In the quiet tension between weight and weightlessness, between stone and metal, lies the world Madusanka Dimal has spent over a decade crafting. Born in 1987, Dimal is a seeker — one who looks not only at material but into it. His hands speak the language of nature with reverence and restraint, carving only what is necessary, allowing form and spirit to breathe freely in his work.
There is something profoundly human about Dimal’s sculptures — not in their shapes, which are often abstract and stripped of figurative noise, but in their philosophy. He works with stone, iron, copper, and brass. The stone, left raw and untouched in parts, speaks to permanence, history, and time. The metal, bent and refined, glints with intentionality — it is mankind’s intervention, a whisper of design and direction.
Where they meet is where the story begins.
Dimal’s work invites quiet reflection. It holds its breath and asks you to do the same. There is gravity in his sculptures, quite literally. Many of his works appear to defy it — suspended, balanced on fragile points of contact, invoking a sense of stillness on the brink of collapse. Yet they do not fall. That is the mystery, the mastery.
This dialogue — between organic and engineered, between chaos and control — is not simply aesthetic. It is emotional. It mirrors the delicate tension we each hold within: between who we are and who we shape ourselves to be. Between what life gives us and what we choose to do with it.
Equilibrium of Duality IV Stone & Copper | 63 cm x 25 cm x 61 cm | 2025
Dimal’s minimalism is not emptiness. It is listening. It is knowing when to stop. His hand guides, but never dominates. He leaves space for stone to speak, for silence to echo, for balance to emerge not as perfection, but as understanding.
Through his evolving practice, Dimal has become a quiet force in the contemporary art scene in Sri Lanka. His recent exhibitions — The Chisel at the Lionel Wendt Art Centre in 2023, and his group showings in 2024 including State Art and Sculpture Festival and Denary Odyssey — reveal an artist in deep conversation with his craft. These shows, whether solo or collective, become sacred spaces where material becomes metaphor, and each sculpture a meditation.
Even his earlier works, exhibited in 2014 at JDA Perera Gallery and the National Art Gallery, carry the same pulse — a devotion to the meeting point of nature and nurture, instinct and intention.
To encounter a piece by Madusanka Dimal is to be asked to pause. To examine the forces that hold things together. To consider that harmony is not the absence of tension, but the courage to stand within it.
In a world that rushes to shape and reshape itself, Dimal’s work reminds us of the beauty in restraint, the poetry in precision, and the silent power of balance.
Equilibrium of Duality I
Stone & Copper | 110 cm x 38 cm x 50 cm | 2025
He stands with the weight of myth upon his shoulders — a torso carved from stone, muscular and unforgiving, crowned not with horns, but with something far more perilous: a throne. In Throne of the Beast, Madusanka Dimal summons the archetype of the bull, not in rage, but in restraint. This is a creature of might, whose body pulses with tension and strength, yet whose authority teeters on the edge of majesty and menace. The throne above his brow is both burden and birthright, symbolizing the dual nature of power: noble in its intentions, corrosive in its excess. Through the merging of human and beast, Dimal creates Anthrotaur — not a myth retold, but one reimagined, challenging the viewer to reflect on the balance between dominance and dignity.
Equilibrium of Duality IVStone & Copper | 63 cm x 25 cm x 61 cm | 2025
Equilibrium of Duality Il
Stone & Stainless Steel | 55 cm x 85 cm x 33 cm | 2025
With gleaming eyes that catch every sliver of light, the crow of Eyes That Remember the Light does not simply watch — it remembers. Silver spheres, cool and reflective, become the soul of the sculpture, capturing the full sweep of the world around it. This is no ordinary bird; it is an oracle cloaked in feathers, ancient in its knowing. Dimal’s use of metal here is deliberate: not for show, but for sight. In the stillness of the crow’s gaze, we are confronted by our own blindness, our inability to see beyond the surfaces we inhabit. Titled Nyctogladius, this piece evokes the glint of something sharp moving through shadow. It is the dark intuition that lives beneath the surface, unspoken yet ever-present, a whisper of wisdom in a world of noise.
Equilibrium of Duality III
Stone & Copper | 90 cm x 25 cm x 36 cm | 2025
She does not gallop — she carries the gallop within her. In The Mare Within Her, Dimal offers a sculptural ode to the feminine spirit — not delicate, not diminished, but formidable and composed. The female form merges with the torso of a horse, reversing the classical centaur and flipping the narrative of strength on its head. Her smooth lines and poised posture conceal a storm of motion beneath the surface. This is not beauty as fragility. This is beauty as force. Inspired by the mythical figure of Lilith, the sculpture becomes a monument to feminine will — unyielding, ungoverned, untamed. It whispers of grace, yes, but also of defiance — the kind that runs deep, like hooves across the earth.
Equilibrium of Duality IV
Stone & Copper | 63 cm x 25 cm x 61 cm | 2025
A head without eyes, a mouth without voice — and yet, The Silence That Speaks resounds. Inspired by the sculptural language of Barbara Hepworth, this abstract human form is carved not for what it holds, but for what it omits. The voids — small, hollow, and deliberate — are not merely features. They are fractures in perception, spaces where truth hesitates and hides. Dimal distills the chaos of expression into something hauntingly still, asking what it means to speak and to see, and what happens when both are withheld. Veil of Illusions is the name, and rightly so — for here, silence wears many masks, and emptiness becomes eloquent.
Equilibrium of Duality III Stone & Copper | 90 cm x 25 cm x 36 cm | 2025
Equilibrium of Duality I Stone & Copper | 110 cm x 38 cm x 50 cm | 2025
Equilibrium of Duality II Stone & Stainless Steel | 55 cm x 85 cm x 33 cm | 2025
Equilibrium of Duality III Stone & Copper | 90 cm x 25 cm x 36 cm | 2025
Equilibrium of Duality I Stone & Copper | 110 cm x 38 cm x 50 cm | 2025
