An ongoing solo exhibition at India Habitat Center displays the artworks of Madhuri Jalan who works in mixed media by using glass and ceramics. For the exhibition, the artist has displayed different forms of Ganesha in glass sculptures and paintings
A glass sculpture of Ganesha depicts the intricacies with which the artist has created the work. A viewer can decipher that it is a sculpture of Ganesha only by the shape given to the glass.
The artworks by Madhuri Jalan in her solo exhibition Ganesha’s and Ganesha’s at India Habitat Center displays ‘bappa’ not only in different forms but the artist has also played around with mixed media.
For her solo exhibition, she has experimented with glass and has tried to erase the traditional boundaries between ceramic, glass, wood and metal.
What she enjoys most in ceramics is ‘Raku’ —a Japanese technique of firing. “I love experimenting and it’s a delight to explore the unexplored. I believe that, today, I am at my best with glass where my joy finds an uninhibited expression,” she says. In the exhibition, one can clearly see how her background as a painter and ceramic artist informs and provides a foundation to her work in glass.
The ongoing exhibition which would continue till September 17 at the Open Palm Court displays mixed media sculptures and paintings that the artist has taught herself by reading and experimenting. Madhuri began as a painter in the 70’s and moved to ceramic art in the 80’s. In 1999 she again took up a new challenge with glass and became one of the very few artists in India working in this medium.
Over the years, Madhuri’s work has evolved in major ways. The vagaries of combining these diverse media create a degree of unpredictability that she finds exhilarating. Her work in glass has its unique physical properties, brilliant hues and glowing radiance. During the last few years she added other media such as wood and metal and has been making mixed-media sculptural works.
Her work is not about making statements; rather it is a ‘wedging’ of her inner self into the work to result in a form. At every level there is a constant dichotomy apparent in her work: in motion, yet meditative; structured, yet malleable; primeval, yet timeless.
She studied ceramics from Government College of Art and Craft, Kolkata, and has attended courses at the School of the Museum Fine Arts, Boston. later she honed her skills by attending summer residencies and workshops at Penland School of Craft, North Carolina, USA and at Urban Glass and Corning Studios, New York, USA.
Madhuri started holding solo shows of her paintings in 1970s and since then has exhibited her works across the country; AIFACS (Kolkata), India Habitat Centre (New Delhi), Academy of Fine Arts (Kolkata) to name a few. She also received an award for the best exhibit in terracotta by AIFACS.