A ten-day solo painting exhibition titled ‘Colliding Collages’ by Harun-ar-Rashid Tutul will begin on July 27 at Alliance Française de Dhaka (AFD).
Dhaka university Vice Chancellor Prof Dr AAMS Arefin Siddique will inaugurate the exhibition as the chief guest on July 27 at 6pm, while Additional Secretary and National Project Director, Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme Mohammad Abdul Qayyum will attend the event as special guest. Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts of Dhaka University Professor Nisar Hossain, eminent artist Mohammad Eunus and art critic Mustafa Zaman will also be present as honorable guests.
Harun-ar-Rashid instigates a seeing that lets the viewer in on a picturesque landscape – which often appears as bird’s eye view of the urban spatiality.
In his works, content is complicit with the form, and there is a unity in each composition which he brings into existence with certain panache. His method of reproducing reality in snapshots as well as the way those are brought into alignment with his pictorial scheme recalls the Italian futurists – artists whose canvases went through a splintering of the imagery in use. Harun-ar-Rashid reverses the technique to arrive at his image employing a technique of collage-making to create a whole out of a number of objects. Consequently, the artist forwards a narrative which is embedded in a plethora of visual cues.
‘Colliding Collages’, his first solo, is a testimony to the divisive politics, which now afflicts this deltaic region.
As in many other works, the imagery is revealed in two layers – one that dominates the painted space with their sharp contour lines and the other that is spread around the entire surface of the canvas. This visual ploy enables him to conflate his main motif with a set of secondary, but equally important, motifs.
Born in Jaypurhat, Bangladesh in 1976, Harun-ar-Rashid  completed his M.F.A. in Graphic Design, Faculty of Fine Art, University of Dhaka in 2011. He won ‘Media Best Award’ in Graphic Design, Annual Art Exhibition 2000, Faculty of Fine Arts. University of Dhaka and Best Award - ViewSonic Graphic Design Contest, City IT 2004 BCS Computer City, Dhaka, Bangladesh. l