A Pilgrim’s Progress 

Curator :Uma Nair 

Director Anu Bajaj of Art Positive celebrates its 15 years in contemporary art practices with a solo show of award winning origami artist sculptor designer Ankon Mitra at the Bikaner House entitled The Pilgrim’s Progress. In an uncanny coincidence, Mitra is also reflecting on the completion of 15 years of his art practice and has pivoted this show on the unveiling of 15 diverse materials to accompany this celebration for Art Positive.This is Mitra’s third solo and comes after a gap of 6 long years. A suite of 22 new works have been created exclusively for this occasion underlining an eclectic synthesis of elements from several art historical movements associated with origami, including design dynamics inlight, space and the magic of folded forms. Mitra s works straddle steel aluminium, banana silk, stoneware ceramics, resin and manyother materials, reflecting intense conversations between folds and materials (all the materials absorbing the folds in magnificentlydiverse ways) in a rare resonance of gravitas and sensorial beauty.Designed specifically to fit into the Bikaner House Main Art Gallery floor plan, curator Uma Nair says It’s an unravelling of  high-intensity spatial formulations that will invite a confluence of illusions as well as alluring responses from viewers. The show has a series of installations that ripple like patterns crystallised in prismatic poise. From a fruit in tangerine mango tones to a Forest Peacock lit up with lithe lines in the tensile folds, each work is a beauty to behold. The A Pilgrim’s Progress  is an allegory brought forward in the language of design in the unending quest of weaving together form, space and order, time and all energies  light and sound included Bridging Spirituality and Materiality Mitra’s installations create a melange of materials bridging spirituality and materiality. The layers and gathers of the materials creating variegated qualities of inner light, making the mosaic of geometry embedded in everything around us rich with meaning, sometimes more material, sometimes more spiritual - a fine balance. Buddhist tenets and Indian philosophies swing through the finesse of facets created from multiple folds. Repetition (like a chant) becomes more than a process, more than a means, it is the inner dictums of the harmony eked out from the ritual.In the thicket of narrow verticals and zigzagging diagonals, laid over a matrix of thatched momentousness the dappled surfaces quiver with a fertile energy from the tension between the overlaid geometries.In this body of work  Mitra s dispositions develop an existential character as he deconstructs the aesthetic logic of his previous constructions into a deeper search for the meaning of all things, incentivised as he is by personal experiences and exploratory sojourns in tropes of terrains, landforms and energy fields in nature. In embracing what we call the elegance of materiality, he challenges the ideas of order with a dynamic duality while considering the states and spaces of daily routines.At Bikaner House the Main Gallery will be punctuated with a series of folded creations that will celebrate the tenets of time, space and light all woven into installations that will unfold from the ceiling, the walls and shadows created within their own interstices. Amongst most intriguing and arresting will be Mitra has spent the past fourteen months getting ready for this seminal show. He states : “I love the Latin maxim - ‘Vivendo Discimus’. It translates to ‘By Living, We Learn’. The artist learns about his technique and his material by working with it and meditating on it, and through his material and through his work, he finds himself. With the architect’s interest of numerous materials and behaviours, I have a lifetime’s worth of potential discoveries lying ahead of me. This show is going to be an important milestone in that ongoing journey, but I am only scraping the tip of the proverbial iceberg at the moment, and there are infinite miles to go before this pilgrimage reaches its fruition. As the poet John Dryden says - “Errors like straws upon the surface flow, he who would search for pearls must dive below”. The joy is in the pilgrimage itself, the conclusion is actually a sombre affair.”

Anu Bajaj, Director Art Positive says: “ It feels extremely exciting and also satisfying to show Ankon Mitra at Bikaner House during a time when Art Positive is celebrating 16+ years of its presence in the service of contemporary Indian art. For us this show is integral to forging new directions and continuing on the journey of serving Indian art in unique and novel ways by bringing Ankon’s highly original work and ideas to an Indian audience, wherein he has already made a mark for himself on the international art stage.” Mitra’s work lighting installation - ‘Komorebi’ was the cynosure of all art aficionados in Venice at the Arte Laguna Prize, Arsenale du Nord, Venice, Italy (2021).He has also been twice awarded the Lucca Biennale Outdoor Artists' Prize, Italy and had two important participations with installations at the CODA Museum Biennale, Apeldoorn, The Netherlands (2021) and The India Pavilion @ the London Design Biennale (2021). At Bikaner House his works will merge the organic with geometric precision, making Origami a tool of verve and vivacity.