An acrylic on canvas by Prabhakar Kolte

If one were to choose a label to summarise the art of Prabhakar Kolte, it would have to be urban. Urban not only because the shreds of shades he cobbles together spell smart arrangements, which they indeed do. Urban because anyone who lives in any big bad city of the world ? be it New York or Calcutta, not to mention Mumbai ? will sense the unsettling vibes of city life in his oeuvre and thus relate to it instantly. Because, in all such cities there co-exist with glitz and glitter stained walls and peeling plaster, construction chaos and disintegrating buildings. Because, every such city has its festering little hellholes for the underclass that resist cure and simply refuse to fade away.

Though Kolte has been seen regularly here, it is usually only as part of bigger shows. But the current solo being hosted at Galerie 88 brings some 30 works. That allows Calcutta connoisseurs a more holistic view of the artist’s vision. And a dark vision it appears to be. Here is abstraction that’s rooted firmly in an address: the infernal underbelly of the city, with its squalor and decay, its hints of unspecified menace.

To those who’ve seen the artist before, No. 24 might appear as classic Kolte ? if such a term doesn’t sound contradictory. Beyond the foreground patches of black, your eye is drawn to a scratchy ground of depleted greys even as maroon and brown paint drips down in congealed columns. The illusion of cavernous depth, the sense of flux, the insidious refrain of decay make the acrylic just the right kind of black anthem to city life.

But elsewhere Kolte has added elements not usually seen. Just as stains on surfaces take on suggestive shapes in the eyes of the beholder, the artist has playfully turned smears of paint into vague forms. Mostly animal forms, but not clearly delineated. You think that the blotches of paint in, say, No. 1, suggests an elephant. Or that the dark silhouette in No. 14 is like a bull. Or that No. 9 is a work of macabre humour as you sense a mythical creature with jaws opened wide in the colour patches. But his playfulness isn’t innocent fun as another meaning begins to loom: the city as an unpredictable beast.

Texture has demanded much attention from the artist. This is seen not just in the dry, scratchy grounds that counterpoint more solid zones of foreground colours but also in collages where torn bits of crushed and wrinkled paper add to the masculine energy of the works.