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Lot 37

 

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Nataraj Sharma's art often explores the relationship between man and machine in today's industrialized age, where direct contact between the two is unavoidable. Visually dramatic and overwhelming in both scale and subject matter, the artist's works allude to the unpredictable yet inevitable confluences of nature, civilization and industrialization. His factory interiors and urbanscapes seem to underscore the reality of such developments, touted... Nataraj Sharma's art often explores the relationship between man and machine in today's industrialized age, where direct contact between the two is unavoidable. Visually dramatic and overwhelming in both scale and subject matter, the artist's works allude to the unpredictable yet inevitable confluences of nature, civilization and industrialization. His factory interiors and urbanscapes seem to underscore the reality of such developments, touted as 'progress', distilling them to their basics, and in doing so, revealing more complex interactions. These works mirror a sensibility and sensitivity that acknowledges the fast changing contemporary world, but also questions the socio-economic and political repercussions of this heady, never ending project.

The protagonists that narrate the artist's vision on canvas are man and machine. In the present lot, a bleak interior, the silhouette of a seated man is contrasted against a factory full of inanimate equipment, seemingly in decay. As Peter Nagy suggests, perhaps Sharma "recognizes something anthropomorphic but also emotional in these machines, often abandoned to decay or arranged into what could be mistaken as social groupings. Both still life and landscape, these arrangements of machines prove to be opportune for displaying the painter's skills of composition and rendering, his adroit perceptions of the play of light, and his deft sense of color" (Nataraj Sharma, Bose Pacia exhibition catalogue, 2005, not paginated).

Grant Watson asked the artist about the source of his fascination with machines, to which Sharma responded "When I came to Baroda in 1994 to teach at the art school I had become saturated and reached a dead end with the human figure. Baroda was and still is a rapidly expanding city. I rented a house on the outskirts of the city and all around me I could witness construction and upheaval. Through this experience I became interested in the transgressed and transforming landscape on the urban periphery and also the mechanisms that authored this progress. In 1996 I wrote: "On Sama Road a familiar upheaval goes on. Gouged up earth, the earth's innards lie exposed. Looking down I see large drainage pipes, hard and cylindrical, embraced by sinuous electric cables. I take a turn to the right and pass through some desperate shanties before falling upon a magnificent, convoluted vision. A wasteland ravaged and desolate. An open view through to the horizon. Eroded gullies and a deep cleft filled with stagnant water. This whole rough-and-tumble landscape criss-crossed by a network of trembling footpaths… Objects have a still life, a permanence and a consistency that stands in contrast to the fickleness of human exchange. Look at objects and they look back without blinking…They say: "Reveal us and we will reveal you" (Voices of Change: 20 Indian Artists, Marg Publications, Mumbai, 2010, p. 113).

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