Bengaluru | My encounter with sculptor Dimpy Menon’s dream whisperers

Experience the frenzied pace of Bengaluru's Lavelle Road contrasted with the calm and dynamic sculptures of Dimpy Menon.

There is something frantic about twilight anywhere in the world. Everything is in a state of flux. The sun. The moon. The tide and skies. Light and shadows. Roads and streetlights. Movement reigns.

As always Lavelle Road in Bengaluru is busy. Impatient drivers tapping on horns, the whoosh of bikes and autorickshaws streaming on the narrow road hemmed in by lit-up shop windows and restaurants cause little explosions in my head. The burgeoning city burgeons even more on a Saturday evening. But within the empty white walls of Gallery Time & Space, there is respite. The empty white walls and the sculptures within stretch a palm towards the frenzied pace of the street below as if to say: leave us, thus.

The show is being mounted as I enter. Sculptor Dimpy Menon and her team move around assessing the space and its possibilities. The sculptures are still waiting to be assigned their designated space. But it doesn’t seem to chip away at the stillness. Amidst the hammers, pliers, strings and boxes, the dream whisperers have found their own isle of being. It is exactly this I had hoped to witness when I asked to preview the show before the actual opening.

I have been familiar with Menon’s body of work for over two decades now and have witnessed the rising arc of her artistic trajectory.

I think of Menon’s earlier sketches, paintings and bronzes and the sense of waiting they expressed. Each line captured the innate longing that comes with waiting. In the years thereafter, her bronzes became bigger and their energy that much more powerful. Even the aerial sculptures caught in mid-motion exuded a raw tensile strength. The sculptor and her creations had moved into a realm where ‘doing’ was supreme.

But this evening, I see a new dimension that has entered Menon’s artistic journey. So much of her art is drawn from nature and the body in motion. But now her work had progressed to being embodiments of calm. That doesn’t mean they are static. In fact, movement is still the leitmotif of her work. But this is a dynamic ease. I feel a flaring of the spirit as I spend time with each new piece. Some of the motifs are familiar and some are new. This is exactly how it ought to be in any artistic journey — the art and the artist share a path together.

Amidst the tall lotuses [or lotii as I prefer to call them] and unfurling ribbons and the birds always about to soar into the skies, the human forms speak a new story. They are no longer who they once used to be.