Pravin Waghmare
Concept Note
Choosing to use gunpowder as a medium to create artworks was very significant.
When the subject of decay was turning around in my mind, it was in the form of the table, the fan, the portable TV and the water-pot. These objects so somehow almost outdated, in a way a part of the history of daily life. I selected these objects and made casts of them in a mixture of gunpowder and fiberglass. Gunpowder is explosive and to compress and convert it into another form without revealing its presence, this I found is much too close to the contemporary situation of our suffering. I’m not talking about the suffering in the urban situation. I’m talking about it in the contemporary situation.
Gunpowder has its own smell, which could be attractive. It has a kind of beauty in its smell. If you look at the works, at first glance it looks like cement concrete, but it’s not. So, I think it can play role of history. the past, very easily.
In this, the Sculptorates series each work is made of three archival prints and one pedestal sculpture. The pedestal is also made with gunpowder and fiberglass. There is a link between the prints and sculptures. Individually these forms look very separate but together they fulfill the needs of each other. The prints indicate a relationship between dream and desire. Basically it’s a fictional work. Which again relates to ancient Roman sculptures, history.
Phototrait is painting which contains passport size photographs omitting the faces. Like lost identity of self. This work again talks about finding the self in the contemporary situation. To bind this work together I have used hardware material and gunpowder. Color isn’t used to make this painting.
Day in day out, we perform actions and complete tasks. Things that are new to us and things that are the same. We call them chores, the ones that are extremely familiar and to an extent monotonous. While this monotony is very superficial, there are changes on the inside, taking place on a continuous basis. The chores and the changes both differentiate one person from the other; they are details we tend to miss in a person. Ever changing details!
We ourselves create some, destroy the others, and the rest are altered in an unknowingly discreet process. A process, the effects of which are noticed only after its completion, and hence remains a mystery forever. But there are certain things that serve as reminders, of who we were before the process took place and that is all we are left with.
Sculptorates here is an archive of such states and many others in the making. It speaks of intermediaries that are vital, yet overlooked in a rush towards the result.
