Imagine looking at the world through a gauze screen. Manish Pushkale’s art is a little like that; and the colours are incandescent, the subjects are hazy silhouettes and the more you look at them, the more forms you discern.
His solo show, Language Of Vision , is on in the city. Manish’s art is interactive; they are mostly untitled and so there are no expectations. You look at each canvas with an open mind and form your own subjects. His 9” x 15” pieces are colourful, gold-rimmed and have waves of colours. There is a letter and a word in each canvas. The one with orange, grey, green and brown splashed across it, resembles how one views the earth from the sky. Another has blue, green and orange.
His oil-on-canvas paintings have cool colours and a grainy texture to them. One of them, large, and painted in different shades of green (mustard, olive, light) with a cream centre, forms the shape of a blurred Ganesh, with a lamp in front. In a vertical painting next to it, The Pillar Of Gratitude , pastel geometrical patterns adorn the backdrop while an illuminated ray of light is in the centre. It lights up everything around it.
A feature that recurs in Pushkale’s paintings is the geometric patterns. His paintings are technical and precise, there are no arbitrary shapes in his bigger canvasses. The three square pieces that hang in a line, Volume I, II and III have nine hazy squares each. They are rather therapeutic in the sense that looking at them eases your mind. The colours aren’t harsh and the grainy texture of the backgrounds adds to effect.
One other painting is blue with different shapes. Move a little from the paintings and you see two faces; one up and the other below, upside down. One seems to be smiling and the other is grim. Another set of four paintings, titled A , B , C and D are a little more communicative. One looks like the blades of a rotating exhaust fan, another like an egg or a white telephone handle, the third looks like a man standing upside down and looking out the window. The fourth, the simplest, has rows of crescents. These shapes are precise and yet the painting itself is abstract and free-flowing.
Language Of Vision is on display till December 11 at Gallery Veda, 4/22, Rutland Gate, Fifth Street, Nungambakkam, between 11 a.m. and 7 p.m.
