THE REAL SURREAL

I’m always searching for new and cool art to share with social media followers. A few days back I stumbled upon a Polish artist called, Charbak Dipta also known as Men of Comics. Absolutely blown away by his technique and Ideas, which looks like a surreal approach towards the art of storytelling. This can be further categorized under contemporary surrealism. So I decided to take his interview and some share some of his views on surrealism and society.

About the artist

Charbak Dipta is an Indian Bengali illustrator, cartoonist and graphic storyteller. He has done cartooning and illustrations for many organisations. Currently he is doing freelance comics/illustrations all over the world.

Apart from that he is also a trained singer and musician. Born in Bongaon, a small town in West Bengal, India. He went to Bongaon High School. He completed his B.A. (with honors in Philosophy) and M.A. in Philosophy and Diploma in Film Studies from Jadavpur University, Kolkata.

Charbak has been drawing since his very childhood. From his college days he started taking drawing seriously. He started working as a cartoonist in the Kolkata branch of The Times of India, the largest read newspaper in India. Later he worked for various other publications and other media. In 2013 he moved to New Delhi to become a full time illustrator and cartoonist.

Charbak is also a trained Hindusthani classical singer,Guitarist and classical Pianist. He took music training from ITC Sangeet Research Academy and Calcutta School of Music for over 10 years

ARTIST INTERVIEW

Tell us a bit about your work

My work is illustration and graphic art. The reason for my being in this field of pop art or comics is because it is the cheapest and most powerful medium of telling a story. You don’t need lots of money, camera and other costly instruments to make a cinematic visual sequence in this medium. Again sometimes comics cannot be translated into cinema, then it becomes a unique self-sufficient medium.

I do single illustrations to record my thoughts, they are each a full-length story in a condensed fashion, you can build a narrative easily around any of my artworks. Again sometimes I feel one artwork is unable to capture a concept. Then I make Graphic Poetry. As an introvert, I am not good with words. So, I use art as a tool to reach my inner thoughts to the world.

The style of my art is an amalgam of Ligne Claire Marcinelle school, Bengal and my own innovation.

My best-applauded art is The Alien series which is a juxtaposition of Indian culture, especially Bengali culture and the concept of Aliens, the thing I am always curious about. –

http://www.charbakdipta.com/indian-aliens.html

The Alien series

What inspired you to make these artworks?

I watch the world around me, cook the images, events and sounds inside my head. I read books, make music, listen to music. Music plays an important part for the inspiration. Another inspiration is travelling. I travel across continents for my exhibitions. Films are another source of inspiration.

As a student of Film studies in university I had the privilege to watch a wide range of cinema. All this experiences, sights and sounds get stored somewhere in my sub-conscious, changes with time, merges with one another and later gives birth to different imageries. By time those images become mature, ripe and struggles to come out. Then I bring down them from my head onto the papers.

What do you think about surreal? What is surreal for you?

Surreal is a couple or more things juxtaposed together to emote a new meaning. It is like a montage, only difference is, here the images are overlapped, things are criss-crossed with each other. For me, surreal is a dream of bizarre worlds with bent space and time, which is not escapist though. It is more similar to Plato's hypothesis of thoughts and their natural duplicates.

Kaali

How does society perceive your art form?

So far I have seen distinctive reactions in various parts of the world for my works. Each general public accompanies its own particular bundles. In India, people still cannot accept nudity in art and the regression is increasing day by day.

I once made an artwork called ‘The Third World’ in which a shaved headed brown boy, who embodies the the third world countries, embraces a pillow, smiles, dreams wild erotic things and masturbates in joy. While posted online it received mixed reaction and some people asked to remove it because they only found nudity and nothing else in it.

Same fate for another piece of mine ‘Kaali’ where I experimented with Kaali, the Hindu Goddess who is shown to land in Delhi as a representative of womanhood and drinking the blood of the rapists. Many people asked me to remove it since I can be in trouble for demeaning Hinduism just like Hussain did in his Saraswati.

