Since 2000, a French artist, Alain TENENBAUM has opened "LES
LAPIDIALES" (in Latin, "lapidis" means "stone") to artists. This place
is opened all year long but it is better to come between May and
September: the residence program begins and during 5 months and you
can meet artists from France and all over the world (Turkey, Russia,
Zimbabwe, India) who come and work during some periods of two months.
They work "in situ" according to one of the five themes of the site:
water, the surface of the earth, the depths of the earth, the air, the
fire.They work all day long, like quarrymen did before, but they have
another aim: the transformation of stone into contemporary works of
art.
It was in 2006 that Gadadhar OJHA, the only young Indian sculptor
living in France, has heard the first time about the LAPIDIALES as he
had participated to the 1st International Symposium of PEZENAS (in the
South of France). 13 artists working on the unique theme "Message of
the Body", but amongst these artists at least 4 of them knew already
the LAPIDIALES. And it was enough for Gadadhar OJHA to have the will,
the desire to go and see how it was: working in an old quarry, what a
strange and wonderful project!
In September 2006, like every year, during 3 days, this was the
"closing session" of the Lapidiales, so we came and met everybody:
organizer, artists, and ... the site! And this is how it comes ...
Your work is your visiting card, you are invited by one artist who had
worked before (one artist can give two names of new artists), then you
learn some weeks later that you will work at the LAPIDIALES, says
Gadadhar OJHA.
Gadadhar OJHA has worked in 2007, during May and June, on the part
called "in the depths of the Earth" ... Two months in the part of the
quarry where there is less light, where there is more humidity, where
it is more cold, where people who come could not see you, because
there are so many caves, so many ups and downs, that visitors forget
to go to see where artists work what could be the dark side of the
existence.
But in the depths of the earth, you don't know how life could be also
interesting: first, when you enter on right side, you are invited by
some gnomes surrounded with strange friends with strange smiles who
invite you to one library where you find old books, and crane, and
candles, and another crane, and an old pair of shoes (maybe from the
artist of or the ones of the skeleton, lying there, waiting ... ?).
More far still in the right side of you, you can already seen
(mistake, n to delete) also one big mouth with one woman emerging,
from the throat, one big chain, you could be scared, but it is
impossible because in the middle you see something else that show you
the poetic part of existence.
Upon on huge black wall, suddenly you see one beautiful and peaceful
human being, man? Women ? who knows ?, emerging from one lotus flower,
showing to our eyes his/her half-nude body, the other part made by
flesh, guts, intestine, heart, lung, brain ... And in the center, one
flower.
But there, it is impossible to be afraid, because, you know that from
flower comes life, that this wonderful human being born in a flower
gives birth, at his/her turn to another existence that from the depths
of earth came to existence.
Suddenly, in the dark, you could see light, because slowly your eyes
get used to this place, you can see also the structure: this personage
is filled by horizontal lines. Those lines that follow you since you
open yourself to life: the horizontal line that guides you to the sun
when you wake up in the morning sunset SUNRISE, the horizontal line
when you begin to write, the horizontal lines when you begin to learn.
Lines that give also movement: is not a drawing a complex of lines
jointed together? There, the lines give movement to this body, and
even in the dark, light is caught by these lines. Come and see this
strange vision with candles around him/her ... Shadows will make the
body dance, will make the flower rustle ... and maybe, you will be
able to see life in the depth of the earth? Those lines begin from the
stone to go back through the stone. But where are they going? Gadadhar
OJHA has all the answer at his work. And when I asked him Don't you
ever get tired? He said, "I never do anything that is not in my
nature. You don't ask the wind whether it gets tired of blowing or the
sun whether it is tired of shining. This is because they don't do
anything that is not in their nature. And the thing here is that there
is not pretension. There is no covering up of a mistake. There is no
point in trying to appear as someone you are not. These are the
principles that make my Art very strong."
And when we lead through such examples, through our own lives, it
becomes really effective in other's lives also. People are moved by
people, not just by principles. It's a ripple effect. Gadadhar OJHA
lives and works in Paris.
Contemporary Sculpture Review: Ashok Art Gallery
http://ashokartgallery.blogspot.com/