Where have all the stories gone?

Susanta Mandal’s recent sculptural installations have explored the ways in which fragile and ephemeral presences —light, shadows, air— interact with and change the solid, static structures they inhabit. For his exhibits at the Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2014, Mandal has worked with soap bubbles to create kinetic sculptures where steel and mechanical elements frame an unfolding drama of effervescence and death.

The premise of these sculptures —the simple interactions of air with water and soap salts— is evocative of a range of processes, from cell division to the relentless inflation of the universe. As with Mandal’s other works, lighting and chiaroscuro are important components of these installations and key to their evocations of the uncanny.

One of Mandal’s exhibits is from his 2007 series It doesn’t bite – “a performance on the structure of steel and stone”. Here, bubbles move with infinite slowness through a coiled steel cage, creating an ephemeral sculpture the vitality of which dies with the eventual disappearance of its moving components. Also on display is a sculpture from the 2011 series, How long does it take to complete a circle? that evokes the complex, invisible routes through which matter and energy travel. The long transparent pipes allow a viewer to examine the progress made by bubbles that move within it, infusing drama into an otherwise clinical structure.

Where Have All the Stories Gone? (2014), Mandal’s new series of works created for Biennale, is composed of several free standing devices that continuously create fragile globe-like films of soap which ascend from a solution and envelope space for a moment before disappearing. According to the artist, though they disappear, these soap films leave “tangible imprints in memory”, building a “wall of experience that gives form to an idea or a mystery.”