At whatever point I make a political toon, I need to smooth the sharpness of the quip or parody to be protected in this greatest equitable nation of the world. Just not me, each other political and social sketch artist is frightened nowadays or another Charlie Hebdo will happen.

What is the relevance of this form of art that you do?

The form of art that I work on is illustration and graphic narrative. My style of line drawing is an amalgam of Ligne Claire, Marcinelle, far eastern wood cut, Bengal school and my innovation. This is the most flexible form of art I know which can be used in graphic novels, main stream art and even in films. In this fast paced world, only illustration can be the mirror of the society in respect of art as it is both massy yet can be used in sophisticated way. Making outline or realistic story resembles making a film, where everything from the spot kid to the DOP is you and can have all the control over it which isn't conceivable in other media.

What are the main elements you work upon in your work?

My childhood in inside Bengal and my growing up a very long time in Kolkata have a noteworthy influence in my work. So there is obviously Bengali-ness, another sort of it, a noteworthy component in there.

The literature I read in my adolescence, the retro sci-fi of Arthur C Clerk, H G Wells, Isaac Asimov to Satyajit Ray, Premendra Mitra , Anish Deb is another element. Mystery of the space always excites me as an element. Apart from these there are other books too. Sometimes I get inspired from the Mahabharata.

Another one is absurdity and nonsense literature of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear and Sukumar Ray. In Indian literature and art there is not much progress in this genre. This is an incumbent element that is I am proud of in my art.

Peace Machine

What is the future aspect of this form of art?

The future looks bright for graphic art. Ten years back anyone hardly heard of graphic novels and now it is everywhere. But again, since its being mass produced, everyone is jumping into the bandwagon, the graphic quality of the narrative is declining. But the brighter side of it is the main stream art is gradually discovering the pop art world and even street art and it is making space for it in the main stream art.

What are you giving to the society with your artwork?

I try to give the society a new kind of culture. I often feel the countable number of cultures, traditions in this world is not satisfactory. We need to constantly invent new kind of cultural identity to make the world an interesting and fashionable place. The possibility of the existence of Zealandia or the lost continent Atlantis or the discovery of Aliens can give birth of new kind of life style which is a world apart. In this way art can be the key of world peace.

What is the people's perspective towards art in today's world?

These days thanks to social media people can see more works which were otherwise supposed to be locked inside art galleries.

So, their outlook has grown that is very encouraging for artists. But again in commercial art world, laymen don’t want path breaking concepts from the artist. They are happy with the dogmatic software drawn regular illustration which doesn’t disturb brain.

In mainstream art too people are keen to buy the art that only suits their furniture at home, which is pathetic. In India we don’t have the art infrastructure like, for example China. Our number art gallery is too low; our graphic narrative publications cannot compete with that of Manga or any American comics.

What symbols and metaphors you can give for surreal? Keyword in which you perceive the idea of surreal?

For me surrealism is differing and tremendous. It can't be tied by some specific images or metaphors. I see the possibility of surreal in everything from a dead parrot to the cheddar made moon. There must be a tinted glass of imagination and consciousness in between objects and subject to see the surreal aspects of things. Here more than surrealism I am slanted to the drivel and ridiculousness of things and its scientific aspects.

Any advice for younger artists?

Be original, honest in their work, dream big and to work hard towards a single goal. You have to reject every rule and everything that has been done in the past to present your work to the world.

Life is an adventure and its fun to break the rules of success. In our country children are not being taught their vernacular language these days for which they are forgetting their roots. They are being designed to be fit in a geometric patterned society that the British taught us to be doctors or engineers. So, not just the young artists, their parents too should be aware of their kids’ talents and nurture them.

For more info on Charbak Dipta follow the link below

Website: http://www.charbakdipta.com/

Email: charbakd1@gmail.com