Recent Works by Jagannath Panda

Back in Delhi after his scholarship in London, Jagannath adopted a vigorous work style. The distinction between sculpture and painting diminished, giving rise to a new vocabulary that captivated the Delhi art world. His work became increasingly contemplative, witty, and issue-based. He deftly transformed the realm of popular culture, often associated with kitsch, into a soft, hazy space where equilibrium and equivalence flourished.

As a painter, Jagannath has made previously inaccessible areas of artistic discourse more accessible. His paintings introduce stimulating, suggestive, and seductive elements that can be seen as artistic constructions. They neither depict reality nor represent pure fiction but rather encapsulate his life’s experiences in a mythical marathon. His myths are not necessarily legendary but can be, for instance, the story of water scarcity in Delhi.

Jagannath appears to be a relentless artist who has travelled a significant distance and is actively engaged in artistic and linguistic investigations. His journey began three and a half decades ago in his native place, Kotilingi, and has taken him through Bhubaneswar, Baroda, Delhi, Japan, and London. An artist’s journey is indeed a restless search, navigating the changing relationships between object and subject, material and form, tradition and modernity, in a perpetual process of exploration. It never truly ends; he has many more distances to travel and worlds to discover.