Improbable Physics

Dimpy Menon’s smooth, muscled sculptures seem to defy the laws of physics, but that is precisely why they are so disarming.

I must have looked strange to staff at the Art Positive gallery in Lado Sarai this past week when I went in to check out Dimpy Menon’s contribution to their Form and Formless show. I stepped in feeling—and hopefully looking—all decorous, in my sturdy black shoes, hair tied back. Within minutes, however, I was on the floor—pointing my toes, arching my back—trying to contort my spindly limbs to mirror those of Menon’s statues.

Though I consider myself quirky, this was my first time playing ninja within gallery walls. Part of it was probably my eagerness to put my newfound love of yoga into practice; the other, however, was the undeniable, eerily relatable humanity of the figures. Eyeless, hairless beings, their smooth visages have little expression. And yet, their muscled bodies, perched atop granite cylinders or spheres or bursting forth from a bronze frame, are charged with energy, both in striking the pose they do and in compensating for what a face without eyes cannot provide. Their dynamism, however, stems from the force of a body language uninhibited by facial cues.

Breakthrough-1 is a compelling example of the expressive flexibility of Menon’s sculpted body language. A female figure stretches forward through a circular porthole in a bronze square. Her arms are thrust to her sides—right arm in front of the frame, the left one lingering behind—as she stretches a balletic left foot forward. Her right shin, resting on the sculpture’s frame, supports her entire weight.

A view of the piece from the front shows a powerful woman breaking through her surroundings, as the sculpture’s title would suggest. Her strong jaw and slightly cocked head show no hesitation, and we are confident that wherever she is going, she is going with no apologies. Inversely, the same tilt of her chin viewed from the back indicates a more understated examination of her surroundings, a careful survey of the setting as she deliberately makes her way forward. Watching her from her left, it is as though she acts with caution, gingerly testing the temperature of her bath water with an elegantly pointed toe. And, finally, from the right, her outstretched arms and forward-thrusting torso suggest she is suspended in the moment before a dive forward.The audacity she displays from the front, thus, is sometimes revoked, sometimes reconstituted, simply by virtue of a reinterpretation of her expressive limbs.

Though I couldn’t fully grasp Breakthrough-1’s multifaceted, emotionally complex posture, I was struck by the impossible equilibrium of her form. Her weight is swung too far forward and her shin is too unstable—in a world besides Menon’s, she would surely have toppled over. A quick glance around confirms this as a running theme of Menon’s figures; they all seem to defy the laws of physics. For all the confidence Breakthrough-1 displays in the thrust of her chin and strength of her outstretched arms, in the real world, she would fall head first onto the gallery floor. In other sculptures—Lightness of Being, Rhythm, Take Off-1—this disregard for earthly constraints is even more blatant. And yet, Menon’s muscled human bodies excite the viewer through their very improbability. Improbable as those forms are, their simplicity and unyielding confidence also bears us along. And the effect, overall, is rather disarming.

In the midst of such confident company, however, we meet one lone figure who suggests hesitation. She is, oddly enough, the figure most solidly and realistically balanced in our terms. On the Ball-3 is a woman with her right knee up and bent, weight resting solely on the ball of her left foot. She stands on a granite sphere and looks down at her feet, palms splayed downwards beside her, as if afraid of losing balance. She is the only figure to operate within physical boundaries as we know them, the only one to show fear, and by that very virtue, she presents a strong foil to her high-flying cohorts.

As I examined this anomalously cautious figure, I wondered if On the Ball-3 was simply the beginning of these figures’ boundless steps towards flight. Enthralling as her companions’ effortless, near-supernatural self-situating is, the woman of On the Ball-3 casts a sobering light. She is a reminder of the simple beauty of our own human condition; her companions, perhaps, pictures of imagination. I raised my left foot, bent my right knee and—however inelegantly—joined her.

Form and Formless will show at Art Positive, New Delhi, till 14 February

Dimpy MenonForm and Formlesssculpture