Anandajit Ray graduated from the fine arts university in Baroda and is currently working out of its vibrant campus town. In this particular series, Anandajit plunges into the depths of an amoral abyss, where, dynamics of urban conflict expunge the humane. Caught between the devil and the deep sea, his protagonist is victim to the 20th century malaise of living on the edge, where an unrelenting war wages in a ‘real’ world of science-fiction. In fact, the epic wars are now so palpable, they confront you everyday.

A sense of pain is crucial to the viewing of Anandajit Ray’s recent paintings, because the society that takes shape in his story-crammed frames is a pathological experience. It is a society reminiscent, in its eerie horror and endemic violence, of the scenario first elaborated in Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange, 1962, and most recently revisited in Quentin Tarrantino’s Pulp Fiction, 1994. Indeed, Ray’s images put us in mind of J G Ballard’s description of the 1981 classic of punk Gothic, George Miller’s Mad Max 2.