For his latest exhibition 'Consistent (In)consistency', artist Manish Pushkale presents an extensive series of paintings deepening his enquiry into his ongoing exploration of deriving visual forms to soundscapes. 

Working with large and small-scale formats, Pushkale's canvases are reflective of the textures of his background. Hailing from Bhopal, Manish is a self-taught artist who developed his practice as an artist at Bharat Bhavan’s creatively fertile environment. Evolving his artistic language over 25 years of practice, in his paintings Pushkale experiments with the imagery, working at the intersection of the personal and the spiritual. 

The cartographic undertones and the running stitch of the Kantha tradition follow through in his latest suite of paintings with a play of hues and contrasts while he attempts to envision form for the formless. The current creative investigation has offered a space for his process to take precedence freeing him from the constraints of thematic experiments. 

Each image alludes to an interpretative readability for the audience, while any specific figurative connotations are always out of grasp. The seemingly simple monochromatic colour palettes of the canvases at a glance reveal the contrary on closer inspection. The stark restraint and precision of the paint strokes, colour and tones unveil an elaborately thought-out composition. 

With a seemingly singular colour palette of canvases like Shadow Casting Real and Gates of Memory, the dense constellation of dots and dashes building the base for the matrix are all part of the slow reveal afforded only to the patient viewer. The regular interval and repetition of the dashes are reminiscent of the metric structure of beats or Taal in Indian classical music. For Pushkale, the abstraction of the sonic arrangements of his personal locale and experience is aptly demonstrated in the canvases Between the Memory and a Metaphor of a Forest - I &II and Music of Brown Body series. 

The series of paintings presented in this exhibition is a result of his current enquiry. Playing with the notion of abstracting the auditory, the compositions transcend the tangible language of sound as we perceive them to be. This exhibition is evidence of the evolution of Pushkale’s artistic research while he remains faithful to his paintbrush, his preferred medium of choice.

- Siddhi Shailendra

Manish Pushkale

Manish Pushkale (b. 1973 in Bhopal, India) is a self-taught artist who has honed his artistic style and sensibility at Bharat Bhavan’s fertile, intellectual, creativity-filled ambience of the time. The intellectual rigour of Bharat Bhavan’s founders in its early decades, its deeply held Indian values and its uncompromising artistic mission to foster these values in art have formed the foundation of Manish Pushkale’s subsequent career as a celebrated abstract artist. Bhopal as a city informs much of Pushkale’s artistic sensibility. Bhopal’s rare blend of the modern and the ancient is embedded in the prehistoric Bhimbetka rock shelters and the antiquity of the Sanchi Stupa. Pushkale’s abstractionism channels this prehistory and antiquity into contemporary forms of expression. His calm, contemplative canvases dwell upon the ebb and flow of civilisation and its underlying spirituality through themes of genesis, progress and change. This reflective consciousness is tied to his deep interests in archaeology and geology, the latter of which he studied during his Master’s at Barkatullah University, Bhopal.

His works have been widely exhibited in India and internationally over the last 25 years. He represented the country at the Festival of India in France, in 2016, with an exhibition at Musée de Guéthary, with Akar Prakar and ICCR. He has also exhibited his work with his guru S.H. Raza on multiple occasions, including as a parallel exhibition to the Venice Biennale, in 2010. He is the recipient of numerous awards and residencies, such as a fellowship at the Nantes Institute of Advanced Study, in 2014; and Grand Award, Bharat Bhavan Biennale, Bhopal, in 2018. Over the years, Pushkale has closely worked and mentored young artists by organising art camps, and providing them with artistic and commercial guidance. Apart from this, his work as a trustee of the Raza Foundation, the executive trustee of the Krishna Sobti Foundation, and his establishment of the Vaid Award in honour of the late writer Krishna Baldev Vaid to recognize radical Hindi writers, are efforts to contribute towards building a sustainable artistic and intellectual legacy for future generations. The artist lives and works in New Delhi.