Jagannath Panda
(1970)
Untitled
Born into a family of priests in rural Orissa, Jagannath Panda moved to the cities of Vadodara, Fukuoka and London to study painting. Following his education, Panda settled in New Delhi, India's political capital and one of its most rapidly expanding metropolises. As a result, Panda’s work speaks of an uneasy urbanization, where the re-settlement or, more alarmingly, the ‘neo-colonization’ of land results in the alienation and disaffection of...
Born into a family of priests in rural Orissa, Jagannath Panda moved to the cities of Vadodara, Fukuoka and London to study painting. Following his education, Panda settled in New Delhi, India's political capital and one of its most rapidly expanding metropolises. As a result, Panda’s work speaks of an uneasy urbanization, where the re-settlement or, more alarmingly, the ‘neo-colonization’ of land results in the alienation and disaffection of all its residents, human and animal. Using motifs that are, at best, surreally out of place, the artist comments on the easily ignored exploitation of animals, land and resources that results from urban sprawl, and that eventually affects us, the agents of this development.
As Gayatri Sinha explains, “With the palpable need for a ‘home’ for the migrant, antispatial, high rise gated communities replace miles of green fields. The past and the present are set up in appositional relationships, as a pocket of India demonstrates the neo-colonization of the rural hinterland. In the period of the personal as political identity, or the body as the site for art, Jagannath Panda gives us the seeming barren environs of a city as a subject of contemplation… But if the quantum representation of urbanism yields a visible spectacle, Panda chooses to evacuate these pleasures. The possibility of the spectacle has just arrived, or is not yet visible and the viewer is left in an uneasy limbo” (Recent Works by Jagannath Panda, Saffronart and Berkeley Square Gallery exhibition catalogue, 2006, not paginated).
In the present lot, a large format canvas, a single antlered buck stares steadfastly out of the canvas at viewers, accusatively returning their voyeuristic gaze. An open gate, a half pulled-down signboard for a national park, felled trees, a truck piled with construction material, and a pair of fleeing deer all suggest the advent of urban civilization; the beginning of the concretization and colonization of the land that was rightfully conserved as theirs until the developers took over.
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Lot
73
of
100
WINTER AUCTION 2009
9-10 DECEMBER 2009
Estimate
Rs 12,00,000 - 15,00,000
$26,090 - 32,610
Winning Bid
Rs 18,92,233
$41,136
(Inclusive of Buyer's Premium)
ARTWORK DETAILS
Jagannath Panda
Untitled
Signed and dated in English (verso)
2008
Acrylic and fabric on canvas
90 x 60 in (228.6 x 152.4 cm)
Category: Painting
Style: Figurative
ARTWORK SIZE:
Height of Figure: 6'