Speaking the language of flowers

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It would probably be hard to imagine something as beautiful and delicate as flowers giving a voice to something as destructive and evil as terrorism and corruption. But artist Manoj Kachangal brings out the beauty of this seemingly impossible representation with panache in his solo show, Sublime Lands.

Inspired by semul and palash flowers that have been etched in the artist’s memory since childhood, he uses their colour and form as metaphors for his voice against violence, corruption and terrorism in today’s society.
Painted in bright shades, Kachangal’s textured landscapes are realistic renditions of what he sees around him; landscapes that evoke nostalgia and transform from the mundane to the sublime. “The first message of any art should be to appeal visually to a viewer. I don’t think I deliberately give out any message with my work, but the conditions prevailing around me do affect my mental state and thus, my work. For instance, the terrorist attack on Indian Parliament and, thereafter, continuous attacks on the country disturbed my mental peace. Everybody seems to be competing with everybody else and in that competition, they have cremated morality. The aggressive colour of my paintings is the voice against such violence. The message through my paintings is that now the time has come for people to awake from their slumber and take aggressive action against terrorism and violence,” Kachangal says.
Several of his paintings have the hallmark features of criss-crossing knife strokes, horizontal planes that run parallel and the bindu, which for the artist is a symbolic representation of all celestial planets, besides being a point of gravitation and focus. The strokes, slashes and rolls in his paintings are perfectly defined. “In the last three years there has been an astonishing change in my paintings. Earlier, I used to work in monochromatic colours, which were
then replaced by a bright and aggressive palette as memories of semul and palash flowers crept into my work,” he explains.
The show has been curated by Johny M.L. and features 50 large-scale paintings made by Kachangal in the last three years.
“In Kachangal’s works, the centre of focus is not just about creating a harmonious composition, but also about expressing his world view. As he believes so much in the music of nature, he also believes in the chaos that nature creates within itself, once in a while. He believes in these upheavals of nature, its violence and rapturous movements,” says Johny.
According to him, an artist should reflect upon beauty as well as terror because beauty occurs when the chaotic terror is contained and regulated, and terror unfolds when beauty forgets to articulate itself . “Kachangal considers humans the most beautiful creation, who forget their own beauty and indulge in violent acts. As an artist who seeks harmony, he cannot look away from this chaos created by these ‘otherwise’ beautiful creatures. Hence, each of his canvases, however calm and serene, encapsulates a contained violence. He transcends this terror and human nature into ‘Sublime Lands,’” Johny adds.
Kachangal has always been interested in flora and fauna. “Nature has been my most important influence. Situations in life have been my guru,” he says.
Experiments with various art forms have been a part of his evolving style. “In my earlier paintings, I used the allegory of geometric forms. The flower and the butterfly were also important. Many times I have used these to make the composition more effective. I have used common symbols like the swastika, the sun and the moon. In short, my art has been the composition of symbols of Indian folk art.”
The artist, who admires the works of Ram Kumar, V.S. Gaitonde and J.S. Swaminathan, enjoys working mostly on a vertical format so that he can bring all the five
elements of nature in one canvas.
He reveals that while his teachers in school and later in college — Vishnu Chinchalkar and Sachida Nagdev — were great influences, meeting S.H. Raza in Bhopal in 2006 proved to be the turning point in his career. “When Raza saw my work and wrote these lines — Na roothi meri aas, aa gaya phir madhumaas (I have not given up hope, love is here again) — I became free and realised that the beauty of abstract art lies in simplicity,” Kachangal says.
Born in Shadhora, Madhya Pradesh, Kachangal grew up in rural surroundings. Accom-panying his grandfather, a farmer, to work in the fields, he witnessed the expanse of the earth, its undulations and changing complexions and they have remained with him. “I was fond of travelling. The way I looked at nature was not imitative; it was analytical. This has been my real teacher,” says the 34-year-old artist.
A recipient of the Raza award, Kachangal has held more than 20 solo shows and participated in several group shows. A book on his art, Doors of Perception, was published by Bharatiya Jnanpith in 2008. Some of
his works exhibited in “Sublime Lands” are as big as 7x6 feet.
His works are currently on display at the Visual Arts
Gallery, India Habitat Centre,
New Delhi, and will conclude on July 25.