A SOCIALISATION OF ART Interview with Indranil Garai of IGA
Art in the public allows for a changed dynamics in the
artist/viewer connection. It is a challenge for the artist to
envision something that blends into the available elements,
and allows the viewer to have an all encompassing experience,
creating pockets of beauty and fantasy, an extension of reality.
LV: What would you say to those who often comment that
‘commissioning kills creativity’?
IG: Like all other mediums artists use, I consider Public art
to be medium we are working with. Each medium has its own
possibilities and limitations, and the work becomes relevant
when the artist understands the medium fully and employs
its expressive qualities. I believe in the medium and disagree
when the word ‘compromise’ is used where commissioning
is concerned. There is a large amount of precision, scaling
and calculation, but that does not curb the creativity in
any way, rather it is a system, just like any other technique
(like say printmaking) where one has to be resourceful and
experiment while mastering the processes. I have spoken
about the responsibilities of an artist working with public
sculpture (above), with such responsibilities to the ambience
and a community, one’s own ambitions towards the project
must of course be moderated.