Akhil Chandra Das

What strikes the viewer of Akhil Chandra Das’ works at their very first introduction to each other is the swipe he takes at cultural decadence, hypocrisy, capitalism, and erosion of values. These are issues that rattle and concern him and he leaves no stone unturned to use it to evoke through surreal and mythological imageries, the collation and presentation of his through with a sense of the absurd, disdain, wit and sarcasm.
While he has access to any media or material, he chooses to appreciate the elegance of using limited means to send complex signals. What he achieves with the self-imposed limitations is extraordinary. The well-constructed richness of his sculpture and installations makes the viewers wonder how so much is possible with the use of so little.
His love for wood and bronze are well-known and he uses them with an audacity that is so rare. The works are structured around the interactivity of disparate body parts and in their tight and sonorous arrangements, project disunities and interpersonal separations as symptomatic of today’s unstable times. The break- up of unities, loss and separation between individuals and between the contradictory directions of the self – the emotions are threadbare in his works. The figures in his sculptures stand isolated despite the subtlety of their combinations.
Carving a double entendre, like masked humans underneath the mask of a beast is his specialty. He is one artist who can laugh at himself and sculpt himself in a rather humorous way as well. The artist has cast himself as a goofy, ludicrous thoroughly enjoyable totem with a self-deprecating smile and closed eyes who have achieved some state of bliss.
He loves pun and sarcasm and uses them with a wit to represent the hypocrisy of the materialist society we live in. Akhil’s works are in no way solutions to any issue or a way out of this imbalance. They merely are representations of the reality, his figures rather dispassionate and somewhat accepting observers of conditions that have replaced our values and nature.
Akhil holds an MFA in Creative Sculpture and is a widely honored and awarded artist by art academies across India.

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