The Open Studio / DEBJIT GHOSHAL
DEBJIT GHOSHAL
BROKEN CITY
Little houses lean as if the ground moved beneath them
A black sun sits low over a row of paper mountains.
Houses the colour of rust and turmeric lean on each other.
Each one keeps a single dark door and one small window.
Thin poles hold up wires that lead nowhere.
A staircase climbs into an orange field and stops.
A blue band, water or road, cuts through the middle.
The white of the paper shows through like quiet between the walls.
The work
Broken City is part of an ongoing series by Debjit Ghoshal of The Indian College of Arts and Draftsmanship in Uttarpara. Small houses tilt and lean. Stairs, poles and wires cross patches of orange, yellow and deep blue. Ghoshal watches streets, buildings and changing cityscapes closely. The aim is not to copy a place but to break familiar forms and build the picture in layers. As a child Ghoshal found speaking hard and made things from cut paper. Shapes with clean edges like cut paper fill this watercolour.
In the artist’s words
“Rather than directly reproducing a place, I often distort and break familiar forms to create spaces that exist between reality and memory. My ongoing series Broken City examines the transformation and psychological character of urban environments. Through fragmented structures and disrupted spaces, I explore loss, silence, instability, resilience and the traces left behind by human presence.”
- Theme
- Urban memory and loss
- Material
- Watercolour on paper
- Size
- 28 × 20 cm
- Year
- 2024
- Edition
- 1
- Framed
- Yes
- About the artist
- THE INDIAN COLLEGE OF ARTS AND DRAFTSMANSHIP
- From
- UTTARPARA
- Code
- RC-723
