













Theater of the Bizarre
Mrinal
Dey, a
MFA from Indira Kala Sangeet University, Chattisgarh, India 2005-07, is also a
recipient of the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, New York 2010; The Elizabeth
Greenshields foundation grant, Montreal, Canada & China Government
scholarship in 2008.
"They
are, all, without an exception, depicted in a manner that is eerily grotesque
and yet identifiably human. Slits for eyes, bulbous noses, thick - set lips and
jaws, a baldness that places the pointedness of the ears in sharp focus and a
neck - or the very pronounced lack of it - attaching the large rotund face to a
flabby, disproportionate body, highlight my disturbance with the overt emphasis
on the usual trappings of post - modern habitation. The colours I use are all
solid enough to carefully avoid any merging with the textured backgrounds I
create. This solidity enhances the boldness of my figure endowing them with the
intended quality of both awe and repulsion".
There
is at the same time, a surrealist overtone to my works, as dreams seem to flit
in and out of the minds of my central figures, even as they transfix the
viewers with their cold hard stares. The sense of self - contentment, stemming
purely out of a self-centered complacence, seeps through the smiles pasted on
my figures; a smile that more than serves the purpose it was painstakingly
designed for - to instill a sense of disturbance that can somehow jolt us out
of an opium-ised slumber.
Mrinal Dey
Santiniketan