By Birendra Pani
Located in Kolkata, West Bengal
Birendra Pani - Risk The Time - 66 x 42 inches (unframed size)
Acrylic on Canvas , 2009
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In this series of works - “Boy - Dancer”, Gallery Kolkata revisits the artists very popular and well lauded ‘Boy Dancer’ suite of paintings on the plight of traditional Gopitua dancers from his native land, Odisha.
The boy dancers who perform a devotional dance ritual are quickly declining in today’s cosmopolitan world. Pani entwines his empathy for the dying art with an opinion on our post-Modern era. In that respect, Pani does not try to create nostalgia for the decline in the taste for the dancers, instead he problematizes the issue by bringing in a dispassionate view of the issue.
The ten canvases on display in this exhibition, features the Gopitua dancers in different situations.
The canvases are a hyper-real portrait, far & close shots of a Gopitua dancers with liquid innocent eyes and a small smile playing upon his lips as he confronts the viewer. The blade is a recurring motif in Pani’s work and it has multiple functions and meanings. In this instance its meaning is rather clear — one where modernity eclipses tradition.
Style : His fresh, perspective and contemporary canvases have loud and vivid images and use colors like green and shocking pink unashamedly. Pani says his works are preoccupied with exploring contemporary materials, culture and current lives of people, the negligence of local places, their culture, history, memory and their identity in present times.
Further he feels the consumerist attitude has penetrated deep into the human psyche. Human beings are being consumed by the commodity rather than them consuming it. In his works, Pani explore the struggles, contradictions, dichotomies and critical reflections of the embodied selves with changes in value, knowledge and culture in our present society.
“I have extensively used body parts like brain, heart and other organs, and everyday objects like capsule, syringe, blade etc to create a new visual language. Deriving from life experiences, my idea is to create a new vision by the juxtaposition of the above experience with the rich legacy, diverse visual culture and sensibility of the vast tradition of Odisha’s miniatures and Pata paintings, stone carvings, monumental visuals of temples and dance forms like Gopitua dance and Chhau-dance in Odisha.”
Pani, thus attempts to create a new phenomenology and the reinvention of ‘self’ in a globalized and yet very localized world.
About the Artist and his work :
BORN : 1969, Bhadrak, Odisha, India.
FINE ARTS EDUCATION :
1997-1999 MFA – (First class with Distinction) Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University, Baroda.
1991-1997 BFA - Kala Bhavan, Viswa Bharati University, Shantiniketan, West Bengal.
1987-1990 2nd world “Studio for Fine Arts”, Bhadrak, Odisha.
SOLO EXHIBITION IN INDIA AND ABROAD :
2017 Towards a new Viewership / Audience & Reproduction Aesthetics, Curated by Dr. Rajashree Biswal, organized by New Bridge India and North Odisha University, Baripada, Odisha.
2016 “Mahanadi”- A Journey through History, Memory and Culture curated by Maurice O Riordan of Australia at Lalit Kala Akademi, Rabindra Bhavan, New Delhi.
2015 Re-Vision / Relationship- a visual literary engagement of Birendra Pani and poet Jayanta Mahapatra, curated by Dr. Rajashree Biswal, and organized by New Bridge India, Forum on Contemporary Theory, Vadodara, Sarat Chandra Library, Baripada and Revenshaw University, Cuttack, Odisha at Revenshaw University, Cuttack.
2012 “Soft- Subversion” at Red Earth Art Gallery, Baroda.
2011 “Re – Vision” at Aakriti Art Gallery, Kolkata.
2010 “Re – Vision” at Gallery Sumukha, Bengalore.
2009 “Re – Vision” at Gallery Espace New Delhi and R.L.Fine arts, New York.
2007 “Boy Dancer’’-The convergence and continuum, at Gallery Espace, New Delhi.
2007 “Boy Dancer’’-The convergence and continuum, at Faculty Gallery, M.S.U., Vadodara.
2006 “Risk’’-The Double Edge of Society, at Gallery Espace, New Delhi.
2005 “Echo” at Kaleidoscope Art...
Category
2010s Contemporary Kolkata
