The Crowd and Its Avatars

Emami Art, one of India’s leading contemporary art galleries based in Kolkata, presents The Crowd and Its Avatars, a major exhibition of sculptures by celebrated Indian sculptor K.S. Radhakrishnan. Including approximately seventy-five artworks – many never before seen – the show opens on January 9, 2023, and is on view through February 12, 2023.

Radhakrishnan returns to Kolkata after fifteen years with his most recent sculptures. Curated by R. Siva Kumar, the exhibition comprises the installation of fifty life-size bronze figures titled The Crowd and many free-standing bronze sculptures, including his famous The Ramp, which have deep personal meaning for the artist.

Radhakrishnan was born in the Kottayam district, Kerala, in 1956. He studied sculpture at Kala Bhavana, Santiniketan, under the guidance of Ramkinkar Baij and Sarbari Roy Choudhury, two legendary sculptors of modern Indian art. Radhakrishnan’s sculpture shows his unique vision and stylistic individuality. Being a master modeller, he prefers to work with hand in clay, capturing the essential rhythm of the human forms.

The human figure is central to Radhakrishnan’s sculptural imagination. Since 1996, there has been recurrent use of two male and female characters, Musui and Maiya, in his sculptures. The Crowd, with an equal number of male and female figures, repeats the faces of these two characters. Walking between the figures is an experience of meeting endless Musui and Maiya, which constitute the multitude, connecting the individual to the social, real to the imaginary. However, Musui and Maiya are not just two characters but two lenses through which the artist looks at the everyday, collective human world.

A rhythmic vitality lies at the heart of Radhakrishnan’s sculptural imagination. According to the curator, R. Siva Kumar, there are three broad categories in which we can divide his recent sculptures. First, the singular figures show the freedom of acrobatic movement of the body; second, the sculpture where singular and collective bodies meet; and the third is the interconnected web of small size human figures creating subtle rhythm. The exhibition showcases all three categories mentioned above.