BANGALORE: The fusion of different art forms like sculpting, sound installation and photography met under one roof during an exhibition titled ‘Affidavit’ held recently at Bangalore Artist Residency One. Bharatesh GD, the passionate artist behind the jaw-dropping exhibits was extremely thrilled and pleased with the Bangalore crowd that took active interest in his art. He explained the scientific and artistic efforts that went into the making of snake-like sculptures out of a single tablet. On display, were also the video and sound installations, which he drew from his recent project Sound Signatures at Bern, Switzerland.For a city that is deeply rooted in traditional art forms, this gallery proved to be a stepping stone towards contemporary art. After researching thoroughly on the chemical processes involved in making the sculpting tablets, he began his own journey of art by creating them at home. A mixture of sugar, alcohol and baking soda is used to create the tablets. It resembles snake eggs and is a popular fire cracker in South India. Once made, it is burnt and allowed to take whatever shape it wants. This, is what, fascinates the artist most. “It is uncontrollable and will take any form. It is almost mystical to watch it mould itself.” he said. At right angles from the sculptures, are laser beams that burn different parts of the figure. He also studies the interaction between the beams and smoke, emanating from incense sticks or ‘dhoop’.Another magical element of the exposition was the sound installation which he compiled by mixing local sounds that are produced by the flickering of a flame, turning on a lighter and movement of the wind. His latest endeavour - collecting Sound Signatures from over 49 countries, resulted in the formation of ‘sound mythos’ - a visual imagery extracted from different audio inputs. His source of inspiration was from the historical Kornhauskeller, in Bern, where a street contains more than 12 lakh names, engraved on tiles. The idea of such a personalised street motivated him to collect individual sounds from numerous people and merge them to form sound mythos. The other aspect of sound mythos, is the ‘sound scape’ that represents the volume and depth of the sound waves. The work, of course, took a lot of time and effort. “Since this kind of art is new to India, especially to Bangalore, it was a very expensive process,” he said. He worked on the project for seven months to bring it to the final form.Bharatesh GD is an upcoming artist who works with audio, video, installation and sculpting. His next area of interest is the concept of visualising smell. He is a fine art graduate from Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath and was earlier a painter.
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