Ispat Industries Limited, the 2nd largest steel plant, in India takes some initiatives to beautify the public spaces of their factory as one of projects under social activities. Indranil Garai, a freelance sculptor from Pune was invited as consultant to aestheticize the Ispat Plant at Dolvi in Alibaug, Maharastra to create an artistic ambience in 2006. The core concept of aesthticization of the Ispat Plant was with ispat, by ispat (steel) , in Ispat, for Ispat.
The Dolvi complex has a port on the Amber River that also opens into the Arbian Sea. In short, water body is an integral part of geographical sight of Dolvi along with ispat .A flock of flamingoes was accepted as subject matter for the site of the blast furnace. Since the function of the blast furnace causes serious pollution everyday, a large lake and forest have been created in order to retrieve the loss of natural environment. Here, Indranil Garai, the sculptor also intervenes to create an ambience for retinal pleasure with the sculptures of flamingoes. The flock of flamingoes consists of eleven birds. Each one is fourteen feet height. The materials are obviously only ispat - , but discarded ispat.
Indranil considered the ways of seeing of the regular workers in the blast furnace seriously, while thinking of the image of the sculpture. He traces that the workers of the blast furnace would be active audience of everyday. The officials of the industry are the passive, sporadic viewers of the sculptures, since their visit to the blast furnace is occasional. Indranil’s dialogue with the employees and officials made him realize that the workers recognize formal realistic images as art whereas for officials tell abstract images are modern art. Here, it is important to note that Indranil’s sculpture is a transformation of ubiquitous aesthetic choices that already exist in the mind of the people who work in the different levels of the Ispat. Indranil’s form follows function position encourages him to reuse of the redundant ispat , such as pipes, mesh, sheet etc. to construct the flamingoes . He trained the workers of the industry to assist him in executing the sculptures. In a way, he sensitizes the ordinary understanding of people of Ispat about aesthetic, materials and work of art.
The format of Indranil’s work from conceptualization to installation seems to be an inspiration of Bauhaus ideology of Weimar, Germany in 1919. Perhaps, it has seeped in to his process through Kala-Bhavan schooling of Santiniketan where Indranil had seven years of academic training. But, the seer modernist grid into his work is born not only from his academic training from Santiniketan a school established by Rabindranath Tagore in pre colonial India with alternative modernist ideology, but also, from the conundrum being of post colonial India.
Indranil considered the ways of seeing of the regular workers in the blast furnace seriously, while thinking of the image of the sculpture. He traces that the workers of the blast furnace would be active audience of everyday. The officials of the industry are the passive, sporadic viewers of the sculptures, since their visit to the blast furnace is occasional. Indranil’s dialogue with the employees and officials made him realize that the workers recognize formal realistic images as art whereas for officials tell abstract images are modern art. Here, it is important to note that Indranil’s sculpture is a transformation of ubiquitous aesthetic choices that already exist in the mind of the people who work in the different levels of the Ispat. Indranil’s form follows function position encourages him to reuse of the redundant ispat , such as pipes, mesh, sheet etc. to construct the flamingoes . He trained the workers of the industry to assist him in executing the sculptures. In a way, he sensitizes the ordinary understanding of people of Ispat about aesthetic, materials and work of art.
The format of Indranil’s work from conceptualization to installation seems to be an inspiration of Bauhaus ideology of Weimar, Germany in 1919. Perhaps, it has seeped in to his process through Kala-Bhavan schooling of Santiniketan where Indranil had seven years of academic training. But, the seer modernist grid into his work is born not only from his academic training from Santiniketan a school established by Rabindranath Tagore in pre colonial India with alternative modernist ideology, but also, from the conundrum being of post colonial India.