Meeting the Metaphors
by Georgina Maddox
Having visited the exhibition showcasing Manish Pushkale’s most recent work, in his solo show, Tracing the Cartographer’s Trail at Akar Prakar, one delineates the experience of being in their physical presence.
- Georgina Maddox
Artist Manish Pushkale working in his Studio
In April during that brief time that the galleries were open and one was able to visit shows rather than see them online, I visited the Akar Prakar gallery to see Manish Pushkale’s exhibition Tracing the Cartographer’s Trail. One was not prepared for the effect or the scale of the works that are part of this exhibition. Especially when one stands before the central work titled Sreenath. At the scale of 84x132 inches, this acrylic on canvas commands a ‘presence’. It is almost like when a powerful person enters a room, people go quiet and they just look in admiration and awe at the person before anything can be said or even done.
Manish Pushkale | Sreenath | Acrylic on canvas | 77 x 123 in | 2020
With this work, one may spend time unravelling the layers, discovering the forms that lie within, becoming aware of the central figure in the midst of the canvas, of the gradation of colours that moved from dark to light, and left to right. One may look at the delicately rendered painted texture of kantha stitching that gives the illusion that the work is not ‘painted’ but ‘stitched’. Such is the effect and sheer three-dimensionality of this work. It makes one go into a deep meditative state and experience the deity Sreenath Ji on a very transcendental and spiritual level.
We asked the artist how he decided and arrive at using the Kantha stitch in this body of work? He wrote back over email:
To start, I have to take you to flashback mode. For the last 20 years, a piece of muslin cloth has been playing an important role in my work process. I was not pasting the piece of cloth on my canvas, but I used to take its impression on the wet paint surface. It was almost like a process of wiping the colours (like we do in the process of Intaglio in printmaking) in a specific manner to achieve a specific form.
If you see my previous works, you will find a memory of fabric. It still exists, but now not as memory, but as a metaphor. Hence, the mannerism of kantha stitches in my current series of work has some lineage of the past. But, apart from this derivative, I have another reason to have this pattern of Kantha in my recent works. And this has a lot to do with my local -geographical identity,” says Pushkale. “As you know that I am born and brought up in Bhopal, a wonderful city with equal presence of Hindu and Muslim population, a city which is located in the midst of Sanchi and Bhimbethaka, a city of hills and lakes. The equity, which is deeply embedded in the skin of this city, came as a point of inspiration in these works. The patterns, which look like Kantha stitches, can also be seen as metaphorical contours addressing the binary or lines conjoining the equidistant polarities of my place.
Hence the other work that one experiences is this feeling of being ‘transported into the work’, it is titled Metaphors of my Terrain, which is almost like a map of his home town where he is located. With Metaphors of my terrain which is 78x36 inches, (2020), Pushkale takes us to his birthplace, Bhopal. It helps when the curator, critic and poet Ranjit Hoskote explains to us in his catalogue text, that it is a location that is equidistant between Bhimbetka and Sanchi, the two sites that are important parts of historical evolution. These sites encapsulate the time stretching between Neolithic prehistory to Maurya-Shunga history. In fact, one could say that land holds within its folds ‘memory’ and the ability to ‘evoke’ the past, which is what Pushkale does when he paints the terrain of his birthplace.
Manish Pushkale | Metaphors of my terrain | Acrylic on canvas | 36 x 78 in | 2020
Hoskote explains: “We follow Pushkale, in one of the series of paintings presented here, as he employs the running stitch associated with the Kantha tradition of embroidery as his generative motif, playing it out over surfaces animated by a palette of reds, ochres, and umbers,” writes Hoskote.
“The painted stitch morphs into rivers, ravines, rising terraces in a survey map. The colours remind us vividly of the textile and embroidery arts of the nomadic communities that traverse what had once been the Dakshinapatha, the great trade route connecting the northern cities of Varanasi and Vidisha with the capitals of the peninsula, Pratishthana, Madurai and Kanchipuram,” writes Hoskote of the works. While one may not immediately be aware of these locations one can feel so strongly this sense of a journey and this idea that we are walking through a mapped-out territory of someone’s past life.
“For this exhibition, we are directing the audience to look at his work...as a painted Kantha, using the stitch to make the viewer look into the understanding of the present. Every stitch is like a breath which connects to the previous and the next in a complex matrix which then creates an abstract image, to create what we see as a whole. However, the final image is merely a story created with every little stitch, (or every breath) capturing every moment in its present state, to create a future that only dissolves the moment it is created. His new work is contemporary and in flux as it is modern and stable at the same time,” writes Akar Prakar Gallery Director Reena Lath.
Tracing the trail is a delicate work (drawing on paper), that evokes both a map and a cardiograph, measuring the heartbeat of the artist who is walking across this terrain, that is grey and speckled with the texture of a sandy dry path. Between memory and metaphor (Acrylic on canvas, 60 x 48 in, 2021) appears like another may that goes back to the Kantha stitch idiom and plays out another experience of traversing through a lived history, although on a more intimate scale. The works also evoke Pushkale’s fascination with geology and archaeology. Are these fossils or potsherds? Are these rock formations or the outlines of lost architectures? Are we getting a peep into the imagined landscape that was long hidden in the earth and revealed by ‘infrared photography’? We may be allowed to imagine and fathom these architectures by looking at the series of works on handmade paper.
Manish Pushkale | Tracing the trail | Drawing on paper | 70 x 17 in | 2020
Pushkale adds to our reading, with his explanation:
“As you know, I was a science student, trained geologist, specialised in paleontology. This time, I have invited the imagery from my inert academic resources. And this has allowed a completely new twist in my achieved visual aesthetics. When the Images derived from my geological and paleontological context bank blended with the mannerism and pattern of traditional sensibility of Kantha, they mutually created an interesting visual experience. Memory and metaphor, science and tradition together had created a commune of new aesthetics resulting in its scale, precision and magnitude,” he writes.
Manish Pushkale | Sound of my land | Acrylic on canvas | 20 x 48 in | 2020
Manish Pushkale | Between memory and metaphor | Acrylic on canvas | 60 x 48 in | 2021
Another work that caught attention was Sound of my land, (Acrylic on canvas, 48 x 20 in, 2020). Here Pushkale returns to the palette of reds and ochres. One may wonder what sound is Pushkale referring to? Is the reverential blowing of conch shells? The tinkling of bells during the evening prayer? Or is it the sound of the wind rasping over the dry terrain left empty of people as they hide in their homes, waiting for the Pandemic to sweep across the land? We may be taken through time to imagine several scenarios.
Tracing the Cartographer’s Trail
by Manish Pushkale
Akar Prakar to view online: Tracing the Cartographer’s Trail – Akar Prakar
