Vadehra Art Gallery is pleased to announce a solo exhibition by artist Jagannath Panda titled Opaque, at the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Vadodara from 20th to 25th November, 2012. An alumni of Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Panda returns to the city of Vadodara to hold his first ever solo exhibition there. Opaque offers an excellent opportunity to view the artist’s most recent works including drawings, paintings, photography and sculpture.

Jagannath Panda, originally from Orissa, trained as a painter at MS University Baroda during the ’90s. He credits the institution for allowing him to break away from his earlier more craft-oriented training in Bhubaneshwar and thus embrace different sources and interpretations of art’s meaning. The Baroda years redefined his concept of art and concretised the process an artist undertakes in evolving his language.

Today, Panda has exhibited his work across the world, showing a growing mastery in combining contrasting dichotomies into unified images. In his work, the past and the present, urban and rural, nature and machine, combine or at the very least co-inhabit the surface to create poignant critiques of contemporary times.

In this particular series, Jain demons from 12th century manuscripts lure vendors, gamblers and other modern characters, as if waiting for a misdeed to be committed and the chance to punish evildoers. Other paintings underline the importance of architecture across history and present urban life.

About the Artist:

Jagannath Panda was born in Bhubaneshwar in 1970. After completing a BFA in sculpture at the BK College of Art and Crafts on 1991 in Bhubaneshwar, he did an MFA in sculpture at MS University Baroda in 1994. He completed his studies with a Visiting Research Fellowship in 1997 at the Fukuoka University of Education in Japan and an MFA in Sculpture at the Royal College of Art in London in 2002. Jagannath Panda has exhibited his work in numerous countries such as the UK, USA, Germany, Japan, China and Italy. His work is part of different national and international art collections such as the National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi and the Asian Art Museum in Fukuoka, Japan. The artist lives and works in New Delhi.