Written by Parul |Updated: February 24, 2019 1:36:22 am
Carnival of Colours
Artist Madan Lal’s show at Mumbai’s Jehangir Art Gallery is an exploration of hues and themes.
Madan Lal’s latest show presents new colours, fresh motifs, anthropomorphic images, dreams, geometry, fantasies, and ornamentation. Giving a new texture to his series of 21 paintings at the exhibition ‘Codes of Colours’, he presents his work at the Jehangir Art Gallery in Mumbai next week.
In the past, the Chandigarh-based painter’s work has taken inspiration from his surroundings and the everyday — be it Le Corbusier’s architecture and its geometry or nature. This time it is no different, except there is a new cultural context that the series explores through bright colours and with the entry of pastels in the lines and contour highlights.
The paintings, like applique, depict many motifs. For instance, his series on Urban Phulkari is a fusion of various elements and small figures of the real and the ethereal, with a lot of concrete that we see around us. It presents a metaphor of the complex emotional-scape of human beings. The new figures that have emerged are of immigrants, people we see all around us. “They have become a part of our lives, space, culture. In an indirect way, we have accepted them into our lives. Their colours of celebration are in contrast to the grey landscape of our city. I have strived to merge it together as part of this new work, with a focus on feelings,” explains Lal, who has been working on the series for over a year now.
The paintings, like applique, depict many motifs. For instance, his series on Urban Phulkari is a fusion of various elements and small figures of the real and the ethereal, with a lot of concrete that we see around us. It presents a metaphor of the complex emotional-scape of human beings. The new figures that have emerged are of immigrants, people we see all around us. “They have become a part of our lives, space, culture. In an indirect way, we have accepted them into our lives. Their colours of celebration are in contrast to the grey landscape of our city. I have strived to merge it together as part of this new work, with a focus on feelings,” explains Lal, who has been working on the series for over a year now.
In another work, animal figures dance around the idea of the eternal women. On the clothes they wear, Lal depicts dreams of love, another recurring motif. Women, their beauty, their connection with life, animals, and birds form themes in his recent works. He fuses them with contemporary elements of everyday, such as an auto or an imagery from routine life, thus giving the work multiplicity of meanings.
The miniature tradition of Rajasthan, frescoes of Ajanta and Ellora Caves, idioms from Sufism and Buddhism find a strong presence on the painter’s canvas. However, for this series, Lal says he has focused on colour. “The human form is more prominent in these works, as is the intricate relationship between a man and a woman.
There are motifs of the swing that depicts the many motions of our that of a goat, awaiting its fate. I work with instincts, and in this series, I have worked with pastels, which adds to the idea of the subtleness of a mind at work. For years I have been wanting to paint the 12 months, with their varied colours, behaviours, and forms. In this series, the monsoon has found its way; a subject that will dominate my canvas in the coming year,” says Lal. This show, he hopes, will also be presented in Chandigarh after its Mumbai run.
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