Man and Machine

Having returned from his solo Realms in London’s Arndean Gallery, Khambatta is embarking on his next solo at the Jehangir Art Gallery which premiers this December. “This time, I haven’t done too many humorous pieces but have concentrated on my fascination with man and his relationship with the machine. I also explore the orb—a shape that has always fascinated me,” says Khambatta whose studio has been an open spaces for the likes of Purab Kohli, who learned welding and Homi Adajania who still drops by to chisel away at wood. This time, he’s also being followed around his studio with a young director, camera in hand. Making a 20-minute documentary on Khambatta, Shankar Menon is sending his film to the Florence India Cultural Festival. “I like Arzan’s work because it breaks all notions that one holds in one’s mind about sculpture being traditional. His works are contemporary and abstract in many ways,” says Menon whose self-funded film travels to Florence this month.

Khambatta has chosen to revisit his love for scrap metal. In some of the works he has combined spare parts with the sculpted forms of mankind and his favorite animal, the horse. Nuts and bolts, serve as miniature high-rise buildings on the surface of an orb-shaped city and an old electric metre becomes the door through which the hand of God reaches out to humanity. A hybrid insect assembled in the shape of a motorbike perhaps indicates his inherent boyish side. His love for puns and playfulness surfaces through works like Tired that show a bunch of automobile tyres lying about, exhausted from the friction of life’s challenges. “Sometimes one feels a bit like that, but I don’t mean to complain, which is why it’s better said in a playful way,” he smiles.