Maidan & XX

March 9 - April 20, 2025
Amartya De In Process: March 9 - April 13, 2025

Reception: April  13, 2:30-4:30pm
Artist Talk: April 13, 4:30pm, Elle Perez guides a discussion with Amartya De

The Ely Center of Contemporary Art is pleased to present Maidan & XX, a two part solo exhibition of photographer Amartya De. 

On March 9th, viewers are able to begin their investigation into the photographic installation in its starting point with only a handful of photos on view. Over the weeks leading up to April 13th, De will be printing negatives in the Ely Center Basement Darkroom that he spent the previous year creating as well as making archival digital prints. De describes this exhibition as “a musical score that is alive and brings a certain discipline to printing, which I try to achieve in making the image.”

Please join us for the reception on Sunday, April 13, 2:30-4:30pm, to see the completed installation followed by a discussion guided by photographer Elle Perez at 4:30pm.

Amartya De b: 1988 is a photographer and artist from Kolkata in India who is interested in the disjunction of photography as a decisive moment in the documentary tradition and its descriptive qualities in relation to painting or sculpture. He explores the semiotic significance of the medium inrelation to, contemporary culture, the discipline of making images, formal qualities of space, light color, shadow, and play. Photography’s observable qualities in relation to people, disorientation and our landscape while channeling a mood or a certain attention to the passage of time. Amartya holds an MFA from the Yale school of Art where he received the John Ferguson Weir award for imagination and creativity, he is an alumnus of the ICP one year certificate program in Creative Practices. His work has been exhibited at the David Zwirner Gallery in New York and the Academy of Fine Arts in Kolkata among other venues.