About The Artist

As a child, Raj was fascinated by the arts. It was a fact that did not go unnoticed by his school authorities, who instead of encouraging him, asked his parents to curb his passion so that he could concentrate on his studies.

“The fact was that I was dyslexic and had severe ADD. They didn’t realise it in those days and I can’t really blame them,” he says.

But the result was that his art supplies were taken away and with no resources, he drifted away from the world of paints and brushes. Three decades of advertising and marketing later, a chance sculpture workshop in New York rekindled his artistic flame.

For somebody who had never thought much about sculptures earlier, Shahani surprised himself by picking up clay and moulding it into human shapes.

Source: Architectural Digest

Love for Form

At his ongoing exhibition in Mumbai, Shahani has put together a selection of 25 half life-size clay sculptures from a series titled Emotion. The works are inspired by the lyrical movements of the human body and have been conceived after a detailed observation of dancers in motion.

And for these, Shahani went back to the photographs he has been taking and documenting for a long time. “What stood out was my love for forms, and dancers, specially ballet dancers. I also started asking some of my friends, who are ballet dancers, to pose for me,” he informs.

The idea was to translate the photographs into three-dimensional art forms. “I work with photographs in so much detail that they get imprinted in my mind.

So, the journey of going from photographs to a 3D image was quite interesting for me,” he says, talking about the three feet clay sculptures he has created.

BACK TO LEARNING

The self-taught artist is now looking forward to going to back to school! “I want to do a Masters in Fine Arts, not to learn art but to learn the tricks. It’s all there in my head but I need to translate it. I’m looking forward to being with like-minded people and learn the rules so I can break them later,” he says.