Gurugram-based Odia artist Jagannath Panda's solo exhibition ‘Echoes of the unfathomed worlds’ is all set to be premiered at New Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery on December 8. The show will be open for public viewing at gallery hours from December 9, 2023, to January 19, 2024.
The show features 5 canvases elaborating his engagement with structures and forms built with materials ranging from fabric to acrylic paint. Layered in several artistic skills, these canvases merge and distort the visual world into several worlds that can be seen unfolding several realities simultaneously.
Panda's nine sculptures explore collage-making, papier maché, rice paper, rice weed, fabric, auto paint, plywood, and found objects. He particularly engages with these materials to create a technique-specific medium that blends the borders of medium in his art-making. So, objects from his son's childhood memories attached to his plastic toys, such as legos, are important symbolic narratives employed in his sculptures. The collage pieces are cut out of a gardening book that gave him information on the know-hows of planting trees and nurturing life.
There are 12 photographs mediated with other material interventions that are also important to his genre of art-making. These photographs capture a group of Odissi dance performers being trained under their master. These photos have been further treated with details of wood, auto paint, wallpaper, fabric, and pigments to create an artistic interweaving of metaphors, techniques, and insights.
Panda's work is an amalgamation of materiality, memories, and techniques that expound a diverse range of subjective areas. His art language involves a philosophical purview, architectural detailing, impressions of his natural surroundings, and personal memories enmeshed in the grand expression of a cosmos. He explores the boundlessness and a particular quality of belief in the omniscient which he further relates to reasoning and reflection to look at the infinite as a tactile concept.
Panda received initial training at a BFA programme in the College of Arts and Crafts, Bhubaneswar, and then pursued an MFA programme at MSU, Baroda. Later, he obtained an MFA in sculpture at the Royal College of Arts, London.
Panda's last solo exhibition ‘The Crystal City’ was held in 2017 in New Delhi. The artist has also showcased his works in a solo exhibition at London's Halcyon Gallery in 2015.