Touhin Hasan’s paintings are rich in imagination with an innate energy and beauty of their own. His work is absolutely inspiring and enchanting. His pieces have a mystic quality that transports the audience to magical places. The eye is free to explore the layers within and discover its own worlds.
The movement and textures in his paintings are thought-provoking, exciting and intriguing – all at the same time.
Touhin has the ability to translate raw emotion and energy onto the canvas, creating whole domains of colour and texture that touch a nerve deep inside our own psyche. An artist of multiple talents from Bangladesh, Touhin has a well-earned reputation among art galleries and critics. It has been a great pleasure and privilege to be able to exhibit his paintings.
Aakriti Art Gallery, India
Since the cave paintings of Altamira thousands of years ago, artists have been following two basic trends. Some believe in deconstructing nature, and their works are attempts to triumph over it. Others, artists like Touhin Hasan, chronicle life and its literature in their art. Followers of the latter trend are the ones who end up founding and nurturing academies and institutions for art. Touhin in particular, despite being a poet and a romantic, merely captures beauty; but he carefully manages to avoid sentimental frills in his paintings. This is evident in his colors – lots of gray, earth, black and white, and his geometric treatment of figures. The result, although definitely bereaved of a passionate outburst, creates a soothing and relaxed mood on the canvas. Touhin’s works invite the viewers to rediscover the romantic in them. All the same, it would be wrong to think that he has only a romantic potential. In fact, his works are not entirely devoid of cruelty or agony, but Touhin with his magic paint brush is capable of presenting them in a different, mellowed fashion. So when it comes to art for pleasing the eyes, Touhin can be considered as one of the forerunners to give this to us.
Najib Tareque, Artist, Bangladesh
Touhin Hasan’s paintings are the soft musings of the night. Dreamlike, disconnected and yet familiar like the words of a long forgotten song drifting in from the half open window of perception.
These images, although subversive, for there is definitely a spirit of rebellion pervading through their throbbing hearts, are still flush with the ideas of creativity, fertility, femininity and freedom. A death of freedom even, such is the paradox and the pitch darkness that surrounds each work. There is this sheer force of wanting to be free, of a strange abandon that takes a life of its own.
Like Ganesh Pyne the artist is obsessed with a primeval darkness, a lost world that he is desperate to both explore and evade, so the theme of opposites prevail and the folklore of animal images.
If one is able to produce something that is connected to his core, his origins but has a strong existence of its own; a beauty, a dimension, a form and a sense of something more, then perhaps the artist has created a world, and these paintings definitely belong to a world of their own, a world worth exploring.
Shree Ganguly, Art & Literature Critic, UK
Touhin Hasan is an exceptionally talented artist who uses paint, beyond it’s simple form. He has developed his own style of surrealism, fantasy and dark imagery, around the themes of urban nightlife.
One of the most striking features of Touhin’s paintings is the portrayal of feminine energy and the inner strength of women. His innovative approach to perspective, preference for breaking down forms, and use of vivid color palette are meticulously arranged into geometric structures. This indicates a strong influence of cubism in his paintings.
Touhin attempts to translate through his paintings the inner conflicts of human psyche. Also the treatment of owl and moon is a distinctive feature of his works.
Shaheen Mituli, Art Lover, UK
There is an opportunity to see things from a different perspective and explore the other side of the scene through silence or inert feelings. This difference opens up new horizons based on the dimension of creativity resulting in the discovery of that other scene. Touhin Hasan is one of those rare artists who goes beyond his boundaries in search of the unseen in the ordinary familiar scenes of his daily life. He convinces his audience to think outside the boxes beyond the daily civic life spent within that familiar framework.
Touhin envisions the nightlife and urban structures of the city through owl eyes in the light of the moon. More specifically, he embraces the alleys of the dark world. And he is very loyal to the structure of geometry in the distribution of space. In some cases, these scenarios seem to be covered with a veil of fantasy and sentimentality, but Touhin is bold and adventurous in his exploration of the world beyond the horizon. That is why he is not hesitant to draw the process of human birth.
Touhin sees the subject through a mixed perspective and simplification of forms. Perhaps his goal is not to exaggerate the range and usefulness of his images. Rather he holds the essence of the subject in a much more concentrated space. He is also very moderate in his use of colours. Touhin makes the language of solitude much clearer. Alongside creating his own distinctive style, he takes a lot of inspiration from the contributions of his predecessors.
Ashfaqur Rahman, Art Critic, Bangladesh
As if this is the story of a materialised, urban moon! Everyday issues of civic life and the pain of reality are beautifully reflected in the exhibited paintings. Urban and civic life seem to be becoming detached from nature day by day. The city is lifeless and deprived of birds’ chirping. The artist has embodied that state of lifeless city through the depiction of the dead bird in his painting.
The chaotic, disarrayed architecture of the city with owls dispersed all over in the moonlight will surely make the viewer perceive an unknown fear. Sometimes the owls may appear to be a representation of the evil spirits of the city that have interrupted the harmony of normal life. Depiction of a female figure seems to be the victim of a harsh reality of urban life with the soft moon mocking her at midnight. Maybe the caged bird, now dead, is her soul. Sometimes crows or startled-eyed cats become associated with Touhin Hasan’s paintings. Even the fetus of the unborn child creates dismay in the eyes of the mother in an unrevealed desolation. The owl then becomes an ominous fear in his paintings.
Aranya Pasha, Cultural Journalist, Bangladesh
