Between Presence and Absence by Dhananjay Singh at Travancore Palace

Date : 12th to 15th October
Timings: 11AM to 6PM
Location: Travancore Palace – Art Gallery, New Delhi 

Contemporary sculptor Dhananjay Singh, known for his distinctive sculptures crafted from intricately intertwined bronze and copper wire, presents ‘Between Presence and Absence’, a selection of works spanning his practice, at Travancore Palace, New Delhi. A recipient of honours including the INLAKS Fine Art Award and the National Lalit Kala Akademi Award, Dhananjay Singh brings together works that explore the fluid boundaries between the human and the natural, presence and absence, growth and decay. There is a persistent tension that runs through Dhananjay Singh’s sculptural practice: a state of being suspended between dichotomies. His works inhabit the space between life and death, human and nature, presence and absence, solidity and transparency, growth and decay. Yet these are not oppositions presented as conflicts, but rather they are revealed as conditions that depend upon one another, existing in an endless symbiotic cycle of transformation. Within Dhananjay’s sculptures, one encounters a world where boundaries dissolve, where a tree becomes a body, a face becomes a landscape, and metal assumes the qualities of something organic and alive. Presented by  gallerist Sanya Malik, Raj Manohar Thota (son of Thota Vaikuntam) and Abhivardhan Berry of Sculpted India, in association with Sanya Malik’s Black Cube Gallery , ‘Between Presence and Absence’, is an ode to his practice, a gathering of years of work brought together under one roof. It draws sculptures made across time into a single conversation, from early experiments to recent forms, and in doing so reveals how steadily he has returned to the same questions. Seen together, these works trace the quiet rhythms of growth and change that run through Singh’s practice. Presence and absence, weight and lightness, the human and the natural sit side by side, held in balance rather than resolved. The exhibition invites viewers to move slowly through this world of metal and wire, and to meet, in each form, a moment of transformation caught and held in place.

About Dhananjay Singh

Dhananjay Singh (b. 1977, Hajipur, Bihar) is a contemporary sculptor who has developed a material language entirely his own. He holds a B.F.A. in Sculpture from Banaras Hindu University and an M.F.A. from M.S. University, Baroda. In 2006, he was selected by the Commonwealth Foundation for a residency at the Faculty of Art and Design at Monash University, Melbourne, where an encounter with the skillful use of bronze set him on the path to his signature practice, building figures from intricately intertwined bronze and copper wire. The same intricacy is carried into his drawings and watercolours.

His work has been widely recognised, with honours including the Commonwealth Arts and Crafts Award, London (2005); the INLAKS Fine Art Award, New Delhi (2005); the National Lalit Kala Akademi Award, New Delhi (2002); and a Gold Medal from Banaras Hindu University (2000). He has shown in group exhibitions and art fairs across India and abroad, like the Gulf Art Fair, Dubai (2007); ‘Bronze’ at Gallery Espace, New Delhi (2006); and the ‘Harmony Show’ at the Nehru Centre, Mumbai (2004–2006). Dhananjay Singh lives and works in Ahmedabad.