The show by the winner of Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art Award Sandip Pisalkar, entitled Aaj ka Hero is rather indicative of the trends that are being encouraged by the art impresario community nowadays. The entire exhibition is of sculpture- installations, ensembles of objects, created by the young artists around an idea (or given
the show) one may even say a sentiment. Some of the installations are reworking of everyday objects by adding mechanical power to it and some are created from found objects, and the rest are created by the artist.
The eponymous piece Aaj ka Hero consists of simulation of four supine human skin and one animal skin as the base the sculpture on which the padukas (generally a symbol of sadhus in India) are constantly pedaling on the skins. Each grouping created from latex, artificial skins, pedestals and motors is arranged on a carpet, with the heads and feet fleshed out while the rest is stretched out flat skin.
In two other sculptures Aashwasan and System the artist has used a stone grinder and a mortar and pestles constantly grinding away, the former being ground by a be-ringed and kurta sleeved hand of a politician and the latter by a bangled hand of woman. Greed and abuse of power as well as gendered exploitation is being reiterated through these artworks. The artist uses metaphors for being crushed, pulverised, vaporised and digitised for exploitative reality where the conventional heroes of religion, government have failed the societies and peoples who created them. In fact labour, human and mechanised becomes the language for hierarchies of dominance in these works.
The tenor of the whole ensemble is rather Gramscian with its focus on power, its organised abuse and attempts at its reversal. There is certain anti fascist agit-prop element in his art. The ‘hegemony of power’ thesis is visualised through various devices and there is an attempt at the creation of ‘alternate symbols’ to interrogate lived reality. However one notices that the symbols and objects are taken from the material assemblage and mental framework of contemporary social formation. The objects themselves derive their meaning and significance from shared visual and cultural experience, and not from an alternate cultural formation.
— The writer is an art historian, curator and critic