Farhan Mujib has become one of India's major exponents of collage art. |
At first glance, his colourfully illustrated canvases look like painted details till you pause for a closer look. After a puzzling minute, it dawns that these works are actually collages from scraps of paper, but so carefully pasted that it's difficult to think of them as anything other than art. |
Farhan Mujib, who taught physics at the Aligarh Muslim University till some time back, had subdued his artistic instincts in deference to a regular career. The collages happened almost by accident when, returning to India after his PhD in 1991, he pieced together cuttings from the inflight magazine. "I finally arrived at a composition that was different," says Mujib. |
Thus began an exercise in indulgence, with his works finding their way into friends' homes, till he was "discovered" by Chennai-based gallerist Sharan Apparao. |
Since then, his collages have been complete sell-outs at exhibitions and he was faced with having to decide between his profession and his art. This time, the artistic instincts surfaced somewhat more strongly and Mujib gave up his academic career to invest his time rummaging through scraps of paper. "I was taken aback with the response created by my work and decided to take the plunge," he reflects. |
The immediate impact comes from the colours, followed by the texture. "Where a painter thinks in colours, I think in textures and forms," Mujib says. Collecting and flipping through thousands of magazines, posters and books for shreds to complete his works, Mujib says, "The medium dictates the message where my compositions depend on the kind of material I have." |
Mujib, who's fascinated by the visual complexity that India offers, feels that "in a symbolic way, the collages represent that richness". So ornate doors, furnishings, rich borders, along with architectural structures find a place in his works. |
Birds, deities, Urdu calligraphy and flower vases abound. "Different spheres of traditional Indian art, especially religious art, fascinate me," he says. |
Cracks in the spaces in his compositions are always present "" running through a pillar, a wall or the frames that he painstakingly adorns, yet Mujib cannot explain why he puts them there by way of deliberate deformities. |
Each of his compositions has several sub-compositions and he "enjoys creating a very rich visual experience for the viewer" where "the frames give the compositions a visual ambiguity that I love", he says. |
The neatness of his collages contradicts Mujib's self-confessed, "extremely disorganised" mannerisms, though "I have a very good memory". |
But can collages be considered the apogee of high art? Will they ever command the kind of market watercolourists or oil painters have? For Mujib, satisfied at finding his feet in a field he dared not think could have supported body and soul, he isn't too bothered about the trivial aspect of his work. |
"That's fine with me," he says, "as long as it makes me happy." Gallerist Sharan Apparao, who has single-handedly promoted him, says "his works are in demand and have escalated in price considerably since he started". |
Which is more than enough for Mujib who wouldn't like to intellectualise his work so long as they are "happy and positive, giving joy". |