Review | Ranjani Shettar’s Sunshine and Dew drops
The first thing you might note as you walk through this exhibition by Indian artist Ranjani Shettar is the importance of shadows. The walls and floors become a canvas while Shettar’s sculptures hang and cling to the walls and ceiling. Also notable is the hand crafted nature of these objects – their surfaces are shiny, textured, as well as creepily latexy. There are a range of materials and processes which have been used by the artist to capture aspects of the natural world, for example the effect of wind on leaves or the green belly of a firefly.
Artisans were employed by the artist for Touch Me Not (2006-07) which consists of what look like knitting needles inserted at varying lengths into the gallery wall, they are actually lacquered wooden balls on stainless steel. The varying angles and lengths of these rods when assembled en mass capture the movement of wind over a field of buds, or leaves. The wall plaque describes this neatly as ‘plant kinetics’. I admire the way repetition transforms something simple, identical and not at all ‘nature-like’ into an evocative windswept scene.
A neighbouring work, Fire in the Belly (2007), continues Shettar’s use of wood, this time specifically Acacia, lacquered in green. The wall informs me that these shapes reflect the bellies of fireflies which are in fact green. Each shape is differs slightly in their liquid-like exteriors. Though shiny and slick the wood is untreated underneath so will shrink and crack over time and the paint will peel, revealing the natural object underneath. It’s not clear how this process relates to the bulgy bellies of fireflies, but it may not relate. There may be two stories here, or more. The shadows from this artwork form interesting, overlapping shapes on the wall and floor, and though they are still there’s a sense of movement from their curves. The shadows in Shettar’s work add depth and expand the scale of each work to include the wall and floor space.
The most beautiful shadows, in my opinion, are those in Sun-sneezers blow light bubbles (2007-08) in which loop-shapes, empty and filled, condense as well as lengthen in shadow form on the floor and along the walls. This work utilises significant materials too, including tamarind kernel paste, lacquer and muslin. The surface of these almost spherical shapes look like PVA glue treated paper, of the type students might make lanterns with. This work in particular displays more of a hand made aesthetic than the others. It is not as slick, but has an Earthy feel. The tamarind kernel paste makes us think of cooking and spices, but the lacquer sends our thoughts in a different direction, to preservation and varnishing.
Robert Nelson observes that this particular work is in part a response to the urge to sneeze in bright light, but I think the tactile quality in this work, and others, is most memorable. Nelson concludes:
Shettar’s work is ambitious and represents a kind of grand manner in sculptural conceptualism that isn’t overburdened by too many concepts. The work contains ideas but they aren’t especially challenging ideas; and meanwhile, the concepts are so sumptuously married to a lyrical monumentality that they tend to the formalesque.
I find Nelson’s conclusions interesting, I appreciate that he has noted the importance of marrying concept with artist’s practice, and I also agree that the ideas aren’t particularly challenging. I’m sure Nelson would agree that they don’t need to be for an artwork to be interesting. Scale alone can hold an audience’s interest and change their perceptions (if this is the artist’s intention), or experience, as is the case with Carsten Höller’s installation of two spiral-shaped slides in GoMA’s foyer for ’21st Century: Art in the First Decade’ earlier this year. Concepts like speed, gravity and even, one might suggest, fun, are explored by the audience, as their participation makes the artwork. These are not simplistic concepts, fun is a complex emotion, which everyone expereinces in slightly different ways. I was personally not brave enough to try the slide (I told myself that I probably exceeded the height restrictions).
This digression is intended to illustrate that nothing is below the exploration of art. Nothing in the human condition is worthless to an artist. So, what might seem, in Nelson’s experience of ‘Dew drops and Sunshine’, to be simplistic but well executed could in fact hold a deeper meaning for other viewers. I don’t think he gives enough credit to what we might experience when viewing the contemplative work of an artist like Shettar. Her work, unlike that of other “loud” contemporary artists, invites reflection and close scrutiny. Nelson rightly notes that we wonder at the construction of the installations, we question how they remain taut, upright or vertical. These contemplations are in some ways similar to our experience of gravity in a slippery slide but they do nothing to our bodies, not exactly. The process of looking and becoming aware of our bodies moving around the objects, not through or with them, is historically important to viewing art. Contemporary art often involves our bodies – we do things to make the art work. However, as we complete a work like Touch me not in our minds, we make the associations with nature and recall experiences – the smell of grass, the touch of wind. And in so doing realise that something so un-grass-like has made us recall these experiences.
I’d argue that Shettar’s work is powerfully evocative for the associations it creates in our imaginations. This may be a traditional or “out-there” reading of a contemporary artist’s work which has elswhere been found conceptually shallow, but I stick by it.
Dew drops and Sunshine continues until 26 February 2012.
Images: Taken by me, more available on flickr.
From top down:
Flame in the forest
2011
Teak, lacquered wood, stainless steel
Touch me not
2006-07
Wood, pigment, stainless steel
Fire in the belly
2007
wood, automobile paint, fishing line
