Important Notice

Anandjit Ray's diverse oeuvre, including miniaturist works in gouache, cut up paintings rearranged as visual puzzles, and large sculptural installations, is animated by a sense of the surreal. "Contrary to [the] tendency of finding roots and placing, Ray's aesthetic leanings impelled him to find ways to uproot and displace the world: to let loose a tornado of artistic fantasy to sweep and translocate the world with all its objects…Through a... Anandjit Ray's diverse oeuvre, including miniaturist works in gouache, cut up paintings rearranged as visual puzzles, and large sculptural installations, is animated by a sense of the surreal. "Contrary to [the] tendency of finding roots and placing, Ray's aesthetic leanings impelled him to find ways to uproot and displace the world: to let loose a tornado of artistic fantasy to sweep and translocate the world with all its objects…Through a richly imaginative collage-aesthetic, Ray carefully constructs a paranormal world caught in suspended animation…The situation here isn't very different from a fluctuating television screen simultaneously broadcasting a cricket match and a war dance with a songbird's warble for soundtrack" (Jitish Kallat, "A Concentrated Brew", Art India, Vol. 3, Issue 3, 1998, p. 80).

In the present lot, a series of six flags firmly planted in mudaas or traditional wicker footstools that are slowly morphing into pachyderm feet, the artist draws on the surreal to ask his viewers to consider the footprint; a simple enough icon, but one that is loaded with meaning. Through a series of six sequential human footprints, one on each pennant, Ray provokes questions about what it is that we stake claim to during our lives, and what we leave behind after them. Pushing the existential envelope, Ray uses this piece to navigate viewers through the complex issues of memory (the elephant feet), ownership (the flags) and legacy (the footprints), challenging them to locate themselves within a frame that is much larger than the one they are used to: After we are gone, who will remember us, and what will they remember us for?

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