“Masked strips of paint, layered with other colours and then ripped apart to reveal the lower surfaces, straight edges obtained with tape, yet spilling over wildly with painted convolutions, this interface between the static and the dynamic is quite in accordance with his practice of constantly experiment with form. Moreover in these works we see him almost abandon density of paint surface and interplay of tonal variations which were a marked characteristic in his earlier work. Instead what we encounter is a thinly painted surface, with articulate brush-work; each mark carrying the presence of the hand through an interplay of painterly variations. Sprouting from the basic structures are a mass of thin thread like organic elements, entangled with each other, dissolving their boundaries in a calligraphic act of fusion; with each stroke related to the other. Liberally sprinkled with granular dotted lines, bristling with animated energy, the works may appear at times as external manifestations of psychological trauma. The brush strokes though are not meant to articulate any object. Holding within themselves bodily vitality transferred directly through the act of painting the forms appear as fields of potential energy that expel the excess as a physical phenomenological happenings articulated as singing lines that express much more than any existing linguistic system. In engendering this elemental merging between text based language and the brush stroke, Amitava’s world takes root and spreads out as an energy field. The phenomena of an artist’s act of painting then becomes a means to grasp the absolute behind the phenomenon.”
(excerpt from the catalogue essay ‘Materia Prima’ by Shukla Sawant)