A discarded bed frame, clock dial, bicycle chain, pages of old books, and other sundry, everyday objects find new contexts in The (Pro)found Object, an ongoing exhibition by four contemporary Indian artists at Delhi’s Vadehra Art Gallery. Through these objets trouvés—or discarded objects that have been found—Biraaj Dodiya, Shailesh B.R., Youdhisthir Maharjan and Moonis Ahmad Shah question the notions of form and function, memory, history, truth and storytelling. “The ability to convert a found object into a work of art, all the while being sensitive to its utility and beauty is in itself a challenge, which the artists have managed to overcome and express in their unique visual language,” says gallerist Roshini Vadehra.
“For this group of works, I was thinking about tactility; about what everyday objects transform into with time, age and touch,” says Dodiya, whose sculptures are made from a discarded bed frame and headboard, a bicycle tube and epoxy glue. Titled Soft Helmet and Fog and Bone, they examine the uncertainty and anxiety that the pandemic has bred. Over the last year-and-a-half, our minds have constantly made distinctions between the comforting and the dangerous; these works emerge from processes of degradation and preservation. Objects of domestic utility lose their function and take on fragile and threatening forms,” she adds.
