Just out of the National Institute of Design, Sachin George Sebastian came across a pop-up book at a second-hand bookstore sometime in 2006. Inspired by the geometry of images, he “devoured it” and went on to discover a new pop-up artistic vocabulary. “It changed the course of my career,” admits the artist, who in his own words is “a storyteller practising visual arts”. Sebastian, engineer, architect and sculptor, says this chance encounter eventually led him to where he is today as an artist.
This time on show is ‘Once, There was a Seed’, an exhibition of new drawings and cut-out sculptures cast in metal and paper. The genesis of the idea goes back to 2017. The works are hand-cut on stained archival paper as well as digital prints on metallic paper. “I used the form and visuals from my previous body of work as tools of further exploration. The very act of cutting a piece of paper with a pair of scissors defines the transitory and the ephemeral,” says Sebastian. Flowers of rebellious steel whose spangled wires show the chaos of non-conformity—the signature of the artistic soul the world over.
Another riotous bloom cut and drawn on stained archival paper. Pylons leaning into the wind like gigantic grassblades. As he continued to explore the pop-up technique, working with an amalgamation of paper engineering and the Japanese paper art of Kirigami, Sebastian felt paper and the book format too small as storytelling platforms. Inspired by pop-up book wizards, Robert Sabuda and Matthew Reinheart, he treated other materials and stories as if they were paper itself. Today his installations both paper and metal are instantly recognisable, with their intricately geometric and monumentally complex patterns.
‘Once, There was a Seed’, however, holds no definitive reference to time, nor does it explain the nature of the seed or what it will grow into. It gives no hint to how long it will take to grow into a tree, where it came from, or what will happen to it. “What matters is that the seed is there, and so are its stories,” says the Bengaluru-based artist. Sebastian’s ongoing exhibition is markedly different from his earlier presentations, though visually, they carry much similarity. However, the scale, material and representations have changed. Along with his trademark artwork merging hand-cut paper and drawing on stained archival paper, there are the stainless steel installations.
Sebastian admits, “It’s the thought process that created them that has changed.” His leitmotif has always been urban. While his earlier works tried to represent what he terms “the beautiful carnivorous flower the city is, which devours its prey, how it changes its subjects, and how the subjects change the city itself”, the recent works question the very meaning of the subjects. A dangerous rebel of metal, he seeks to disrupt the order of the world. The city, this time a digital print on metallic paper, is a magnificent chaos of rods and wires, ropes and lights, and curving lines that convey order in a mystifyingly insane way.
Abandoning the frenzy and chaos that marked his earlier compositions, his new work attempts to seek a balance between storytelling and seeking. Born in small-town Kerala, its the chaos of Indian cities that attracts him. Collapse, regeneration, and realities of Indian urbanism is part of his artistic oeuvre, wherein he finds “a certain irresistible beauty in this lack of order”.
The allure of the city, with its fake promises of a chaos-free life and the fragility of civilisations as the deceptive metropolis find expression in his creations. Talking about the core ideas that shape his artistic discourse, Sebastian admits, “Questioning my very existence and trying to discover a meaning from it is what I do with art—a search to represent the absurdity in it all.” The show on view at the Vadehra Art Gallery, Delhi, is simultaneously available virtually with a new immersive 3D digital technology experience offering multi-dimensional mapping.
“I used the form and visuals from my previous body of work as tools to explore further. My act of cutting with a pair of scissors defines the ephemeral.” Sachin George Sebastian
When & Where
Once, There was a Seed; Vadehra Art Gallery, Delhi; Till May 18