making - large scale public art installations
'Rain, the Ganga Waterfront along Time Machine' Hosted by India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India. 2015 | "Bringing a river into the heart of a city."
Excavations in hymns of clay
the Earthen lamp - a droplet of Water
Using the earthen lamp as a metaphor, Manav explores issues of environment consciousness. We recognise and respect earth only when we use its resources for our use without reverence. Having been a part of the religious rituals many years and having grown up and lived this practice in India for years this whole symbolic circle of life has deeply affected the artist to use earthen lamps diyas as a metaphor to explore and raise questions on environment consciousness. And also about the very glaring issue of how perception and context interplay each other. How men and objects are made to traverse responses and the destiny of reactions based on usage, perception, context and situation. The earthen lamp is woven in the cultural-religious fabric of India from time immemorial. This humble small clay bowl called the diya is shaped by poor potters who keep them in large numbers by the road side in heaps for selling. Sometimes beside garbage dumps or beside sewage drain they have a nondescript existence till the time they are bought home by people.Once home, only at the time of worship, they are used as a tool at the altar.Then something dramatic happens. The same humble small bowl of clay that had no meaning, no significance or existence in the human pshyche suddenly turns into the medium of conveying the desires of the soul. Sacred as soon as when placed at the alter.Priests say you do not need to purify these mud bowls by sprinkling of Holy water of the Ganges because it is made of earth and is pure.Oil ispoured in it. A wicker lit. And it assumes the status of the Holy Grail carrying one‘s prayers of the soul to the Gods and our spirit awakens. Once the prayer ends, the earthen lamp is discarded again to be immersed in the Ganges. Taken for granted. Annointed when needed. Only revered when in use. And after its purpose is served, discarded and thrown and another one bought to serve the desires of the soul yet another day. Its life is strange as the way of the world and the circle of life. Like the unsung hymns of clay.
Single Units of Pottery | the diya
Single Units of Pottery | the chillum
the Rural Indian Cigar - a raindrop
Call it the loose cannon of destruction – the conduit of intoxiction for marijuana, hash and more, the ‘chillam’ a rural Indian clay cigar, invoked in me the raw fascination of form. As an artist, I saw endless possibilities that it fired in me, to play with that shape. As a Raindrop’ or a beehive unit that I wove it into, it served the purpose of creative juice with due diligence. But it also offered itself as an iteration of transformation.
An idiom of exchange in identity between the prosaic to luxury. Art can redefine the context, perception and the meaning of both. And it can do much more
To be released from the one dimensional existence of all that’s destructive and prosaic to the ‘nurturing being of existence that embraces trees, I wanted the ‘chillam’ to become a metaphor of change as transformative as its catharsis itself. My rain ’embraces’ Trees, the lungs of the city,almost as an act of performance that calls out the deafening roar of air pollution suffocating cities like Delhi And I chose to embrace Neem and Arjuna trees as symbols, whose barks we humans peel off and shred, for medicinal properties. The rain drops of ‘clay’ may weep that damage or nourish the trees back into life. Either way it sets the tone for an immersive dialogue for audiences to step in, get drenched and soak it all in.
we're all clay - dust to dust | the earthen cup of life
Single Units of Pottery | the kulhad
"transforming the familiar into something completely unconventional, unexpected, and magical.”
Sculpture Magazine
“Gupta came up with a unique way to draw everyone’s attention towards the endangered environment.”
BBC UK
Sacred
If you believe.
It lies
wrapped
in a heap
of nothingness.
Unsung, unlit, unheard.
Till the end of time.
At an alter
sometimes,
Flames peep out
of it’s earthen palms.
An iridescent arch
woven by moonbeams.
Vanquishing all darkness.
My soul sings my desires
Filling me with abundance.
manav
Gupta working on all prototypes of his installations at his studio.
Photographed by the artist:
Photographed by the artist.
the analogy
Shrinking River, South Africa. Hosted by the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History and the Indian High Commission. 2012
Unsung Hymns of Clay, 2012. Hosted by the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History and the Indian High Commission, South Africa.
'Rain, the Ganga Waterfront along Time Machine' Hosted by India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India. 2015 | "Bringing a river into the heart of a city."
