Water conjures images surrounding dissolution, diffusion, flow, and inundation. In A River Inside , Manisha Parekh’s second solo exhibition at Jhaveri Contemporary, the artist, “Uses liquid and its shimmering movements as metaphors for apprehending experience and describing desire,” states Zeenat Nagree in her catalogue essay. Continuing her instinctual and process-oriented approach, Parekh takes advantage of her materials to create delicate works, that expand on questions concerning the formation of lines, scale, figuration, and abstraction. “The sensuousness of water, its tendency to yield, and its forceful ability to overcome, serve to highlight acts of creation and living,” Nagree elaborates. Parekh balances geometric and organic imagery to animate abstract forms through explorations of rhythmic textures and scientific structures. Her poetic titles provide thoughtful entry points into her works that construct a dialogue around material, form, and the creative process.
Parekh’s series entitled ‘The Sound of Water’ demonstrates a layering of graphite on paper. The artist begins by pouring glue on board and waits for it to harden. “I like to physically record the impact from these textures,” Parekh shares in a gallery walkthrough. The artist renders intricate markings with graphite upon the structures provided by these chance droppings. Every variation produced in this series compels a different form of viewership. The works beg the question, “Are we looking above from a great height or peering into microscopic depths?” asks Nagree.
Exploring the medium
Parekh’s use of graphite and emphasis on the line and space resonate with her training under Nasreen Mohamedi at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda in the mid-1980s. Mohamedi’s practice was anomalous in Baroda where the narrative or figurative styles were predominant. Parekh follows her trajectory, celebrating the complexity of the line and its associations with boundaries and patterns. Her series ‘Ripple’ exhibited on a wall opposite her graphite drawings features punched and perforated holes on paper that resemble the action of bookworms. The two series raise questions about how marks act upon surfaces to produce possibilities of beauty. In this case, “graphite or lead can do what punching holes in a surface cannot,” Parekh explains while suggesting it is a form of exploring the limits and possibilities of her media. While her intricate works unravel microscopic or amoebic forms, their titles suggest that we are looking at something larger, forcing viewers to actively move between scales and orientations. For the artist, the works also demonstrate a dissolution of figuration and abstraction.
Parekh’s series ‘Relic’ and ‘Totem’ engage with colour and opacity, employing organic shades of watercolour and ink. Both series suggest bodies that have been preserved for posterity or piety, through their titles. In these works however, the artist dismantles notions of stability by exploring how colour bleeds into paper, and creating swirls infused with a sense of fluidity. Parekh notes how the abstraction found in music informs her work. Music in its association with memories also instils a sense of emotion to these works in their final outcomes, as well as in their process. Several of these works feature, “Tiny lifeforms that grow on the larger wholes, drawing energy and maintaining vitality,” observes Nagree. These forms that resonate with the allusion to bookworms in ‘Ripple’ suggest how parasitic forms need not be viewed with negativity as their destructive acts lead to aesthetic transformations. Violence here may be viewed as a necessary act in the process of creation.
In her wall-mounted sculptures, ‘Following You’ Parekh has worked with welders to create forms that represent frameworks of metal containers. Recognising the difference between working on paper and with metal, Parekh treats these works as “three-dimensional drawings”. For Parekh, shadows form the most important part of these works as they propose “an edge of encounter.” While they emerge from the objects, they also pose questions surrounding where the metal ends and the shadow begins, harking back to the artist’s exploration of the possibilities of lines and their ability to forge connections and boundaries within spaces. Relying on light, these works submit to notions of chance in the way they unravel themselves, whilst addressing concepts surrounding porosity and rigidity that relate to the trope of water.
One perceives an exploration of rhythm, an acceptance of continuous transformation and evolution, and sensitive considerations of the boundaries between creation and destruction in Parekh’s works.
A River Inside is ongoing at Jhaveri Contemporary until February 22
