Art: Photo
So much of what passes as art today is – harsh as it might sound – often nothing more than a quickly-arrived at “mission statement”, or a half-thought-through idea. Combine certain buzz words, and you're seemingly home and dry.
And then there are artists like the low-key, understated Pintu Sikder.
This young man’s work embodies every buzz word you can think of - industrial, stark, raw power, powerful statements - and lives up to everyone of them. Without any hype or hoopla.
Using the humble brass nut as his medium, Pintu Sikder creates sculptures of amazing strength and beauty. His wildlife creations are tactile, encouraging you to reach out and stroke what is an astonishingly smooth surface fabricated from simple brass nuts.
Clay, plaster of Paris, brass nuts, gas welding – Pintu Sikder combines all these techniques to produce a finished product of striking reality.
The Kolkata based artist will tell you himself, quite freely and with no artifice or guile, that he comes from very humble origins and has studied and worked hard over the years simply to survive, then to study, and now to create.
Pintu worries. About uncontrolled urbanization and industrialisation, about global warming and pollution, about the future of our planet. In his own words: “Indiscriminate use of chemicals hampers the fertility of the land left. Days are not far off when land will refuse to produce. We shall have then to depend absolutely on industry for food to eat. This is the real predicament. I wanted to reflect this in my creation. I started sculpting what I visualize.”
This sculpture representing talk - with letters pouring out of an ear – connects to another of this thoughtful, shy young man’s concerns. Listen to what he has to say: “Entire civilization now opts for the rough and tough. Humanity is almost gone. Civilization minus humanity is like a body without soul.”
Recognising, whether we like it or not, that we live in an industrial world, Pintu Sikder uses industry to create his things of beauty.
Observing nature around him and making it larger than life, the artist showcases the simplicity and fragile beauty of a lotus plant through the medium of brass nuts. An unexpected juxtaposition that works.
Pintu observes the beautiful details around us and reproduces them, but with a twist. Like this oversized weaver bird’s nest made from brass and copper yet seemingly ready to house a family of birds.
Not without an impish sense of humour, the artists has created a dazzling washing line. An everyday vignette that he has transformed into art.
A giant sized fallen leaf, with a caterpillar perched on top. Some parts of the leaf have already been chomped away by the insect. This is the kind of detail that we all see around us on a daily basis, and yet almost certainly ignore. It takes an artist to capture such beauty, and in such an innovative way. Pintu sums up much of his philosophy in this simple statement – “Nature imparted tenderness and gracefulness in man”
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