka's Seven Moons Of Maali Almeida. The monster addressing the citizens on telly in PK Dicks Faith of Our Fathers, seen by the protagonist because he was given antipsychotics, not recreational drugs, by a dodgy dealer.
Soumen's work followed me home and is lodging in my inner gallery where it has many friends.
It has taken time, and it may be a personal sticht, but I see an glacial undercurrent of white humour running through his work. The Emperor's New Clothes, his subjects transforming into mobile Pictures Of Dorian Gray, the unsettling effect of a truth-telling mirror. At times his guests seem to be flaunting their real selves, quite unashamedly, on Soumen's ghastly fashion catwalk/morgue. So rich they don't really care and pay the best agencies to do their image management.
Since my inner gallery is closed to the general public ( well, at least i hope so) please go to his page where he shares his living and work environment, works of his colleagues, mentors, his own works in progress and completed output. Visit his life world and his take on why things are going badly wrong, and not only in his Homeland. Chat to him, buy his work. It is not as frightening as it seems, and is perhaps even cathartic. And it will not cause you to unravel, join the opioid crisis or launch yourself into Kamekazi introspection. Trust me.
The artist is travelling to Switzerland for a showing of his work, and what's good for the Swiss can't be too bad for the rest of us. Unless they throw him out, which of course they will not, unless he takes that truth telling mirror along with him. So I wish Soumen a safe and interesting journey to the yawning heights of Europe.
