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Jagannath Panda's work frequently reflects his concerns about urbanization and environmental degradation, and the effects they have on natural life patterns. Like most of the artist's work, the present lot highlights the complex relationship between the natural and the manmade, the traditional and the modern raising questions about our common and imperilled future.

Panda "...not only empathises with the birds, fishes, monkeys and... Jagannath Panda's work frequently reflects his concerns about urbanization and environmental degradation, and the effects they have on natural life patterns. Like most of the artist's work, the present lot highlights the complex relationship between the natural and the manmade, the traditional and the modern raising questions about our common and imperilled future.

Panda "...not only empathises with the birds, fishes, monkeys and ruminating creatures lost in the haphazard and perilous structures that generate giddy, disturbing perspectives, but extends the metaphor of their fate to bear on our own in an environment that we share along with its social contrasts, injustices and irreconcilable ingredients of the disarray…Disappointment and apprehension make him wholeheartedly turn to his animals in praise of their grace and ability to survive instinctively and with joy. He does admit that they cannot carry on untouched by civilisation, have to adjust and transfigure. Still…he lets them preserve a pristine simplicity of living to live" (Marta Jakimowicz, The Human Animal, Gallery Threshold and Religare Art Initiative exhibition catalogue, 2009, not paginated).

"Panda's animals - goats, dogs - in postures of acquiescence wear the skin of the weaving industry. Through an interesting inversion, their own skins are used to clothe the gods, decorate sites as trophies and finally become emblematic of the landscape. In turn the animal is appropriated as decorative furnishing, emblematic of the processes of mass marketing and a humanized aesthetic" (Gayatri Sinha, Jagannath Panda, Berkeley Square Gallery and Saffronart exhibition catalogue, 2006, not paginated).

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