Proving his metal

Arzan Khambatta talks about his work, his public profile and why there aren't more sculptors in India.

It seems fitting to find Arzan Khambatta in a part of the Mumbai that's at the heart of the city's metamorphosis "" the abandoned mill areas of Parel. After all, this is what he does, transforming idle waste into works of art.

The workshop is whining with the sounds of machines "" welding, drilling, scraping and scalding. Finished sculptures and works in progress jostle for space. It's a candy shop for art enthusiasts and a plain junkyard for philistines.

Arzan Khambatta, architect by profession, and metal man by forte, tears himself away from the bustle preceding the opening of his solo show to chat. "This show has turned out, quite unintentionally, to be a sequel to my previous show in 2004," he says.

The titles continue to be naughty, the works a combination of social commentary that isn't quite serious and sexual innuendo that isn't quite ribald. A giant teak wood nose with a pair of angel wings and a halo sits atop a table. It's titled God Nose. Next to it sit two naked behinds snuggling on a metal park bench. That one's titled Aas Paas.

"The titling is an extension of my work as an illustrator for college magazines and later, architectural magazines," explains Khambatta. Architecture didn't hold his fancy as much as sitting on a junk pile did, and so Khambatta began, with a welding machine in his back garden, on what he calls scraptures, sculptures made from waste, that he sought out.

"Wire mesh, automobile parts, corroded metal... telling stories through them was so easy," he says. Today, Khambatta engages a variety of materials, including old wooden rafters and vintage furniture. His genius is attributed to his playfulness "" he uses a traditional welding machine to texturise instead of weld, a grinder to roughen and not to smoothen, and chemicals to bring out patinas in metal.

The young Khambatta reiterates that his career growth has been gradual, but that seems to be guided more by superstitious caution than reality. His public space sculptures have scored him high visibility, his workshop is today a sizeable 2,000 sq ft, and he employs nine assistants, including wife Khushnuma who adeptly guards her husband's bank accounts and his schedules.

Khambatta explains, "I always take on more than I can handle so I route all calls through Khushnuma. For me, saying no is like accepting defeat." He mock threateningly pulls out a Webley Scott gun from somewhere. Thankfully it isn't loaded. Khambatta is engraving it for a much-publicised Hindi movie remake that's underway.

Khambatta's big grouse is that the market for sculptures is still raw, "Even at a large show like the Harmony show, if there are 450 painters, there are barely ten sculptors." Khambatta attempts to count five Indian sculptors that are household names; he can't get past four.

Khambatta himself, is far from anonymous. His face peers out of local newspapers frequently. "Everybody thinks my being seen around town distracts me from my work. But it doesn't," he says, with no sign of exasperation. Not long ago, media censure over The Humble Bee, his glowing sculptural tribute to Amitabh Bachchan, threatened to eclipse his competence.

"It's not that artists that are out and about any more than they used to be, it's the media that today seek us out as celebrities," he laughs.

A calendar on the wall counts down the days to the show. Thereafter the days are not dated, instead it reads "Sleep, get up drink beer, go back to sleep". But that's another day. Khambatta has to return to his methodical finishing of his works.

"My next project is to set up a foundry and train in the art of bronze casting. And there's this engineering undertaking where I am working on motorising the wings on a sculpture," he says. The beer and sleep will just have to wait.