Jagannath Panda (Artist)

Jagannath Panda was born in Bhubaneswar in 1970 and received his BFA in sculpture from the BK College of Art & Crafts, Bhubaneswar in 1991 and his MFA in sculpture from the MS University, Baroda in 1994. Subsequent studies took him to the Fukuoka University in Japan (1997) and the Royal College of Art in London, where he received an MA degree in sculpture in 2002. Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at Nature Morte in New Delhi (2009, 2005, 2000); the Chemould Gallery in Mumbai (2007, 2000); and the Alexia Goethe Gallery in London (2009). He has been included in a wide number of important group shows including “Indian Highway IV” at the Lyons Museum of Contemporary Art, France; “Indian Highway V” at the MAXXI Museum in Rome (upcoming); “Transformation” at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; “Chalo! India” at the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo; “Where in the World,” the Devi Art Foundation, Gurgaon; and “Midnight’s Children,” Studio la Citta, Verona, Italy (among many others).

Panda’s works continue with his characteristic collage technique, in which the surface of the canvas or sculpture is built up with the addition of brocade fabrics, blended together to create the skins of beasts and feathers of birds, to mimic foliage or approximate man-made surfaces. This hybridized surface treatment corresponds with many of the artist’s themes, which focus on moments, locations and icons that are in a state of flux, caught between oppositions that are being reconciled only with both anxiety and confusion. Panda’s portraits of the burgeoning new city of Gurgaon (where he lives and works) illustrate the tensions to be found there, as over-development threatens natural habitats and infrastructures prove to be inadequate even before they are completed. Likewise, Panda’s mix of the mythological and the realistic points to the disoriented nature of Indian identity today, as it hopes to synthesize the traditional and the contemporary, the indigenous and the international, the imaginary and the actual.

http://www.naturemorte.com/artists/cv/96 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jagannath_Panda http://www.berlingallerydistrict.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Gal.-Nature-Morte-Jagannath-Panda-Eng.pdf