A show titled ‘Figures and Forms’ consisting of sculptures by Tapas Sarkar and Neeraj Gupta curated by Nanak Ganguly is being held at Jehangir Art Gallery from May 13-19, 2025. The presence is continually undercut by a future which can never quite arrive, partly because in some sense it is already here, partly because it will arrive only under the sign of its own instant negation.
The sculptures of Tapas Sarkar and Neeraj Gupta are a veritable feast, as intimate and sincere in exploration in bronze and marble. These are an exploration of two sculptors’ verve and felicity that will reinvent a sculptural universe, every piece is fantastical, magnificent, and compiles as the most engaging and eloquent of a sculptural universe. Such dialogue is a continuous process: it has little to do with past concepts of edification but emerges as a vital process, a landscape where we become familiar with the changes influencing our lives. This signals out how an eclectic range of imagery from the changing world of postcolonial India became instrumental in evolving a visual language of collage and citation, which in turn, acted as a vehicle of cultural force, creating and negotiating as the sacred, the erotic, the political, the modern and beyond.
The creation of these two Master sculptors covers a vast space with masterful aplomb- the extreme skill and experience of Tapas Sarkar in Bronze and Neeraj Gupta’s in Markana marble and metal. Each sculptor and their practice and method in this show carries the essence of their language, life, success and how their work helped to unfurl the epoch and understanding of a practice- about their own experience and understanding that is profound and timeless.
These works scrutinize the living reality, which is diverse, but direct and different positions of art confront the viewer in an overwhelming and dizzying fashion-exciting that it contrasts the work of these two major sculptors with widely disparate styles. This is the moment of aesthetic distance that provides the narrative a double edge. We are at a crucial point here. Their practice is meditative, explorative, and creative and can incorporate carving, sculpting, assimilating, drawing and using one’s full artistic potential to create a work of art. The staging of the otherness and alteration that constitutes in these objects, for us, serve the essential aspects of a fictional universe. These tear up the spectator, who finds himself or herself torn between received ideas/ feelings that are dismembered by each sculptor’s verve and language- A visual text that is seized with desire, mirth, and resemblance.
