Exhibition displays artist's watercolours that play with light

New Delhi : The recent works of Manish Pushkale, a painter of light and luminosity, are exhibited at the Akar Prakar art gallery here from Monday.

The exhibition "Lamina" shows his recent watercolour paintings, and his nuanced work with colours and illusions of depth.

Pushkale, who paints as if to retain the bright light given out by a white canvas, plays with shades of colours to create artworks that look inherently lit.

His works "seem to have been shaped from skins of light, subtle tissues of alternate translucency and opacity that shimmer before us", the gallery said in a statement.

"For a moment, we forget that we are looking at two-dimensional works mounted on a wall. It appears, instead, that we are gazing down into the waters of a river or lake, at the action of gentle currents and lightly disturbed alluvial sediments, or the memories of water," it added.

In his handling of light, he gives it a "diffuse, refracted, cloudy, and submarine" quality, Akar Prakar said.

Pushkale's use of the wet muslin cloth renders in the artwork a certain illumination -- a style unique to the artist.

The Bhopal-born artist has exhibited in Delhi, Paris, Chicago, Dubai, Munich, and Perth, among other locations. He received the All India Fine Arts and Crafts Society (AIFACS) award in 1997, and the Raza Foundation award in 2003.

He has been featured in "Seven", a book on seven contemporary artists who have been published in Paris. Having been a resident artist in France and Italy, Pushkale now works out of his studio in Delhi.

"Lamina" exhibits his "mysterious" new works, and is open for public viewing till September 14.