PURUSH PRAKRITI
When you look at Vipul’s pieces, there is a subtle focus on literary and social realities and historical appropriation. Nature Signature is a drooping mass of tactile matte-glazed drips spilling over the sides of the simple bar like terracotta-toned bases — “This work was born out of my experiments with global warming done in porcelain,” explains Vipul. “My work is essentially about deconstructing traditional ceramic practices, so I create really rough, unconventional forms because I am looking at contemporary reality. If nature itself is disappearing, what is left of man? After all, Purush-prakriti is the law of life. ”
Equally enticing is Vipul’s installation at the Ahmedabad Private Estate entitled Mount Meru. Vipul brings to it an aesthetic rigour that is both rare and deeply meditative. This work at the Ahmedabad Private Estate is akin to recalling an archaeology of memory. When lit up, the tall columns with mystic signatures not only sensitively highlight the opacity and translucency but also the delicacy of the materials, to create a satisfying balance between shape, proportion and space. “I worked on cosmic commentaries in Jain scriptures and symbolism,” states Vipul. is not. You cannot work with stoneware and porcelain without knowing the challenges of clay. My work is a commentary of human activity on earth, so when I create abstract forms I focus on the earthy, taking form out of formless mud and going back to it, having gone through fire, water and shaping it into forms that don’t belong to contemporary reality.”
At another level, Vipul is also looking at abstraction as a language to overturn the object as a utilitarian irrelevance, for only then can new technical potential be born. Vipul is deeply interested in the minerals that go into the glazes, and in the possibilities of the forms of solid geometry as well as amorphous shapes in stoneware and porcelain. At Espace, his works stand as a class apart as he stands as a witness to the testimony that the story of sculptural ceramics high-fired porcelain glazes. During the fire, as the wood combusts, it produces fly ash and some volatile salts and minerals, which ultimately fuse with the silica on the surface of the ceramic pieces in the kiln, forming a glaze. The placement of each piece in the kiln determines the effects of the fire on the appearance of the sculptural stoneware or porcelain.”
Again, what emerges is Vipul’s arduous labour, eye for perfection and his technical understanding as he devises slips saturated with fluxes such as zinc oxide and a range of softly-toned glazes that were perfectly in tune with the forms. Rough-hewn and born of earthly insights, Vipul Kumar stands apart as a contemporary ceramicist who is able to seamlessly merge modern elements of firing, techniques, glazes and materials with present-day practices and