In 1972, Luis Bunuel had made a highly controversial film : The Discreet Charm of Bourgeoisie. The film attained cult status partly because of its ambiguous story line without any specific focus and yet being able to convey an idea about the inherent nature of the world of the bourgeoisie, where views are shaped more by imagination than the real world.
The word "Pseudorealism", was not yet coined then and Bunuel somehow felt that this world view was restricted to only that class of people who never need to get down to the real world because of their positions of power and affluence. Bunuel passed away in 1983 without seeing the world of 21st century where such a world view is engulfing the vast middle classes of the nations.
The domination of the entire entertainment space by media has today resulted in a situation where our opinions are entirely shaped by what is projected in the media. Technological innovations have also made it possible for manipulators of media to create such images inside a studio without ever stepping out in the open. Thus what we see is often not the reality and yet we believe in such images and our opinions are shaped by these projections. This is Pseudorealism.
Devajyoti Ray, perhaps the most avant-garde of faces of contemporary art takes this idea and creates his own artworks which look fatally simple beautiful, but beneath such simplicity lies a satirical humor poked on the whole new world that we are creating for ourselves.
In Ray's paintings, a physically challenged beggar, a minor boy worker and a rich ambivalent intellectual all come on the same platform and look beautiful. It is world where everything can be given any philosophy as per the need of the person.
Ray's new style of art has been discussed now in two major books published from Europe this year. Earlier his works were collected by academies in various countries including the National Museum of Fine Arts in Havana.
The present exhibition will showcase 23 of Ray's recent paintings all converging in to the central idea of Pseudorealim as the new reality of the world that we live in. An excellent exhibition and must see.
