Intriguing industrial landscapes by Vipul Prajapati

Mumbai—based Gallery Le Sutra hosts an interesting show of industrial landscapes by Vipul Prajapati. An accompanying note by curator Shraddha Purnaye elaborates how landscape is not just a natural space, a feature of the natural environment, very landscape is the place where we establish our own human organization of space and time.

It adds: “Landscapes are complex phenomena. In addition to the assemblage of physical features on which geographers and others focused until the last thirty years or so, it is now widely accepted that landscapes reflect human activity and are imbued with cultural values.

“Landscapes combine elements of space and time, and represent political as well as social and cultural constructs. As they have evolved over time, and as human activity has changed, they have acquired many layers of meaning that can be analyzed through historical, archaeological, geographical and sociological aspects. They can be compared to a language, with ' obscure and indecipherable origins. Like a language, it is the slow creation of all elements in society. It grows according to its own laws, rejecting or accepting neologisms as it sees fit, clinging to obsolescent forms, inventing new ones’. It is the subject of perpetual conflict and compromise ' between what established by authority and what the vernacular insists on preferring.”

Vipul Prajapati’ imagery has roots in the rustic contemporary world. His works are dominated by the themes of work sites, dockyards and industrial laborers. His works give us a glimpse in to what happens behind the urban metropolis of today. They evoke and anxiety of some urban waste that we see around us. The deep and genuine concern of the young artist for Industrial waste and gloom is very timely and time –specific at the time of real estate boom and an industrial growth and transport infrastructures like fly-over, foot over bridge, tunnels, metros etc.

But more than his anxieties about industrial waste catastrophe, he has focused on the recurrent theme of the figure of the industrial worker at his site with his environs, Machines and tools. He has artistically and creatively used digital prints of the photographs of the workers at ship yards in different activities amidst their environs. He finishes his works in oil paints.