Sakti Burman’s bronze sculptures are inspired by his paintings. He told Iknoor Kaur that they are a reflection of his ‘confused imagination’
For so many years the conch shell has been used by Indians to welcome the morning sun and send out the evil by the evening. This ritual is one that is deeply rooted in several parts of the country and also forms a very important subject of artist and sculptor Sakti Burman’s work. His latest exhibition at Arushi Arts, Magical Dialogues, was a solo show of bronze sculptures that were a reflection of his “confused imagination”. He explained, “I went to Paris in 1956 and have been living there since. Naturally after all these years I have acquired a certain experience of technique and ideas. However, being an Indian, I always carried a small part of India with me and that India unconsciously worked with my reality of Paris. It was as though the East and the West were living together. What I was learning there and what I had acquired already from India were intermingled and all the things that I knew appeared in my works. So my work had this feeling of dream, reality, fiction and mythology.” One of the sculptures by Burman shows a man with a shell on his head. He shared, “Often people have asked me why I use a shell. The shell for an Indian is a very important thing. I’m not a religious person, but I like the way it is used in India. It reflects our divinity and mythology.”
According to Burman, all the sculptures exhibited this time were pieces inspired by his lifelong paintings. “I am a painter and a painter likes to try a lot of media to express his emotions. It’s like language — a literary needs various languages apart from English to express his meaning. Thus, Magical Dialogues has sculptures that were taken from my paintings in order to explain more,” he shared.
The 79-year-old artist said that all his sculptures carried strong significance. One of the sculptures at the exhibition was The Thinker. “The subject in this is the life of gypsies. They go from one place to another on any transport they find. The sculpture shows a girl sitting on a horse. While she is going from one place to another, she is thinking about her life. Here you can see the reality and unreality of the moment merge,” he elaborated and went on to explain another sculpture called The Father and Child. “This shows a man standing and holding a baby. I have done many paintings with the theme of paternity and maternity. I try and reflect the love and affection of humans while showing them as opposites. I also have another sculpture on the same lines called Affection,” he informed.
The reality of life and the abnormality of our actions inspire Burman to paint and sculpt, he said. “These are all common ideas. See the reality of life — at home you have your family and they are a symbol of love and affection. However, your imagination runs parallel to that reality all the time. My art reflects this paradox,” he added.