Exhibition explores new ways to use metal as medium and subject

Twenty-three leading contemporary artists including Atul Dodiya, G R Iranna, and Bharti Kher have explored metal as a medium and subject of art at an ongoing exhibition here.

"Burnish / Tarnish" that opened at the Palette Art Gallery here recently, has on display works that showcase the enormous artistic possibilities metal has to offer across a wide range of media -- sculpture, painting, photography, video, and installation.

"Metal is very prominent in contemporary art and it is used across a variety of media including sculpture, painting, photography, and installation. The type of metal used has widened to include material like rusted mild steel.

"It is an exhibition exploring new ways to view metal," said Girish Sahaney, curator of the show.

The art works use a gamut of metallic elements and alloys, including gold, silver, copper, bronze, iron, and steel.

For instance, artist Pooja Iranna has created an entire row of miniature skyscrapers by laboriously sticking numerable tiny zinc-plated steel staple pins together.

The project, which she has been working on for almost a decade now, is an attempt to interrogate contemporary urban development by modelling modernist architectural forms.

"The absence of figures in the habitations and the relentlessness of their straight lines serve as a criticism of modernism's resolute functionalism, its lack of human touch.

"At the same time, the works attractive symmetry signals why such buildings have become ubiquitous around the globe. In miniaturising high rises, she endowed them with fragility and emotive appeal they usually lack in their metropolitan context," Sahaney said.

Manjunath Kamath has created one of his characteristically lavish visual puzzles for the show.

His painting bears a luminous golden surface that plays with textures, but it is the incompleteness of the composition that makes the work stand out.

"The passage of time damages works of art and created the gaps in our understanding. Kamath recreated that process deliberately in order to investigate the very nature of interpretation," the curator said.

Other participating artists include Anant Joshi, Chittrovanu Mazumdar, George K, Gigi Scaria, Himmat Shah, Jagannath Panda, Manish Nai, Mithu Sen, Ranbir Kaleka, Rathin Barman, Ravinder Reddy, Riyas Komu, Saravanan Parasuraman, Subodh Gupta, Vibha Galhotra and Zarina Hashmi.

Works by Pakistani artist Adeela Suleman and Bangladeshi artist Tayeba Begum Lipi are also part of the show that is set to continue till October 30.