Life We Desire; Life We Gain — a solo painting exhibition by artist Betap Shavan Bachhar has begun at La Galerie of Alliance Française de Dhaka. The inauguration of the exhibition was held on Friday, 22 July 2016.

University of Dhaka (DU) Vice-chancellor Dr. AAMS Arefin Siddique, DU Faculty of Fine Art Dean Professor Nisar Hossain, and DU provost of Jagannath Hall Professor Dr Asim Sarkar, were among the guests present during the inaugural ceremony, Alliance Française de Dhaka vice-president, and Pro-vice-chancellor of Bangladesh University of Professionals (BUP) Dr Nazmul Ahsan Kalimullah presided over the opening ceremony.

Throughout the last decade, Betap has been running his imagination over the human psychology prevalent in our society, and he found out that unhappiness formulates from the natural manifestations where man desires something but gets another thing instead. This unhappiness, experienced by many from numerous disappointments for the duration of their lives, promulgates the collective depression of the society. The artist tries to bring that out in his paintings, along with the social bondages and customs that are burdensome to a human. In his artworks, the conflict between desire and destination is sometimes the main point that he prefers to show.

Technically, the medium is oil based, which is essentially Betap’s favourite medium here because of its flexibility, durability and scope to work in details. Almost all of the artworks are life-size as the artist would like to exhibit the visceral feelings of his subjective motives.

Born in 1985 in Satkhira, Bangladesh, Betap did his BFA and MFA from Dhaka University and stood first class first.

The exhibition will be open to all until 2 August 2016.

Visiting Hours: Monday to Thursday from 3:00pm to 9:00pm; Friday and Saturday (9:00am to 12 noon and 5:00pm to 8:00pm), except for Sundays.