elements are often constructed in layers, creating the effect of being visible and shrouded at the same time. Fragmented images, collaged text and pictures, mythical iconography, abstracted and literal figuration are all built on top of each other, crowding together, yet appearing to be on separate planes of "translucent and opaque paint". In the early to mid 1990s, although still largely focused on painting, Mazumdar was experimenting with different technologies and the use of three dimensional spaces. He collaborated on designing theater spaces, where he developed some of his technique and ideas for using sound, lighting, moving parts, digital media, and also the architectural elements, contours and traversable spaces of the exhibition venue itself. Since the late 1990s, Mazumdar has worked mostly in multimedia installations. He has continued to produce a large number of discrete paintings, but these are usually incorporated into the larger entity of the exhibition as a whole. In some shows, he has taken groups of multiple paintings (displayed in a traditional gallery-space configuration) as well as the entire room containing the display, and turned these into components of the larger installation. Mazumdar's installations employ a wide range of technologies and materials. He has used painted canvas and paper, poured industrial tar, mercury coated cups, aluminum reflectors, rubber, wood, wax, engine oil, brocaded textile, masonry, gold, iron, steel, motorized and mechanical devices, light bulbs, filtered light, video, CGI, soundtracks (including recognizable strands of music and recited poetry as well as human screams, traffic sounds, and jumbled noises), and massive freestanding structures such as metal towers with embedded digital content. In part because of the variety, Mazumdar's works have tended to defy categories. They are usually loosely characterized as installations or sculpted environments, but the artist himself refrains from attaching any single label to them. He says "there are paintings, sculptures, sound and light installations. Each piece tends to cross over to a new field, forcing the viewer to shift his/her position constantly." Subjects and themes Critical reception Business Standard calls him "one of the foremost artists of his generation." Celebrated painter M. F. Hussain, who once described Mazumdar as one of India's "most dynamic younger artists," later said of his work "underlying his many shifts in medium, form and style over the years is a sensual intensity that reaches past the clever and the quick to probe deep layers of the human experience in all its tragi-comic