'The naked and tonsured figure that serves Iranna Rukumpur as his key image is compacted from many ancestries. It fuses the yogi, the bhikshu, and the tirthankara, exemplars of transcendence drawn from Indic culture's three major sacred traditions; in more secular key, it also encodes references to Gauguin and Bacon, the exponents of the Jorasanko circle, and the android martyr-saviours of science fiction... Iranna's accomplishment, in the present suite, is to extend his investment in the figure considerably, in terms both of pictorial inventiveness and metaphorical charge. His aims are twofold: first, to consolidate the archetypal figure as bearer of existential crisis, and second, to restate the relationship between this figure and a versatile ground characterised by sensuous plenitude as well as menace. Typically, the relationship between figure and landscape takes the form of dream and perplexity in these new paintings.' - Ranjit Hoskote

Artist's biography is provided in the present catalogue of the solo exhibition of Iranna Rukumpur.