Art at office uplifts staff’s mood

GURGAON: Mukesh Panika, a senior director with Religare and an art connoisseur, believes that corporates are moving closer to appreciating the benefits of art as a mood uplifter, and that it actually affects the productivity at work place in a good way.
“We have an art gallery in our office where employees can walk in at any time and spend some time appreciating the canvas and colours.When you walk into a space that has paintings all around, you are transported in a different realm of thoughts altogether and such an experience can do you wonders when you’re in the middle of a hectic work schedule,” said Panika.
Corporate houses in Gurgaon are using art like never before, and one can spot paintings and graffiti in most offices that earlier had a very conventional, and as most interior designers would put it, ‘simplistic’ décor.
Religare invites contemporary and upcoming artists, sculptors, and craftsmen from all over the world, to spend three months creating new works at their headoffice, where employees can witness the artists at work, and get a first-hand experience of art.
The same is true of Airetel. The organization got celebrated Gurgaon-based painter Manav Gupta to enable 3,000 employees to paint a five storey high wall inside the office compound.
“We painted the tree of life that represents various life forces. The idea was to get ourselves involved with paint and brushes and create something that we can cherish everyday in office. Personally, I have never been an artist but the whole experience of painting with colleagues was thrilling,” said Ankur Seth, a marketing manager with Airtel.
According to Seemanto Ghai, a network engineer who has also been an avid art collector for the last seven years, “the concept of an art market, or commercial art has only come from the west, even though we’ve had a history of thousands of years in art creation and analysis.
Corporates, apart from using art as a great psychological devise for increased happiness quotient among their employees, also look at art pieces as great
investment.
It is therefore never a loss making proposition to display art in office spaces.” Ghai further added that most employees today have predisposition to fine arts as a result of increased awareness and exposure.
“Most people I know have attended art exhibitions and bought works that they use in their homes. It’s a status symbol to a large extent, but I won’t deny the fact that a lot more people today are genuinely interested in discovering popular art,” said Ghai.
The most popular genres in corporate offices is abstract and contemporary art, as it doesn’t distract the employees, and are extremely colourful and vibrant.
“One can just look at these painting and have their own interpretation for each one of them. Art is a reflective like reading a book or watching a movie, and good art always makes you think rather than just pleasing you,” said Aby Rajan, network engineer at CISCO systems.