As Walker Art Center chief curator Phillipe Vergne's pick for the Lyon Biennial - where Hans Ulrich Obrist and Stephanie Moisdon invited fellow curators, or "players" to select "an essential artist of the decade"- Ranjani Shettar exhibited Just a Bit more (2006), a network of blue beeswax nodes connected by tea-dyed string. The delicate installation reflects Shettar's interest in employing traditional, crafts to create decisively contemporary forms, which, in this work, evoke molecular structures, the brain's neural pathways, or even the internet. Earlier in the year, the Bangalore-based artist exhibited, "Me, no, not me, buy me, eat me, wear me, have me, no, not me" (2007) at the 8th Sharjah Biennial and again at Talwar Gallery, New Delhi. Made from flattened cars that have been shredded into thin strips and woven into enormous traditional baskets, Me, no, not me...is a paean to innovative recycling, and also to what the artist sees as her country's impressive resourcefulness. Slated for a solo exhibition at Boston's Institute for Contemporary Art, Shettar has the self-possession to go at her own pace in the current go-go art world climate.
-Art Asia Pacific