Sakshi Gupta recycles scrap materials, often of industrial origin. Inviting contemplation, her sculptures endow these materials with new meaning. The emphasis on materiality conveys an impression of ephemerality, lightness, and fragility. Gupta’s works may be understood as a commentary on today’s world – highlighting “the shift from the economics of heavy industry to the weightless age of information and technology.”¹

At first glance, the sculpture the artist made during a stay in Vienna, triggers associations of high cloud towers, of smoke or steam columns. A light form extends toward the ceiling. In Baroque painting, such cumulus clouds are to be found as motifs of transition between (this world’s) architecture and the heavenly sphere, as elements conveying transcendence. Due to their immateriality, clouds seem to be particularly suited to indicate something divine. The motif of supernatural beings covered in clouds recurs in nearly all civilizations.

The material for the “column” in the evn collection, which Sakshi Gupta got from the waste material deposit, subverts the impression of weightlessness. But the artist goes beyond the materiality of the iron wire. What we are confronted with are spiral elements as they are used for standard commercial desk calendars. By “transforming” them to a sculpture, the artist combines the technical level of recycling with the level of spiritual renewal. With the expired calendars as a symbol of transiency, the sculpture presents itself as an attempt to recapture the formerly booked up time. Yet, Gupta’s wire clouds not only loom as a manifestation of time and the fleeting nature of things, but also visualize the idea of a connection between then and now, between heaven and earth.

Heike Maier-Rieper, 2011 (translation: Wolfgang Astelbauer)

1)  Cf. Rebecca Morrill, “Sakshi Gupta,” in: Indian Highway, exhibition catalogue (exhibition curated by Julia Peyton Jones, Julia Gunnar, Hans Ulrich Obrist), Serpentine Gallery, London – Astrup Fearnly Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne 2008, 162.