Images in bronze

Conveying Messages

In the beginning these images may seem macabre, contrary to the pleasant and soothing effect that art has on one’s mind. But going deeper, you realise that art can serve many purposes, other than pampering one’s senses. It can force one to think deep and question their own ideals.

The sculptures of Pintu Sikder, an artist from Kolkata, exhibited at the iArt Gallery on Lavelle Road, bring such images.

Says Sadhwani, the art gallery owner, “Sculptures of Pintu Sikder highlight the issue of fast growing industrialisation in India. For example, the apple which is made up of industrial material brass nuts and bolts. It depicts the eventuality that the way the land is taken away from the farmers for industrialisation, we will have nothing left to eat except apples made up of metals.”

Another provoking sculpture is that of a foetus with a knife behind skull. “It signifies female foeticide, and if you find the image a little too unpalatable, there is an option to detach the knife, making it a pleasant display art,’’ says Sadhwani.

His bronze images are equally rivetting, one of them being a 3-d landscape with masts jutting out in space and the rippling water forming the base for the work, and another of men running with Communist flags to shelter themselves from a torrid downpour.

Perhaps, the most creative and artistic of all the sculpture was that of a torn textbook, depicting children who want to break free from the shackles of Indian education system.Pintu Sikder’s art at best can be described as collector’s art where the collector of the art finds his own personal meaning behind the art, in spite of the artist’s own strong message behind the art which he successfully manages to convey.