ANANDAJIT RAY (1965)
Anandajit Ray was born in 1965 in Kolkata. He completed his BFA
and MFA degrees in painting from the Faculty of Fine Arts at
MaharajaSayajirao University of Baroda, in 1989 and 1991
respectively.Ray works in controlled formats that recall genres
as diverse as the miniature and the comic strip. This creates a
hybrid that is laborious in rendering but irreverent in content,
drawing as it does on areas of adolescence which create avenues
of escape from a potentially dreary reality, and whose desires
are projected and materialized through the popular media. The
underlying narrative, continuous or splintered as the case may
be, defies a literal readability in spite of the very specific
images that constitute it, relying instead on a visual logic
where an image is what it is rather than what it could stand
for. It represents a unity that is connective rather than whole.
Ray’s diverse oeuvre, including miniaturist works in gouache,
cut up paintings rearranged as visual puzzles, and large
sculptural installations, is animated by a sense of the surreal.
The artist lives and works in Vadodara.
