Manish Mehta's A Play with Colours on September 23, 2005

A Play with Colours
An exhibition of recent photographs and paintings
by Manish Mehta
September 23-25, 2008, at the Exhibition Hall,
Faculty of Fine Arts,
MS University, Baroda.

“Construct lines and colour combinations on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the utmost awareness. Nature (or, that which I see) inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from that, until I reach the foundation (still just an external foundation) of things...”
Piet Mondrian in a letter written to H P Bremmer. 1914

In some of Manish Mehta's photographs, the abstract geometries of Mondrian come alive in the strange environs of Indian village architecture – bold, bright and basic colours painted in strong strokes, identifying the vertical and horizontal frames of doors and windows, the large expanses of walls and verandahs. Vibrant yellows clash with bright blues, blood reds nuzzle garish greens, awesome ochres tweak cool sea-greens and candy pinks. There appears no doubt that the influence of Mondrian, knowingly or unknowingly, has made a significant impact on the sensibility of this photographer.

Certainly, colour is at the heart of Manish's photographs and paintings. It finds expression as flat, vertical and horizontal lines in complex relations with each other. The local folk and vernacular traditions of architectural decoration signify celebration, festivity, good luck and Manish's compositions highlight the play of colour and of light and shadow, to bring out elements of dramatic juxtaposition, tongue-in-cheek humour, and often, simple visual delight. In some of the photographs, Manish uses the multi-coloured windows offset by white-washed walls as sharply focussed orifices from which to peer into softfocus patterns of coloured walls and windows inside the rooms. These photographs are almost like abstract images, playing with geometrical coloured forms.

It might come as a surprise to many that Manish Mehta is a self-trained photographer, and in recent years, has also turned to painting. Getting time off from his commercial photography assignments, Manish has spent the last few years wandering and travelling for long stretches of time, indulging his love for catching extraordinary images digitally or on film. And late into the night, he wields thebrush on canvas.

Manish's watchful photographer's eye is always looking for the incongruous and the surprising, trying to freeze that exact moment of the wondrous visuality which the act of living keeps alive all around us. Toy cars piled one upon another as they are squeezed into the limited display space in stores at highway restaurants are reminiscent of traffic jams on city streets. The image of a car's spare tyre languidly resting against a bicycle's wheel evokes an immediate smile. The white-washed silhouettes of a mosque dome sitting on a hexagonal base and of a rectangular building besides it, jutting into a Turkish blue, cloudless sky, are almost painterly in their treatment of texture and composition.

Manish has been painting for the last year or so. Perhaps doing photography assignments for the large artist community in Baroda was an inspiration for him to work on a dormant desire and talent. His paintings are abstract works where colours continue to play the most significant role, creating vertical and horizontal lines that run parallel or crisscross, that thicken or narrow, become light or heavy and are steadily built up on the surface to evoke a certain kind of textural feel. Manish chooses complementary or contrasting palettes as the basis of these works, creating a distinctive mood that goes with each painting.

Though Manish has held several exhibitions of his photographs, this is the first time that he is displaying his paintings along with his photographs. Together they will perhaps give viewers an indication of the direction in which this photographer-painter is moving.

Sandhya Bordewekar
Baroda, July, 2008