EXPERIMENTATIONS & TRANSFORMATION
Jyoti integrated many of these mixed media works into his multi sensory installations at the Sundaram Tagore Galleries in New York and Hong Kong. In Red Earth-Vanishing Ice(2008), he addressed climate change and the global scarcity of water. In 2012, Jyoti interpreted China’s traditional connection to earth, water, fire, metal and wood in Wu Xing: Five Elements, which ushered in the Year of the Dragon in Hong Kong and was reviewed in Asian Art News magazine.
Since 2009 Jyoti’s work reflects his experiences living in Bellingham, Washington. In a studio facing the snow-capped, Canadian Coast mountains, which were compared to the Himalayas by early explorers, he has found new materials and inspirations, including Northwest aboriginal cultures. Jyoti’s recent paintings and sculptures integrate earth colors gathered across the border in British Columbia with recycled sanding belts marked by the trees of Pacific Northwest forests.
By stretching and folding sanding belts, discarded and presented to him from Whatcom and Skagit wood workers, Jyoti transforms discarded industrial objects into paintings, curving wall reliefs, and three-dimensional sculptures. The surfaces are defined by a mixture of media, including earth, turmeric, beeswax, and resin wood. Jyoti often accentuates his work with shilajit, a jet black, tar-like substance, tapped from Himalayan rock crevices. Best known for its healing prosperities in the practice of Ayurveda medicine, it boldly animates the artist’s meditative and mysterious writing.
These works coincide with the artist’s most recent installations that continue his exploration of climate change. For the traveling exhibition, Vanishing Ice: Alpine and Polar Landscapes in Art (2013-2018), Jyoti was commissioned to create Melting Ice, which he constructed by configuring frozen blocks into a monolithic cube embedded with glowing LEDs. Reminiscent of the majestic, morphing shapes of disappearing glaciers and icebergs, the sculptures gradually succumbed to the surrounding warm air. It’s lifespan depended on the vagaries of the weather where it was installed. At the McMichael Canadian Art Collection and the Weisman Art Museum, the work enduring over three months, but lasted just four weeks at the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham. It vanished after only a few, brief days at the El Paso Museum of Art.
Jyoti continues to work in a variety of media simultaneously. While his art traces a personal journey, it also calls attention to both nature’s beauty and the precarious relationship between humans and the environment. What guides his art is the belief in the potential of creativity to catalyze positive change.
Barbara Matilsky
Art historian/ Curator