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