Mayur Gupta’s ‘What Form Retains’: Between Material, Memory, and Meaning

What exactly is form, and what does it mean for form to retain or persist? Can we reflect on form without referencing a specific form, within the boundaries of form, or beyond them? In considering the question of what form is, how should viewers interpret the artworks in ‘What Form Retains’ by Baroda-based sculptor Mayur Gupta at Latitude 28, which explore and question the nature of form, while simultaneously developing and sustaining it?

The content shared by the gallery states, ‘Mayur Gupta’s practice unfolds as a sustained inquiry into persistence, repetition and the memory of form. Working across bronze, marble, wood and composite materials, Gupta approaches sculpture as an evolving dialogue between the hand and matter, where form does not arrive fully formed, but emerges through return.’ Although Gupta’s art practice evolves around form, in the end, one must understand what it leads to, as Machiavelli said, ‘The end justifies the means.’

The artworks in this exhibition are precise forms. Not a single formless work is displayed there. However, in the argument, the artist’s views on forms, and perhaps everyone’s doubts about forms, are included. Otherwise, forms are brought into question of existence, leading them to the void of forms.  The statement ‘Beginning without a fixed image, form emerges through handling, recognition arriving slowly in the act of shaping’ can be accepted as an argument. If the beginning is like that, it can also be argued that the end is also like that, which is what Machiavelli seems to envisage.

It must be said that the artworks in this exhibition can be seen as contradictions to the artist’s reflection, ‘While sculpting, I am not aware of what I am doing. Images come floating in my mind.’ One cannot say that this exhibition consists of works that start with an image and end with a sculpture (form). However, as in Kant’s statement, ‘the hand is the visible part of the brain,’ one must recognise that formless explorations also eventually ripen to form.

Considering Kant’s argument, it is the brain that shapes the form through the hands, whether form or formless, and transforms it into arguments that can be seen and touched (don’t touch the artwork!). However, the twist occurs in the argument. While the sculpture shaped through the hands is the brain’s argument, the artist transforms it once again into another argument. This is how artists did it, claiming that it is an action flowing between the brain and the hands, and that artworks are formed unconsciously. The congruities and incongruities between art and the arguments that accompany it can thus be seen as artworks of the ‘post-truth’ era.

‘What Form Retains reflects on recurrence as a method of deepening’ is certainly true. Mayur Gupta’s artistic worlds, formed from materials such as bronze, marble, wood, and composite materials, have created another world of forms. The artist is always the creator of a world created over forms and materials. Each form is created from the materials, engaging, yet twisting in an indelible way, with and relating to them. The twist here is not an argument of the artworks themselves; rather, it is an argument instructed by the artist in relation to them.

There is honesty in saying that I worked on the forms, but in the end, I got lost in them. At the very least, it is grand that, like Kafka said, ‘what I really intended to say in the end remains unsaid,’ can be expressed philosophically. The spheres of meaning of that grandeur must be created. Everything I came to say sank halfway. Whatever is said is not quite what I came to say. On many levels, the art worlds presented by Mayur Gupta are worlds of extremely finished, bold forms. This exhibition encompasses the differences between what is intended to be said and what is said, between turning that into an argument, and the worlds of contradictions and the manifestations it creates.

It is necessary to highlight here what Sumedha Gosain mentions in the exhibition text. ‘Why do familiar volumes reappear? Because the hand remembers their balance, its resistance, and its weight’, says Gosain. Kant is correct. Hands remember many things. Even after years, shapes that have been seen and touched will return, sometimes in form, sometimes formless. It will take its place in the exhibition centres. In its flow, all other arguments will disappear. Those forms themselves are arguments. Gosain’s argument, ‘The work begins close to matter. Recognition comes later. Form is not imposed so much as found surfacing slowly through encounter,’ is relevant here.

Gosain discusses the profound connection between the artist and the craft. As a child, an emotional bond was formed through seeing and experiencing the world of craft created by the mother. From then on, the world of craft documented through use and adornment via small acts of assembly and adjustment, as Gosain states, may be one of contradictions. That connection is simultaneously emotional. If forms are approached emotionally, how would they respond in return? Do forms have the capacity to respond to emotional expressions? In art, emotions and memories hold an inseparable place in its formation.

Bhavna Kakar’s statement, ‘Mayur’s sculptures carry that rare quality of silent authority,’ is also noteworthy, especially the use of ‘silent authority.’ Here, silence is something powerful. Authority comes across silently. It should be noted that it does not need any embellishments or accompaniments. Silenced ‘authority’ can be more dangerous than a loud one.

The question of whether artworks are a silent authority that renders the viewer speechless is possible here. As Bhavna Kakar herself says in this exhibition, ‘geometry is not an aesthetic device but a way of thinking, a disciplined language through which balance, proportion, and equilibrium are explored.’ Silence is a desirable necessity. The viewer’s silence is required to ensure the sculpture’s authenticity.