Ranjani Shettar explores the uneasy intersection of industry and the environment in installations that evoke technology’s encroachment on tradition. Transforming ordinary materials (wax, cotton, mud, PVC pipes, plastic sheeting) into ethereal sculptures that mimic natural structures such as beehives and spider webs, Shettar fuses the mundane with the metaphysical. Whether examining the nature of inhabited space or the confrontation between facts and ideology, Shettar’s intricate works collapse distinctions between art and craft, yet draw liberally from the histories of both.
Shettar’s three-dimensional, sculptural drawings fluidly string together particles of divergent material to reveal their biological inspiration. Creating breadth from masses of small parts, the elegant installations move beyond the scientific to suggest contemporary social, and even geo-political, relations.
Born in Bangalore, India in 1977, Ranjani Shettar received her MFA in 2000 from Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, also in Bangalore, where she currently lives and works. Solo exhibitions include Talwar Gallery, New York, NY (2004); Gallery Sumukha, India (2003); and Chitra Art Gallery, Bangalore, India (2000). Group exhibitions include J’en rêve, Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris, France (2005); Landscape Confection, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH (2005); and How Latitudes Become Forms: Art in a Global Age, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (2003).