Innovative forms of art steal the show

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The recently concluded India Art Fair meant more than just business for art lovers. Along with a variety of works showcased at the venue, what caught the attention of many were the installations that ranged from astounding to magnanimous.
The Robert Bowman Gallery, on its second trip to the fair found many takers for its star installation “Trojan Horse”. The horse made of scrap metals, parts of cars and bikes depicted the social and political journey in South Africa over the past 25 years (after the Trojan Horse massacre). About his work, Willie Bester comments, “We were naïve about the state of things in South Africa, we thought things would be different. We wanted to believe that our culture had changed, because we so badly wanted things to be different so that we could move forward. But it’s impossible to forget the past because it influences our future. This is why I document these events, so that we do not forget.”
Among the other attractions at the fair was Aakash Choyal’s “The Muse”. The work spoke of a free falling spirit. “The idea was to show the freedom flight towards the infinite. Both are very close, yet so far. When I was a kid, I had a thirst to know what’s beyond a certain point. I was attracted to the infinite. So I wanted to show a figure flowing down from the top, towards this circle, which depicts depth and infinity,” he said.
Bharti Kher’s sari work was another work which was hard to miss. Presented by the Art Fair, Hauser & Wirth, London, Kher’s work, titled, “I Find A Way To Keep It All”, was created with wooden chairs and saris. “These are put together with the help of resin. The saris layered on top of each other tell a story. The idea was to balance them on top of each other.”
G. Ravindra Reddy’s “Braid” was something that gripped all. With undertones of vulnerability, the colourful braid spoke volumes. Using cement fibre with enamel, the artist had created something that gave a different spin to an ordinary braid.
“It is as if the form of the sculpture dictates itself in that balance, volume, geometry, texture and representation, all come together and create a unified whole,” explains the artist.
Another intellectual structure at the fair was Somnath Ray’s “Exquisite Fold”, the Fold machine. The artist revealed, “This machine implicates a gargantuan taxonomy of known and unknown morphologies, an exquisite process of ‘becoming’. The fold lends itself to art by engaging the ‘viewing subject’ as the mechanistic component in the unfolding of itself.”