'Rain, the Ganga Waterfront along Time Machine' Hosted by India Habitat Centre, New Delhi, India. 2015 | "Bringing a river into the heart of a city."
“Manav Gupta has reinvented the language of clay with true originaility of thought and treatment”
Architecture Update | Volume 10 | Issue 7 | ‘Allegoric Innovations’
“A river of disposable clay vessels speaks to how we choose to use (and sometimes misuse) the earth for our own purposes, where the artist makes the river an idiom -‐ and takes it across the Nile or the Mississippi or the Thames as ‘water’ that relates to the commonality of environmental issues the world over”
PUBLIC ART REVIEW, USA | Fall-‐winter edition, 2015-2016
Gupta has universalised the diya to draw attention to a contemporary issue
Mail Today
the bed
the Bed | meet me by the riverside. the bed of love. | The bed of Life
“The artist makes an intimate statement of love through the use of the male and female idioms of existence and how fragile love can be and yet so ethereal. Another dimension of sustainable development. With the river bed of earthen lamps and earthen cups, a stream seems to emerge from somewhere deep within and flow seemlessly pouring over. The bed is symbolic of history, of love and of a certain hope that the statement ‘meet me by the riverside..’ evokes.”
Noah's Ark
“The artist uses the symbolism of the Noah’s ark to underline the relevance of saving the world. A cycle of creation, un-creation, and re-creation, in which the ark plays a pivotal role. We are all clay and could all be Noah to stop a while and protect our own; by adopting a safe methodology of sustainable living that takes the future generations of our own families and other species to an evolved and secure life through the consciousness of preserving our environment.”
the beehive garden project
“This global beehive garden project is an environmental statement by the artist about biodiversity and its crucial linkages to sustainable development. Manav’s art has always sought to play a bigger role than itself, in creating greater awareness on environment.”
The Beehive Garden Project. 1 of 6 installations spread across 26 acres. Exhibited as part of the artist's "arth - art for earth" project. Hosted by IGNCA and the Ministry of Culture, Govt of India, 2018
The Beehive Garden Project. 1 of 6 installations spread across 26 acres. Exhibited as part of the artist's "arth - art for earth" project. Hosted by IGNCA and the Ministry of Culture, Govt of India, 2018
RAIN
“No other artist uses clay and pottery in public art like Manav Gupta”
‘Down to Arth’, Swarajya, 2018
Half-an-acre of rain. Rain, Rainforest and the Beehive Garden. Daylight shot. 1 of 6 installations for Arth Art for Earth by Manav Gupta. Hosted by IGNCA and the Ministry of Culture, Govt of India, 2018
Half-an-acre of rain. Rain, Rainforest and the Beehive Garden. Daylight shot. 1 of 6 installations for Arth Art for Earth by Manav Gupta. Hosted by IGNCA and the Ministry of Culture, Govt of India, 2018
rain, rainforest and the beehive garden
“Rain stands as the most gentle and revolutionary expression of art: exposed to actual rain, trees and sunlight. Depletion of natural resources, recreating and sustaining, are at the core of the series.”
Half-an-acre of rain. Rain, Rainforest and the Beehive Garden. Daylight shot. 1 of 6 installations for Arth Art for Earth by Manav Gupta. Hosted by IGNCA and the Ministry of Culture, Govt of India, 2018
"In its entirety it can fill the Tate Turbine Hall"
The Pioneer.
"Gupta at his musing best."
Blouin Art Info
"fresh, minimalistic, innovative and original"
Architecture+Design
the time machine
“The artist engages the audience with Time and its ethereal and transient passage. Clay, a naked, earth symbol of existence, resource and sustainability and the cup as the metaphor of Time’s limitedness draw us to explore how we use our resources. The introduction of Light within, by the artist, celebrates the awakening of our consciousness and its potential of Hope.”
Time Machine, Amrita Shergill Marg, New Delhi, India
Zen
‘The zen’ , earth and the universe. Umbra Penumbra:
The earthen lamp and pottery ‘mutka’ (water vessel)was once again deployed to create the sculpture of earth immersed in the universe created as Umbra and Penumbra as the artist’s unique deployment of the concept of fragility of ‘ONE EARTH’ in the universe to highlight how precious is the need for value of environment consciousness.
