At Nungambakkam’s tucked-away Art Houz gallery stands metal, wood and ceramic in all shapes, sizes and forms; 52 of them precisely. Delicate human figures, wooden animals stitched with leather and fabric, ceramic plates, and even large monochrome blocks in clay, all take up space. Here, a cross section of India’s contemporary sculpture landscape comes alive.
Titled AI 50, the show is an offshoot of AI 100, a similar outing that focussed on painting last year. “The show invites viewers to contemplate the interplay between form, material and theme,” says Poornima Shivram, curator. The power of connection and communication stands at the core of the collection, she says.
M Basavaraj’s Face 5| Photo Credit:special arrangement The small gallery space packs everything — from forms and figures that capture the very essence of human experience to literal animal figures that exude techniques of a medium that is hard to master. In senior artist Venkatachalapathi’s winding bronze sculpture titled Harmony, it is hard to miss the marriage of classical and modernist influences. While the form itself may seem abstract, his familiarity with the medium of bronze speaks volumes of the artist’s decades of experience with sculpting.
S Kantha Reddy’s large, almost turquoise piece in bronze titled Capcut is hard to miss. A little surrealist, the piece, much like his famed body of work, maps the tussle between the pace of urban life and traditional values, showing a weary face bogg.