source: scoopweb

anjani Shettar is an artist born in 1977 in Bangalore, India where she presently lives and works. In 1998, she received her Bachelors in Sculpture and in 2000, Masters in Sculpture from Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath, Bangalore. Shettar creates sculptural installations that combine elements of nature and industry using a range of materials that include, beeswax, sawdust, wood, latex, PVC tubing, silicone rubber, and metal. Ranjani Shettar’s work is in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and has been the focus of several solo exhibitions including The Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston, MA (2008), The Modern Art Museum, Fort Worth, TX (2008–2009). Shettar’s group exhibitions include, Freeing the Line, Marian Goodman Gallery (2006), Zones of Contact, XV Sydney Biennale, Australia (2006), 9th Lyon Biennial, France (2007), and Life on Mars: 55th Carnegie International, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh, PA (2008).
Ranjani Shettar is best known for her large scale sculptural installations. She uses modern and traditional crafts to sculpt natural and industrial materials to create multidimensional works that bring forth the metaphysical characteristics of existing within a constantly changing physical environment. In 2009, Shettar created a group of smaller sculptural works. Bird Song is created from muslin and steel with curving, lyrical lines suggesting feathers and flight. The Bird Song sculptures hang like floating musical notes of a melody and resonate with a transient beauty found in nature. In another work, muslin cloths textured like weather worn skin are stretched into five organic forms, each seemingly compliant to a pull that makes known its delicateness with a gentle opening. Waiting for June is composed of small bake terracotta shells that reveal tender cracks that are suggestive of parched earth, poignant yet beautiful.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
source: thenationalae

Shettar’s star has been steadily on the rise. Beginning her international career in 2003 with just two sculptures at the Talwar Art Gallery in New York, she has progressed to group and solo shows at several venues, including the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, the Liverpool Biennial, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, the Hermès Foundation in Singapore and MoMA in both New York and San Francisco.

In 2007, Shettar also created a special sculpture Me, no, not me, buy me, eat me, wear me, have me, me, no, not me for the eighth Sharjah Biennial. Shettar handpicked the low-rise Heritage area, which recreates traditional Arab architecture, as the site for her modern work. Woven out of scrap steel from old cars and a marked departure from her usual airborne creations, the sculpture is a comment on consumerism. It is now in the permanent collection of MoMA in San Francisco.

All this international acclaim has not made her any more keen for attention. It takes several calls and emails through her New York-based gallery before pinning her down for a meeting. When we finally meet in her part-time studio in Bangalore, filled with half-finished sculptures that look like props for a sci-fi movie, the slight and unassuming Shettar sheepishly explains that she often has no email or mobile phone reception back home in Sagar. And she doesn’t miss them. “Living in a small town is the closest I can come to getting away from it all.”

Much of Shettar’s work is inspired by her small-town surroundings. Her ethereal, fragile constructions reference light, water, dewdrops, birds and sunshine with titles such as Sun Sneezers Blow Light Bubbles and Vasanta (Hindi for spring).