Rajendar Tiku

Verbalizing sculpture is difficult, especially the kind where one does not have direct, particular and recognizable references. It is here that one needs to be more focused so as to arrive at a form that transcends its own material and dimensional limitations and attains a sufficient formal autonomy. As a result, the evolvedform generates its own space and establishes its presence which now may be called as its reality.

I think, the reality a work of art attains is sum total of what we see, react to, remember, think about, perceive and then together externalize these aspects as a concrete manifestation. The whole process, which may also be called the process of creativity, needs time – a period of gestation.

It is important, however at that same time to realise that in the name of creativity one does not drift in the attitude of triviality and selfish individualism that seeks only a short-lived private joy. Creativity should rather be aimed at attaining independence that in turn imparts enough visual impact and aesthetic strength to what is created, the strength that decides and establishes the contemporaneity of a work of art and at the same time makes it eternal in its value and effect.

For us as practitioners of art it is an important phenomenon, which needs to be understood and internalise as an attitude that helps us to imbibe tradition and effort to transcend it to build a new psychological makeup. Looking at this phenomenon from the point of view of human perception also, one understands that a society’s grasp of its part becomes a source of creativity in the present. It stimulates all forms of contemporary expression, allowing the meaning to seep through images, shapes and a plethora of the other cultural activities. While looking at this phenomenon of past and present as a continuum, where lines of distinction between historical memories and personal experiences blur if not disappear, we realise an eternal source which energises us to flow on to be a part and parcel of the same.

Based broadly on this understanding, I have been trying to bring out in a tangible form, the seemingly intangible aspect of the silent and sacred imbedded in our civilizational life and tradition. Getting inspired from shapes of objects ranging from mundane ones located in our immediate surroundings, to the visual grandeur of monuments located in the trajectory of the timelessness, I perceive a quantum of images and symbols that seem to usher technical, intellectual and philosophical human endeavors into realm of the universal.

May I state further, that practicing Sculpture should involve, materialising those spatial and plastic relationships, which are fuelled with energy to transport us beyond the particularity of the structure, the physicality of the medium and the situational time frames into an area where environment of the aspirations is not only realised but enhanced also. This phenomenon, in turn may relieve us of our direct physical or visual bonding with the work of sculpture and even while standing within its space allows us to generate our freely expanding aspirational space. Internalising, such a potential of sculpture to induce, generate and establish all these emotive and psycho-spatial relationships and practicing sculpture for more than 30 years now, I realise that sculpture is a larger phenomenon of which a medium, its execution and dimension etc is only a part. The lot more beyond these attributes is its potential to work in return on us and impart meaning to our existence.