Manisha Parekh forcefully challenges conventional classifications of painters, sculptors, chroniclers and craftspersons through her work of the last five years. Consider `Movements' (recently displayed at Nature Morte's Lokayata Gallery) which comprised several sets of five works, each constructed, layer by layer, with tracing paper, mounted on black paper and then more of each. Manisha cuts the tracing paper, slowly, attentively, and in similar rounded, cylindrical forms, to expose the darker paper beneath: a craftsperson in her workshop.
On the other side, a viewer, unselfconsciously peering into the frame, deciphering where the paper was cut and where it overlaps to look grey, might wonder how such a complex work comes together with such agility. It gets repeated - there are so many ways to see a single work."I can never predict my work, but I have a sense of it ," Manisha says. She never actually planned out any of them formally, but they worked. "Probably, I'm a bit organised in the way I think. I like to keep a routine and a rhythm. Maybe this plays itself out in my work." In `Movements' there is an amazing sense of accident and chance, guided by intuition. This blows out into a shared sense of excitement about what has happened and in fact, can never recur. It originates from a flash of the subconscious mind. John Berger comes to mind: "Never again will a single story be told as though it's the only one."
Sometimes, Manisha's works are a bit like plants . She puts in the seeds , nurtures them and then they just grow. Her interest in layers plays this out. In 1996, she contributed to a show on recipies. Her work, in several small frames went something like this : "Add a layer of onions. Fry well. Add a layer of tomatoes-." Early this year, she showed work where she layered household implements against a plate shape. She builds up her work - her "architectural drawings" - and then seems to abandon a consciously charted out pathway. "There is pleasure in holding on to the simple beginnings in a work and letting it grow-letting it breathe and form itself," she writes in a catalogue of her newest show.
There is a strange, undefinable dialogue, as it were, that Manisha's audience has with her. So much of her work intrinsically reflects herself, yet it is simultaneously about sharing and reliving the challenging moments of `creating', often within restricted parameters. Consider two works from her newest show: `100 Moments' (with 100 paintings) and "Hairy Letters". The last, scroll-like, thirstily drinks the ink, splits it into two tints and then spreads it out like a hairy insect. Suddenly, the quality of the paper - its absorbent, hide like surface and leathery edges comes alive.
`100 Moments'- a stunning agglomeration of restricted colour, abstract paintings, is equally about the painted background of each vertical mount and uneven edges as it is about how shapes and colours can flow in and out of one another. Manisha never knows how these will appear on the wall, till she arranges them on the floor.
The work is being created as it's being put up to be exhibited. And that's the fun : whichever way you look at it, the work is moving and changing.
