They were once alive before they turned into fossils. That alone makes them an ancient repository of geological systems that are important insights for modern scientific explorations. They tell us about the earth’s history, the very force that nurtures life and promotes livelihood. These petrified impressions remain mysteries that researchers and scientists have been trying to explain, however, even after thousands of decades, many have remained conundrums for civilizations to follow.
What meets the eye when we look at some of these preserves in state of the art museums, carefully preserved in glass cases, is just the tip of the iceberg. Artist Manish Pushkale, who is showcasing his new line of works inspired by foliation, fossils and lost languages in Lamina, brings abstractions that unearth their forgotten enigmas.
He immersed himself in the study of these remnants from lost geological periods, never once considering them mere specimens. “They are a consolidated body of frozen memories. Symbol of gradually compressed augustness. Sometimes they look like sculptures where the organic materials have been converted into inorganic states. It is a cast of a lost life in detained state as a stupendous structure,” says Pushkale.
Lamina is a Latin word which means thin layers of stratas in geological terms. The term has also been given to address the layers of colours, a prominent aspect of his paintings, that are composed of multiple transparent layers. “These layers are thin, derived from the word ‘think’. The process of application of these layers is a process of thinking. I try to create the strata of multiple transparent layers which sometimes go up to the thickness of 50 layers. The resonance of transparencies create a unique visual. This process is symbolically close the process of foliation,” says Pushkale, who is celebrating his silver jubilee as an artist this year.
As a painter, he says, his struggle all these years has been about reaching a right visual vocabulary and to discover an appropriate medium to provide precise visual identity and individuality to his belief system. He dislikes the term style. It is the biggest cliché churning badly between notions of traditionality and modernity, he believes. “Art is a continuous process of learning and understanding by creating their relevant antipods,” says the artist.
He has been living in Delhi for 25 years, before which he was in Bhopal where he was born. His father migrated from a small village in Bundelkhand to Bhopal in the 50s. His was a migration from rural to urban, whereas for the artist, it was from urban to metropolitan, but what is common between the two is the idea of movement, which is both geographical and cultural.
When they shifted, they also imbibed in Delhi’s intrinsic eccentricities and learnt to live and flourish within it. “Delhi is a beautiful ancient city which is receptive and reflective. Snowfall in Himachal or Kashmir freezes us, floods in Uttarakhand sinks us, burning of paddy in Punjab challenges our respiration. This is a city of bazars and bizarre,” says the artist.
Just like he has seen Delhi’s personality change, he has simultaneously watched his own art practise evolve. In the early 90s, when he was associated with the multi-arts centre Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal, Pushkale’s work was very different from what it is now. It was a time of several influences. Later, they changed into personalized expressions.
“The environs of Bharat Bhavan allowed me to believe in ineffability, this creating a different aesthetic. Since then my sensory faculties have been active in mounting my consciousness by the many influences that followed,” he says. Each one has been a building block to an ever evolving vocabulary that Pushkale is defining and redefined. Till September 14: Akar Prakar, Defence Colony, 11 am to 7 pm.