Reconstructing space This weekend, check out a modernistic sculpture by Hemali Bhuta

Reconstructing space

This weekend, check out a modernistic sculpture by Hemali Bhuta

Contemporary art can either be viewed as a complicated subject with its own jargon and paradigms or as a work of beauty. Artist Hemali Bhuta has created a modernistic sculpture for an exhibition space titled The Column in Transit and the Wall Piece. Bhuta’s architectural intervention directly confronts the viewer, charging the entire space with its solid presence, its raw edge, its size and placement. To the casual onlooker, it may look more like a leftover crumbling wall than a new sculptural installation. The work takes its cues from the history of the art room. Jutting out from the place at the back of the gallery where there is a vestigial structural column, the installation is made of local silica sand. She says, “I wanted to create a structure coming all the way to the entrance, thus dividing the space into two. I believe this structure acts as a framework or a divide in order to experience the empty space created on its either sides. It is so important to enjoy that nothingness or emptiness. I wanted the viewer to walk in and think that this is an incomplete piece, so it ends up becoming something that couldn’t be mistaken as just a rotting wall and it also becomes instrumental in the process of contemplation of emptiness.” The artist considers the building components to be catalysts, that expose their pasts, through projections and other structural indicators. According to her, humans make their homes around themselves, obsessing about every square inch of space. Bhuta alludes to themes of vulnerability, fragility, and temporality. The casual observer may not even recognise the installation as an artwork, or notice that the artist is responding to the architectural space and dividing it, sculpturally and structurally, into differing zones.