Ankon Mitra

“It is rare in human life to experience those moments
when the commerce of life stops momentarily,
when what we have achieved in this material world
becomes immaterial, when what is going to happen
tomorrow is no longer a worry or a concern, but also
becomes a mere trifle. When everything pauses, and
in that pause we touch infinity - and feel bliss for a
fleeting time - before we are hurled back into our
world of illusion. The metamorphosis process for a
butterfly may happen over many months, but once
emerged a butterfly lives for only two weeks. We
know their lives are over in a fortnight, but when we
see them flitting in the garden, from flower to flower,
the ephemeral becomes the infinite. We experience
a fleeting moment of never-ending bliss. And that
blink-and-miss glimpse of the infinite is enough for
us to smile benignly and knowingly at the endless
dreariness of this material existence.”
To look at a trio of butterflies in steel aluminium,
hand folded and powder coated to brass finish is to
know the power of the human hand. In making these
complex and unusual forms that echo evanescent
elegance , Ankon reveals his love for folding born of
origami intonations.The manifestation of minimal
radial forms that share the features of simple sine
wave curves that wrap around to define ridges and
valleys is a process that begins from sketching root
forms, defining wave frequencies and repetitions,
then using meticulous moorings to integrate these
elements to create a digital model of the form
and the mould needed to cast it. The 3D kinetics
becomes the bridge between virtual and physical
objects. We think of plaster moulds, we think of
slip-casts and thin, translucent and opaque objects,
and contemplate the beauty of the earth within the
fragility and the immersive insignia of the these
gorgeous butterflies.The butterfly lives out every
fraction of its short lived mortality only serving the
earth and biological needs in its act of pollination.A
lesson for man that life is only about serving a
greater canvas. Ankon’s last 25 years have been
dwelt in the abstract folds of the Origami series,
inspired by the Japanese art of paper-folding,which