Eight Corners of the World

In Sudershan Shetty’s Eight Corners of the World series, domestic furniture and objects turn into surreal organs leaking blood or milk. Collected in troughs placed under the cabinets, the liquids are pumped back to rejoin the endless, gushing, gurgling torrent. Shetty is fascinated by machines and toys. At the same time, his work shows a deep anxiety about technology. As he says, toys and machines also seem to have a life of their own, as if they exist and perform on another plane of understanding, unknown to us.

The translation of living traits - such as circulating fluids and throbbing hearts - to mechanical bodies gives his inventions an eerie life. It sometimes gives them the inevitability of death as well. If we keep the pump switched off in this work, it will no longer be the artwork that Shetty intended. If we keep it running, this cabinet will gradually degenerate and stop functioning as it wears itself away.