Important Notice

Jagannath Panda’s body of work grapples with both the foundations and the fate of new urban settlements. A migrant himself, Panda moved from his home state of Orissa to the megalopolis of New Delhi, with brief stints in Tokyo and London along the way.

Speaking about the artist’s work, curator and critic Gayatri Sinha illuminates the ominous connection that Panda draws between migration, urbanization, instability and the loss of natural... Jagannath Panda’s body of work grapples with both the foundations and the fate of new urban settlements. A migrant himself, Panda moved from his home state of Orissa to the megalopolis of New Delhi, with brief stints in Tokyo and London along the way.

Speaking about the artist’s work, curator and critic Gayatri Sinha illuminates the ominous connection that Panda draws between migration, urbanization, instability and the loss of natural environments. “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” (Gayatri Sinha, Recent Works by Jagannath Panda, Saffronart and Berkeley Square Gallery exhibition catalogue, London, 2006, not paginated).

In the present lot, a large urban nightscape, Panda offers his viewers both a sense of celebration and one of threat or menace. In the background, bright coloured lights adorn the ubiquitous and uniform apartment blocks that have come to symbolize contemporary city settlements. In the foreground, however, a large bat accosts viewers, blocking their view of the buildings and challenging them to consider life beyond the supposedly secure gated communities they live in. Constantly upsetting the expectations of his viewers, the artist employs this kind of “deliberately de-contextualized space”, in the same way that he does the glittering silks and brocades that adorn his canvases, to highlight what they so willingly overlook. “Panda’s motifs often allude to the underlying forces that drive the social mechanism. He shows a profound understanding of the threats to stability and individual independence that are inherent in contemporary society” (Paths of Progression, Saffronart and Bodhi Art exhibition catalogue, 2005, not paginated).

Read More
Artist Profile
Other works of this artist in: this auction  |  entire site