Please visit www.bsgart.com for further information on this exhibition.
A New Delhi based artist, Manisha Parekh has studied painting at the M.S. University, Baroda, as well as at the Royal College of Art in London. Having well known painters -Manu and Madhavi Parekh - for parents, she grew up with paints and brush around her. She has emerged as one of the significant young Indian artists, whether it's for her skillfully executed graphics of articles of daily use, or her more ambitious works in the area of conceptual, site-specific installations. "There is a new consciousness in my work which allows freedom and the admission of several factors that takes place without pre-emption."
The main thrust of Manisha's style has always been that of clear, scientific structure. "I am a figurative painter and have deliberately weaned off academic theories, such that my own basic training would render a logical approximation of my work." Parekh has always shown a marked preference for black and white, which allows her to concentrate on form over color. Exploring the densities, opacity and transparency of inks, she is fascinated by the life they take on when in contact with paper, seeming as do to almost animate it.
Using minimal color, she uses harmonious forms that are linked and unfold a larger vision. Sometimes an oval and a line meet and become something new. She has a continuing fascination with vessels, and breathes life into inanimate objects, which themselves take on connotations of the human body. In her series 'Hairy Letters', she has used rice paper, glue drawings and gouaches, exploring textures rather than tones. Her earlier rugged brushwork has gradually evolved into loose strokes, and the handling of figures in her work in now done "to relax muscular as well as pictorial tension," as she says.
A few years ago, she exhibited her sketchbook as part of a group exhibition. She says, "I was very hesitant to show my sketchbook to the public. So I started making another one specially for the show but that ended up getting too self-conscious and I didn't like that. I am showing both sketchbooks as a result. As students, we were forced to do a definite number of sketches each day. It was an imposition I hated. I couldn't find a way to personalize it, perhaps that was because I did not have a language of my own at that time. But today the sketchbook is a small intimate space for me, one that I would like to keep to myself. You could call it a diary where I jot down my thoughts in lines and shapes, very instinctively. My sketches are never smaller modules or first drafts of the larger works I make. I invariably attack the work directly because I am preoccupied with the material."
Parekh has exhibited extensively in India, London and Germany. She also did a stint of teaching at Baroda and then joined the Kanoria Centre for Arts in Ahmedabad. "Here one could work in peace among fellow spirits," she says. "It is a lovely campus. In a way I also felt I was striking roots in my parents' Gujarati soil."
In 1990, she was awarded a fellowship by the Kanoria centre and also won the Inlaks Foundation Scholarship for a postgraduate course at the Royal College of Arts, London.
Manish Parekh lives and works in New Delhi. |
