When stones speak

Early on Wednesday afternoon, Kalagram wears a languid look. Unmindful of all those who come and go, four sculptors are busy doing what they enjoy best. A chisel here, a brush there, they are painstakingly fine-tuning their masterpieces. It’s the last leg of their 20-day workshop, organised by North Zone Cultural Centre, Ministry of Culture, Government of India.

Four prominent artists from the tricity — Parminder Singh, Gurpreet Singh Dhuri, Mandeep Singh Mann and Tarwinder Singh Tarri — have turned massive blocks of marble and granite into musical instruments, digital pieces and abstract forms. Calling one of Asia’s largest open sculpture park Kalagram home, which has over 200 works on display, these artists add to its collection.

We catch Parminder Singh first. A teacher and a passionate sculptor, he is much in love with acclaimed artist Balbir Singh Katt’s flow of form. His current work — a huge folk sarangi — rests on an eight-feet pedestal. Complete with 11 keys, a bow and strings, he has carved it out of granite with precision, adorning it with musical notes written in Gurmukhi. This being his third outing at the Camp, he says, “I love to express energy in my works.” While his earlier two sculptures reflect brain energy, even the sarangi this time around showcases a similar fervour, “I have tried to show energy in the form of musical rhythm.” In love with ancient temple art, he gets back to painstakingly decorate his sarangi.

A few feet ahead, we find Gurpreet Singh Dhuri perfecting his granite ghunghroos. “I love the sound of ghunghroos,” he opens up, cleaning his hands with a duster to sit and talk with us. “I am going to put these giant ghunghroos in white marble so that it looks as if they are wrapped in a cloth,” he shares. As much as he loves sculpting, he also enjoys working for films. A prosthetic artist, he shows his works that were done for big-budget films like Gangs of Wasseypur and Tumbbad. Though here he works with stones, silicon is one of his favoured material. “Easily mouldable, it works as excellent material for intricate sculptures.” Dhuri has made couple of prominent people in life-like statues, including that of Nek Chand, which sits at the Rock Garden.

For our third artist, it’s not music but increasing digital influence that gets frames in stone. Mandeep Singh Mann has turned black granite and white marble into an ode to fast-changing pace of relationships. Pixels sculpted out of stone with deft hands, his work depicts how our thinking has been blurred by the growing impact of digitisation, corroding the institution of relationship. “The face-to-face human interaction has been overpowered by behind the gadgets communication. This is what I am showing in my work here.” A huge fan of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he states, “Such was Michelangelo’s art that turned a rejected stone into David. Vinci’s The Last Supper is also a masterpiece.”

Tarwinder Singh Tarri, has chosen to go abstract. His edifice depicts the journey of the flighty human soul. “My sculpture reflects the recurring leitmotif through the thin lines depicting the intense feelings of an individual, differentiating between the mundane and the mosaic,” he shares, standing proudly next to his work — Echoes of Departed Soul. Done in greyish black colour stone, the artist carves the very spirit of human soul. He has also created the Swara Mandal, a unique musical instrument to meet the theme paradigms.