About the Work
Since the 1970s Jyoti Duwadi has created a multifaceted body of work. His sculptures, paintings, drawings, installations, and digital art reflect an openness to both chance and discovery.
Jyoti’s art first developed as he began translating the power of language into visual form. Over time, the imagery in his drawings, paintings, and artist books were informed by prehistoric cave paintings, aboriginal pictographs, and Egyptian hieroglyphs. The rhythm, syncopation and improvisational aspects of Jazz that accompanied him through the early morning hours working in the studio guided his compositions. Jyoti purchased a saxophone to make his own music and the haunting sounds in many of his videos are electronically composed.
Often the results are humorous, as in his series of waxed sculptures – an old travel iron, repaired tea pot, antique automobile gas funnel – that can be appreciated for their relationship to Pop Art. Jyoti diverges from this 1960s movement by accentuating an object’s formal design and creating sensuous surfaces.
The art and rituals that Jyoti absorbed from his native Nepal inspire the rich palette of colors and Tantric geometries in much of his work. While attending the Besant Theosophical School in Varanasi, India in the 1960s, Jyoti was exposed to a fusion of eastern and western mystic traditions that seek to convey the divine essence of nature. Later exposure to the art of Wassily Kandinsky, an early modernist who also embraced theosophy, reinforced Jyoti’s personal style of abstraction, as did the art of Paul Klee and abstract expressionists Jackson Pollack and Adolph Gottlieb.
The art and rituals that Jyoti absorbed from his native Nepal inspire the rich palette of colors and Tantric geometries in much of his work. While attending the Besant Theosophical School in Varanasi, India in the 1960s, Jyoti was exposed to a fusion of eastern and western mystic traditions that seek to convey the divine essence of nature. Later exposure to the art of Wassily Kandinsky, an early modernist who also embraced theosophy, reinforced Jyoti’s personal style of abstraction, as did the art of Paul Klee and abstract expressionists Jackson Pollack and Adolph Gottlieb.
The artist soon began carving large pieces of raw wood brought to him by friends and arborists. Highlighting the wood’s ring patterns and color while contrasting rough exterior and smoothly sanded interior surfaces, Jyoti re-contextualized a new appreciation for the beauty of the tree. The fine craftsmanship and biomorphic shapes of Isamu Noguchi inspired Jyoti’s work during this time. In 1990 he exhibited a selection of sculptures at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena.
The artist soon began carving large pieces of raw wood brought to him by friends and arborists. Highlighting the wood’s ring patterns and color while contrasting rough exterior and smoothly sanded interior surfaces, Jyoti re-contextualized a new appreciation for the beauty of the tree. The fine craftsmanship and biomorphic shapes of Isamu Noguchi inspired Jyoti’s work during this time. In 1990 he exhibited a selection of sculptures at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena.
The artist soon began carving large pieces of raw wood brought to him by friends and arborists. Highlighting the wood’s ring patterns and color while contrasting rough exterior and smoothly sanded interior surfaces, Jyoti re-contextualized a new appreciation for the beauty of the tree. The fine craftsmanship and biomorphic shapes of Isamu Noguchi inspired Jyoti’s work during this time. In 1990 he exhibited a selection of sculptures at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena.
The artist soon began carving large pieces of raw wood brought to him by friends and arborists. Highlighting the wood’s ring patterns and color while contrasting rough exterior and smoothly sanded interior surfaces, Jyoti re-contextualized a new appreciation for the beauty of the tree. The fine craftsmanship and biomorphic shapes of Isamu Noguchi inspired Jyoti’s work during this time. In 1990 he exhibited a selection of sculptures at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena.
The artist soon began carving large pieces of raw wood brought to him by friends and arborists. Highlighting the wood’s ring patterns and color while contrasting rough exterior and smoothly sanded interior surfaces, Jyoti re-contextualized a new appreciation for the beauty of the tree. The fine craftsmanship and biomorphic shapes of Isamu Noguchi inspired Jyoti’s work during this time. In 1990 he exhibited a selection of sculptures at the Pacific Asia Museum in Pasadena.