The Metaphors of Jayanta Roy

Jayanta Roy's paintings are a collage of metaphors. In his exhibition, Such a Predicament at Nature Morte, he explores the existential crisis that was sparked by the pandemic. Open to interpretation, his free-floating images of horses, fighter planes and birds—all become a metaphors of examining the time that brought significant changes in all of our lives. While Roy's work bears resemblance to surrealism, he eschews the label of surrealist, preferring instead to embrace ambiguity and fluidity in his imagery and appropriate these movements to depict reality through ambivalent images. We talk to him about his imagery, his relationship with art movements, the impact of the pandemic on his creative process and much more.

While your paintings may look like they belong to the category of surrealism, you don't prefer to use the 'surrealist' tag on yourself. Why?
I never claim myself as a "Realist” or a “Surrealist”. I purposefully appropriate art movements like Dadaism and Surrealism as a conceptual framework for my paintings in this exhibition. Well, of course, the entire process was an enriching experience for me.

In the exhibition, there are many repetitive elements—horses, fighter planes, birds—what does the repetition signify?
Predominantly, I use these images in my paintings as metaphors. In this show particularly, these images have been used as a frame of reference. Juxtaposition of mundane and easily found secondhand images convey the conceptual complexities of the politics of representation. I have also articulated certain nonsensical whims in my work, which paradoxically carries meaning within an apparent meaninglessness.

Do you see surrealism and realism merging together in the current seemingly post-truth world?
No, it is not possible to go back to the previous art movements or art practice because everything has changed in the human civilization in a century. Now we can rethink, recapitulate, and appropriate the previous practice to distinguish the truth. 

What is your creative process?
It is very difficult to explain my creative journey as an artist with few words. I used to convey my thoughts through a pictorial space where I generated an optimum impact with minimal intervention. My works were very minimalistic in terms of representation but now I am trying to explore the other side of representation where multiple narrations juxtapose on the same surface and create dialogues. 

What was that moment where you thought of pursuing art professionally?
I never thought of being an artist in my childhood days. I used to think I would become a pilot, but certain incidents drove me towards the art institution.  When I took admission in the Art College in 1992, I took the decision to become an artist in future. Although it was a tough decision at the age of nineteen.