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Some unusual experiments with colours

“A Pathless Journey”, exhibition of painter K. Subramaniam’s works, opens today

One of Mani’s paintings

A weeklong exhibition of paintings titled “A Pathless Journey” by K. Subramaniam (Mani) will be inaugurated by the Comptroller and Auditor-General of India, Vinod Rai, at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts here on Wednesday.

An amateur self-taught painter, Mani’s experiments with colours began in 1985 while he was studying engineering. Beginning with watercolours, he also experimented with acrylic in a few works, but it is oil that became his final medium. He is an officer with the Indian Audit and Accounts Service. It is the belief that painting is not just a means of self-expression but, more importantly, a mode of communicating emotions and ideas that prodded Mani to take up art more seriously. His works are an invitation to the viewer to accompany him on a metaphysical journey to explore the truth of being, a pathless journey stretching the limits of human thought.

The present exhibition, the artist’s third solo endeavour, displays his range of philosophical and spiritual themes. While most of the works display the ideas of Zen, Indian and Greek philosophy, others such as “Sufi Sema” and “The Passage” try to recreate a mystical experience. Another painting, “Levels of Reality”, is a depiction of the “advaita” concept of reality as existence and consciousness as bliss.

Use of symbols

Though use of symbols is prominent in Mani’s portrayal of highly evolved notions, he does not believe in making them too abstract as his main aim is to reach out to the public through his works. Commonly perceived pairs of opposites such as male and female, good and evil, joy and sorrow and the particle and wave nature of nature are also portrayed as two inseparable sides of the same coin.

Kunal Diwan

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