Ritesh Meshram b. 1975

b.1975, in Chattisgarh, India

In 2004, Ritesh completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts (Painting) at Indira Kala Sangeet Vishwavidyalaya, Khairagarh, Chattisgarh, India. Ritesh began his artistic career with paintings; the shift to sculpture happened gradually. Metal appears a natural choice of material for Meshram, who was born and brought up in a steel worker’s family in Bhilai, site of a massive public sector manufacturing plant established in 1955. However, the connection could be coincidental, since he took to steel after years of practice as a painter, and a previous switch to sculptures made from objets trouvés.

Ritesh Meshram’s recent sculptures could be called unfound objects. They give the impression of familiarity, a few seemingly made of articles one could purchase in a hardware store, others of components recovered from a scrap heap. Yet, the forms sprang entirely from the artist’s mind, and were created by hammering, cutting, casting and soldering metal to his precise specifications. They are carefully designed artefacts that echo or mimic bricolages.

His artworks display certain persistent features that hover tantalisingly between formalism and conceptualism.