Hazy Existences: Chandra Bhattacharjee

Drifting into a realm of quiet reverie, emotionally resonant landscapes evoke both ecological disquiet and interior stillness in Chandra Bhattacharjee’s Hazy Existences. Rendered in spectral greys and muted hues, each scene hums with intensity, as human and nonhuman forms—birds, trees, huts, shadows—inhabit terrains at once tranquil and strangely luminous.

Layers of cross-hatched strokes evoke the earthiness of the cow dung smeared walls of the Santhal Tribe of Bengal in Bhattacharjee’s compositions. Serving as sites of contemplation, each painting reflects a familiarity with rural existence and its well-rehearsed rhythms.  Yet within this idyllic quietude lies a persistent tension: dry kindling erupts into flames, illuminating the night with their catastrophic glow; trees shimmer with an unwonted radiance; birds peer out of the canvas, vacillating between serenity and foreboding. Symbolising both revelation and destruction, these flickers of light are not redemptive—they oscillate between beauty and ruin.

Bhattacharjee chooses not to render catastrophe as spectacle. Instead, he evokes the slow, crawling violence of environmental degradation—a violence that hums beneath the surface of daily life, barely visible, yet irrevocably altering everything it touches.

Through his profound sensitivity to light and surface, Bhattacharjee’s works defy easy binaries. His paintings are not descriptive nor do they attempt to tell a linear story; rather, they are accumulations of remembered sensations, filtered through the passage of time and the artist’s inward gaze. 

Drawing upon his childhood memories and lifelong engagement with ecological thought through painting and photography, ‘Hazy Existences’ foregrounds the banality of environmental degradation and the human illusion of control over nature. It does so not through didactic imagery, but through an aesthetic that is deeply meditative, haunting, and at times, dreamlike. The result is a body of work that opens up an “in-between space” – where existence itself feels suspended in a porous, ephemeral haze.

The artworks in this exhibition hold a mirror to our illusions of dominion over nature, subtly challenging the anthropocentric lens through which we often view the world. The human subject, in these compositions, is not central but adjacent—one species among many, caught in a haze, whose sense of permanence is both poignant and misguided. 

In Bhattacharjee’s world, to see is not just to look, but to witness— with intention and a sense of responsibility. His brush does not preach nor proselytise; it murmurs, questions, and revels. ‘Hazy Existences’ is a portal into that murmur—a call to observe more deeply, and to feel and respond to the ground shifting beneath our feet.