Jagannath Panda: “Metropolis of Mirage”

SOLO SHOW by Jagannath Panda: “Metropolis of Mirage”

Opening on Sunday, August 28th, 2011 from 4 to 8 pm.
Exhibition continues to Saturday, September 3rd.


Nature Morte is pleased to present a solo exhibition of new works by the New Delhi-based artist Jagannath Panda. This is a preview of his new works that will be included in his solo show at our Berlin gallery (Sept 24 – Oct 22). For this reason, the works will only be on view in our New Delhi gallery for one week.

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.

In addition to the works travelling to Berlin, one new large sculpture will be on display. This has been created for a group show on the subject of spirituality in contemporary art to be held at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco in May 2012. And two major paintings that were previously seen in group shows at the Lalit Kala Akademie in New Delhi (Common Wealth Games exhibition, October 2010 and “Tolstoy Farm” curated by Gayatri Sinha, April 2011) will also be included in this show at Nature Morte.

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).


Nature Morte is open Monday through Saturday, from 10am to 6pm, and closed on Sundays. For more information and press photographs please contact Geeta Bajaj at (011) 4174-0215 or Rajeev Dhawan at (011) 2956-1596.