This art is truly moving

Susanta Mandal can make still objects come alive through tricks of light, soap bubbles and clever engineering.

- SHAILESH BR

It’s all a way to celebrate uncertaintyI am fascinated with the interplay of something fixed becoming something in motion. In the hands of a clever artist, this can happen without anything actually moving. Delhi-based Susanta Mandal, 61, is that kind of artist.

His kinetic sculptures aren't exactly windup dolls or automata. Consider his Magic Lantern series, in which innocuous objects such as technical drawings and portraits are overlaid with moving wires so as to cast changing shadows on the image. In another series, presented under the titles Caged Sacks and It Doesn't Bite, viewers are presented with what seems to be a sack of jute. But wait, why is it twitching? Is someone trapped inside? Mandal achieves the effect with a simple mechanical contraption hidden inside — it's eerie nonetheless.

Mandal has bewitched steel rods and plates by moulding them into tubes, tunnels and tiny vessels, and filling them up with soap bubbles. As the foam builds and disintegrates, it catches the light, its frothy effervescence a reminder that it’s impossible to hold on to something forever.