Ranjani Shettar's highly intricate sculptural installations are being featured with increasing frequency globally. In 2009, her new works shown at the San Fransisco Museum of Modern Art were listed among the 20 best art exhibits in the US by art web portal Artnet.com. Her works use a wide and diverse range of material from stainless steel and silicon rubber as well as local and indigenous material like muslin cloth, hand molded beeswax and turmeric. Shettar's tendency to use everyday objects and yet create tangibly beautiful and labour-intensive objects have earned her flattering comparisons to internationally acclaimed artists like Anish Kapoor and Tom Friedman.
KEEP DISTANCE
She lives with artist husband Srinivas Prasad in the countryside in a town called Sagar in Shimoga district in Karnataka, away from both the art dealer as well as the often over-eager art buyer. "It was not an arbitrary decision. I am familiar with small Karnataka towns; it's where I spent my early years. I have a studio in Bangalore and travel whenever I feel the need for the stimulus that only a city can provide," she adds.
TAKE IT EASY
Shettar works at a quiet and hurried pace from the conceptualization to the execution phase. She produced not more than four or five works every year.
THE SHOW IS ON
Her work is currently in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. This year, her works were shown at rhe Art Tower Mito in Japan. In 2010, her works were featured in New York's Museum of Modern Art.
-Nirmala Rvindran