K S Radhakrishnan belongs to the generation of sculptors who emerged on the Indian art scene in the early eighties, and were instrumental in bringing about a new energy and focus into sculpture.

The other prominent members in this generation include Ravinder Reddy and Dhruva Mistry. Together they led to a rediscovery of the human body in its wholeness in sculpture. 

The Indian art sculptors were by and large not able to gain the kind of visibility the painters received in the written responses to the art of those years. This was partly due to a lapse in our art writing and partly due to the absence of consistent representation of sculptural practices in the public and gallery spaces. Radhakrishnan and his two contemporaries not only belong to the moment of rediscovery of the figure in modern Indian art but also to sculpture's re-inscription into the public and critical spaces. 

Radhakrishnan's career began with an aesthetic schism. As a student he had on the one hand a teacher like Sarbari Roy Choudhury — who himself belonged to the figurative mode of early modernist sculpture as a portraitist and to its subsequent phase of fragmentation as figural sculptor — and an exemplar like Ramkinkar whose large outdoor sculptures stood out as examples of a more triumphant earlier moment in figural sculptural expression. 

One of the elements that make him stand apart is his conscious adoption of a sculptural idiom shaped by modeling and bronze casting at a time when they were being sidelined, and successfully working them back into mainstream sculpture almost singlehandedly. His work today combines aspects of object materiality of the medium with figural sensuousness and narrative nuances.

Radhakrishnan is a sculptor in evolution, so this exhibition is more in the nature of a mid-career stocktaking rather than a retrospective assessment. But given the body of work he has already produced and their consistency an attempt to trace his trajectory so far should be in place. 

~ R Siva Kumar

K S Radhakrishnan

The artist adopts neither a referential, self-consciously avant-garde approach nor a derivatively tribal folk style; instead, his style seems to spring from the form he seeks to convey, and uniquely suits its subject.

Radhakrishnan attributes the expressiveness of his figures to the example of his father, a thwarted actor who instilled in his son a passion for...

Radhakrishnan attributes the expressiveness of his figures to the example of his father, a thwarted actor who instilled in his son a passion for the potency of ritual dances and performances. Radhakrishnan's works often drawn from the emotions and myths of the Hindu gods, such as Shiva, Kali and Radha. His sculptures are often larger than life-sized; placed in the outdoors, they evoke a superhuman atmosphere.

Over the years, Radhakrishnan has experienced with alternate sculpting mediums, working in molten bronze, beeswax and Plaster of Paris. The physical process of working with the materials becomes a performance in itself. The sculpture is the product of a tactile engagement with his medium.