A ‘GLASS’ ACT

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Sculptures are associated with traditional mediums such as wood, metal and stone. Very rarely do we come across glass as a medium for the fine arts. Glass sculptures always evoke a reference to the decorative arts and artifacts as la dolphins and icons in glass. Sisir Sahana is a rare trained artists who has chosen to work in glass as a medium where the forms are deconstructed and rearranged in a creative vein.

Though glass is associated with transparency or at least translucence, Sahana in his show Enchanted Dialect, presented by Gallerie Ganesha, has introduced a certain opaque solidity reminiscent of ceramic into some of his works. The greens and blues along with red of his forms are dense and monumental. After experimenting with slumping and fusing, he began moving toward the multicolored glass sculptures in which he creates mainly figurative works. Sahana’s sculptures are lyrical and poetic in the use of color. He makes free-floating dream-like forms, infused with traditional and symbolic motifs. Flowing locks and vegetative forms lend fluidity to the solid and petrified substance of glass.
Animal forms and profile disembodied hands dominate his work. Sahana says his predilection for straight angular noses is partly based on the conventions of Greek sculpture. The nose, he believes, gives power to the face. This can be seen in his sculpture of Krishna, titled Fluteboy, where the blue and green face adorned with a peacock feather stands on a pedestal of red cow. The Visage in Blossom borrows many traits from the priest’s head from the Harappan period.
One of the more interesting pieces in the show is that of the a bull’s head appended to a square body suggests a draped and decorated bull embellished with sacred symbols. This evokes the bulls that wander the streets with sadhus, making predictions and begging for alms. The elemental red pierced with yellow is an effective and evocative image embedded in the Indian creative ethos.

— The writer is an art historian, curator and critic