The overlooked beauty of Dhaka in ‘Metropolitan: Beauty in Chaos’

The exhibition titled "Metropolitan: Beauty in Chaos" was inaugurated at Bhumi Gallery in Lalmatia on August 29, 2025. This duet painting exhibition by architect and artist MM Maksud Biplob and artist Al-Akhir Sarker was arranged by Shilpangon, featuring our overpopulated yet beloved Dhaka city.

Artist and art critic Javed Jalil was present at the ceremony as a guest, sharing his beautiful thoughts on the featured artists and their work. After the inauguration ceremony, the exhibition was underway. 

"Metropolitan: Beauty in Chaos" consists of a series of paintings focused on presenting Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh. Interestingly, the artists found each other through social media and came together to bless our eyes with their majestic artworks.

MM Maksud Biplob, who was raised in Jamalpur, is an associate professor in the Department of Architecture at State University and the founder of Paradigm Architects n Engineers, where he pursues his professional practice. Pursuing painting is his passion that drove him to create marvellous art pieces focused on his childhood memories, personal experiences, nature, and daily human life. 

Biplob found solace in watercolour as his paintings in this medium are not only soothing, but also invoke nostalgia in people who have seen those places in the city, and anemoia in the ones who haven't. His oil paintings are meticulous and realistic. 

Landmarks like the National Parliament building, popular places like the florists in Shahbag, Town Hall Market of Mohammadpur, Kamalapur Station, VC area of Dhaka University, TSC and so on are wonderfully portrayed on his canvases. His watercolour painting of bluish grey clouds in the sky of Manik Mia Avenue captured my heart, as did his art of orange coloured fallen flowers.

Al-Akhir Sarker is the other artist of this exhibition. Having graduated from the Fine Arts Institute, University of Dhaka, he participated in numerous art exhibitions at home and abroad. His depiction of Dhaka city is mostly on a smaller scale. 

Sarker's paintings do not have perfect, crisp geometric shapes, but rather, they have a smudged appearance that gives them organic vibes. Some of them look like they are lovingly painted by children. The image of United Hospital with its green landscape and pinkish sky stood out from the rest.

In short, the two artists wondrously waved their brushes to let us see the ever-familiar places of our capital through their eyes, the beautiful angles and perspectives we often miss while navigating our day-to-day lives. Shilpangon will run this exhibition until September 9, 2025.

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