Born 1969 in Orissa, Bal gained his Bachelor of Fine Arts and his Post Graduate Diploma in Painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts, M.S. University Baroda.
He has participated in several shows that include those held at Birla Academy of Art and Culture, Kolkata Sarjan Art Gallery & Bayer ABS Gallery, Baroda Vadhera Art Gallery New Delhi Tao Art Gallery & Jehangir Art Gallery Mumbai and the Lalit Kala Academy Gujrat & Orissa.
He was awarded the Government National Scholarship in 1998 and was selected Artist of the Month for Saffron Art in May 2006. His works are housed in various private collections in India and abroad. A recurrent theme in Bal's works is his quirky take on life in a metropolis and his disillusionment with it.
At the onset of his career one could see that Bal was very much influenced by the British Pop-Artist and their American counterparts, but since then he has found an idiom that is very much his own, Bal\'s works represent man’s innate instinct to dominate nature, for instance man\'s desire to trim trees to look like lollipops, planting flowering shrubs around fountains. Bal use irony and skill to express his fascination and disillusionment with life in a metropolis. The metaphorical usage of serene colors, the flying dainty figures, the scratches, the realistically done attributes are all like motifs stitched together with excellent skill and obviousity of his inner urges. The play of colors and juxtaposed frames of alluring images are themselves praying the viewer quite dramatically to take a voyage in the intrinsic avenues beyond the surface. The fore ground in Alok\'s painting always obstructs the viewer with lyrical sophistication. But once the mid or the back ground is transpassed it takes him into the imprudent world of show up and insecurities of self existence. The materialistic world, the world which is illicit, asinine, harlequin. Where human being carries themselves as effigies of egotism and voyeurism. This vicious world which is overlooked by most of us eloquently portrayed by these vigorous artist. The world is shown not casted out of emotive feelings, emotion is nostalgia here.
Bal lives and works in Baroda.
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