‘Cults of Serendipity’ at Frey Norris

Jagannath Panda’s new series ‘Cults of Serendipity’ marks his debut in the US. The exhibition courtesy San Francisco-based Frey Norris presents works on paper, mixed media sculpture and paintings that incorporate various pastiched and patterned textiles – a sort of layered collage, evoking new cities constructed on ghost cities, as if a whole new civilization superimposed on top of previous ones.

His art largely focuses on serendipitous moments coupled with juxtaposed locations. In some ways, it reflects his observations of Gurgaon. In this fast-developing suburb of the capital city of India, new housing structures and air-conditioned shopping malls often overrun the ancient.

Here the ecosystem has little chance to keep pace, much less the networks for electricity and plumbing. Curator and gallerist Peter Nagy mentions that his 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.

An accompanying note elaborates: “A pair of figures from antiquity seem modestly bound in love-making among floating foliage in the upper right corner of one of Jagannath Panda’s newest mixed media paintings; the rest of the canvas appears to be a remembrance and excavation of this pair of lovers, depicted as in a Kama Sutra illustration, but also a broad play on scale, toying with archeology and construction sites. In the modernity of the backhoes, there is a personal and cultural exploration of human history, both recorded and earlier. It is a bittersweet vision for the frenetic development of the quintessential Indian metropolis.”

Born in Bhubaneswar in 1970, he did his BFA in sculpture from the BK College of Arts & Crafts, Bhubaneswar and his MFA in sculpture from the MS University, Baroda. Later he studied at the Fukuoka University of Japan and the Royal College of Art in London. His artworks were recently showcased at Nature Morte in New Delhi and Berlin, Chemould Prescott Road in Mumbai, and Alexia Goethe Gallery in London.

The artist has featured in prestigious group shows such as ‘Indian Highway IV’ at the Lyons Museum of Contemporary Art, France’; ‘Indian Highway V’ at the MAXXI Museum in Rome; ‘Transformation’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo; ‘Chalo! India’ at the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo; ‘Where in the World’ at the Devi Art Foundation in Gurgaon; and ‘Midnight’s Children’ at Studio la Citta in Verona, Italy, among others.