Jagannath Mohapatra

Jagannath Mohapatra's visual realm is invariably linked to life's realities.

Even as our progressive nation, clamouring for a superpower tag, rightly boasts of its monumental achievements after sixty years of freedom, there are harsh realities of our socio-political existence that cannot be ignored.

A sensitive and socially conscious painter, Jagannath Mohapatra, creates thought-provoking works that act like a mirror, and makes the viewers confront them.

A student of history, he chooses painterly themes that are contemporary in context. His visual realm is invariably linked to the realities of life.

Jagannath Mohapatra is known for his intense visual narrations, based on his experiences and perceptions of sensitive issues that disturb him as an artist and as an individual. His paintings largely deal with the complexities of contemporary life.

Several of his creations revolve around the emotional realm of child labourers. Jagannath has made a realistic portrayal of their struggle for survival under trying circumstances, and has used construction sites and architectural backdrops as symbols to convey his concerns about their fractured future.

As an artist, he follows his inner instinct, and remains faithful to his style and subject instead of resorting to gimmicks in his works.

This probably explains why he has managed to hold the attention of art critics and connoisseurs in spite of his maintaining a low-profile. His paintings urge the viewers to relate to the subject matter through subtle or direct imagery.

They make the viewers pause and ponder. The artist tells his tales through his paintings, and leaves it to the viewers to mull over them for drawing their own conclusions.

Senior artist K G Subra-manyan summarises Moha-patra's works, by highlighting their uniqueness. He (Moha-patra) belongs to the generation of young painters who ground their visuals on the unreality of the realistic image that they encounter in billboards and hoardings, in trade journals and television commercials.

Some of them doctor these images with arresting juxtapositions and envelope them with a covering of cynicism or a critical comment.

Jagannath Mohapatra is one of them. However, his paintings neither have a cynical tone nor have any open critical content. His paintings are mostly soaked in the dissembling juiciness of this second-line reality."