Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Madurai
Mangalore
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
YES, it's attractive
|
Writer and illustrator Manjula Padmanabhan dons her artist's hat in an exhibition at Artworld
|
"I THINK of these collages as celebration of form and colour, only loosely related to objects in the real world." The show titled `YES' is an exhibition of prints and collages by Manjula Padmanabhan, a Delhi-based artist, who is showcasing her works at Artworld.
An interesting dimension of this exhibition is the polarity that exists between the prints on one hand and the collages on the other, the two artistic expressions emanating from the same persona.
While the prints are meticulously worked, with clean forms and rhythmic lines, her collages reflect absolute freedom, spontaneity, looseness yet structured to be consistent with not a dot or a squiggle out of place. In her prints, the playful titles have a tinge of humour, which enhances the character, and are worked in etching and lithography.
Decorative patterns
A cursory glance at the collage exhibits may create an impression of frivolousness, since Manjula communicates through the fundamental tools of line, shapes, colour and texture, ordered and structured to a decorative pattern. But the deeper implication begins to dawn on the viewer when they are scrutinised and realisation brings an awareness that they are far from being what they purport to be.
Given as she is particularly in her prints to detailing, consequent to her years of working as an illustrator and cartoonist for The Sunday Observer, the collages are an expression of release permitting her to fly free with acrylic paints. Since the medium has dictated her forms and choice of colours, it is obvious that Manjula has allowed herself to be tamely led by it, basking in the moments of freedom provided by the medium.
Strangely, what one perceives in her collages is the comfort level of the artist in working with acrylics, breaking herself away from meditative detailing to which she had punished herself to establish, that a work produced over a certain period of time can only be calculated to be serious. One can feel her breathing free in the manipulation of the coloured papers, which she has dexterously juxtaposed and combined in terms of colours, shapes and textures.
The use of acrylics in deep vibrant, pastel and pale colours is further complemented by the use of glitter generally associated with textile surface ornamentation. By getting lost in the details of one medium namely printmaking, Manjula has chalked a new trajectory for herself with these collages. And it has taken her a heap of fundamental tools to create good nonsense. And it is in this that her works are attractive and seductive. They induce, seduce and invite the viewer to liaison with them through naughty squiggles, the shy dots, presumptuous quarter circles, the dreamy `v' patterns, the shimmering drops, the haughty squares and laughing slants.
Manjula's intellectual approach is in no way negated by these playful abstracts, but rather she has moved to another genre as an author or poet may venture to experiment and establish a sense of development and progress to mark a site for signposting their individuality. And it is precisely in this domain that we find the artist playfully exploring with collages.
In this exhibition, Manjula is wearing her artist hat. Otherwise she is also a well-known writer whose play "Harvest" won first prize in the 1997 Onassis Prize for Theatre.
The exhibition is on at the Artworld till December 16.
ASHRAFI S. BHAGAT
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Madurai
Mangalore
Tiruchirapalli
Thiruvananthapuram
Vijayawada
Visakhapatnam
|
