Morals and materials

Subodh Gupta has contributed a great deal to the economy of steel utensil manufacturers in the country, buying several dowries worth of kitchen vessels for his art projects. Bronze sculptures that require foundries for casting are still the norm for sculptors like K S Radhakrishnan — who works out of Santiniketan, Goa and Jaipur on his projects. Painters Jayasri Burman, A Ramachandran, Seema Kohli or Paris-based Sakti Burman, who do occasional sculptures, are conservative enough to want to work with bronze, while Satish Gupta’s ambitions involve a mix of metals. Meera Mukherjee worked in the dhokra style of tribal artists, and Mrinalini Mukherjee is known for her works in jute. But plastic?

Fibreglass is the medium of choice for sculptors wanting to work with new age materials. A plastic polymer that is associated with automobile interiors, toys, kitchen containers — it is a low-end solution rather than a posh material. It has takers in the world of art, not least because its easy malleability allows artists to cast their ideas on a computer and hand the manufacturing to a facility to output before artists begin to customise each for its uniqueness.

Ravinder Reddy does heads of southern women, almost erotic in their directness, which he paints in bright colours, and some of them have sold upwards of Rs 1 crore. Chintan Upadhyay’s small, bald-headed, malevolent babies have been painted with everything from the miniature tradition with which he grew up in Rajasthan to more industrial art. G R Iranna’s figures of the human condition draw attention at biennales as in museums, not unlike Jitish Kallat’s “-saurus” series that uses fibreglass bones for a scathing comment on lifestyles. Ved Marwah’s politicians and bureaucrats are lampooned as buffoons, but the work is no less serious for it. And Bharti Kher’s fiberglass sculptures with their overlay of her leitmotif bindis are characteristic of her work — and at Rs 7.5 crore, her elephant The Skin Speaks a Language Not its Own is probably the most expensive sculpture sold yet.

It is in this context that one must view Chennai-based George K’s work. A poet, photographer and painter who turned to sculpture as part of his organic development, George started out with a complex body of work on transgenders — hijras — which was dark and somewhat comparable with Reddy in its ability to simultaneously attract and repel. The self-taught artist who entered the arena after surviving the tsunami that killed the majority of those with whom he was on a fishing expedition, George uses fibreglass to create what are being described as neo-realistic sculptures.

George uses live models for casting them — starting with his earlier eunuchs and now, a male dancer from Kalakshetra — and has recently taken to covering them with scraps of newspapers — a suggestion of the impermanence of life as also people’s interest in issues with regard to religion, caste and politics. The outsize heads of a previous series too came covered with newspaper bits, offering up a sharply social message.

At Rs 8.5 lakh for each dancer (and there are nine in all), or crow (dressed in household kitsch — works he will show at the India Art Fair), George is priced way below Reddy. The hijras had a value of Rs 7.5 lakh, and could be in the range of Rs 10 lakh now, gallerist Sharan Apparao suggests, though it is perhaps early for George to expect payouts at the secondary market. The chutzpah is evident, but how he shapes up in comparison with his peers depends on whether the collectors plum for aesthetics or a moral message.

Kishore Singh is a Delhi-based writer and art critic. These views are personal and do not reflect those of the organisation with which he is associated