Six ceramic artists create works that celebrate the power and the beauty of trees in all their manifestations at Vriksha. By Uma Nair
Trees have always been the most penetrating preachers and at Vriksha, six ceramic artists create works that celebrate the power and the beauty of trees in all its manifestations.
Standing five-feat-tall, created in stoneware ceramic is Vipul Kumar’s artwork that heralds tales from yore and tree spirits. His handling of the medium and the porosity in his technique is what sets him apart as one of the finest practitioners in the medium of stoneware ceramics today. While Vipul’s tall tree like abstraction creates a stunning statement, Saraswati Renata from Pondicherry has an attractive set of playful porcelain pieces that shows her perfection of glaze. She also has 37 flowers that celebrate procreation and the tensile beauty of flowers in an installation specially recreated by the artist Mukesh Sharma for the show.
Shampa Shah from Bhopal, presents two of her nature series in surreal creations that portray balance, prowess and charisma in the placement and firing of porcelain. Shampa’s composition conveys the techniques of creation. The gaze and Shampa’s fingers can feel the vegetation’s slight relief, the bolder hues and curves of the flowers. The bare white glaze behind is flawlessly smooth.
Keshari Nandan, an award winning artist at AIFACS this year, creates a tree in stoneware. It is bulky, porous and certainly a piece that invites a smile and a poetic lyricism. Texture and tonality both weave into his persona as you look at the fine glaze of terracotta tint and the moss hued green that speaks of organic botanical reams.
Anushka Iris also from Pondicherry, presents a paean to birds and flowers in the small wall platters that she creates. Tensile, tender and soft hued tranquility scenes bring to the fore her gentility and her love for nature as she evokes the poetic ripples of Emily Dickinson.
The holistic healer, workshop mentor, architecture professor, who decided to step away and start dabbling in the magic of the moment in firing and glazing. Manjari Sharma’s Shaman has a hint of ancient tradition as well as modern innovations. She is a mistress at the figurative genre, her little elephant at the bottom is evocative to the core. The Shaman harnesses earth energies to invoke procreation and fertility of life through the concept of virility according to Manjari.
(Vriksha opens today and runs till July 12.)