The Visual Art Gallery presents an exhibition of Nabibakhsh Mansoori's recent paintings at Gallery 27 in Mayfair, London from 24 - 29 April 2006. Born in Gujarat, India Nabibakhsh Mansoori is a contemporary artist best known for abstract art in vivid colours. Art critic, Esther Davis reviews his work here:

While watching Nabibakhsh Mansoori paintings, one could assume that the artist - as a child - is the main protagonist of his own paintings. Here he journeys through a landscape of bright colours, while creating a pictorial memoir of his own life. This method of painting has a past-present and fast-forward movement, as a large part of the artist childhood was spent, tending cattle on the rolling hills of Idar, where he dreamt of becoming a painter.

In these rather abstract landscapes, distant horizons appear in the paintings and the legend of the blue mountain appears in his work as he depicts the play of life, both rural and urban. Looking at his work, one feels, the painter appears to be standing in the golden eye of a peacock feather floating in the sky over the distant village, where stones stand still, like sculptures, as the fragrant lake evokes the language of dreams.

Dreams, which made Nabibakhsh Mansoori move from small beginnings in Idar to larger horizons in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Mumbai, Delhi and the world. Idar is Nabibakhsh inner landscape where images of trees, lakes, birds, animals and human forms emerge in a tranquil pastoral setting. Memory plays an important part in Nabibakhsh Mansoori paintings and leaves its traces in his work, sometimes changing known forms into unknown destinations, which emerge in his canvas as inner and outer worlds of the artist experience.

For an artist like Nabibakhsh Mansoori, memories of his village, now lost in time, emerge in his paintings with kaleidoscopic images, as he lifts the transparent layers of colours, which appear and disappear into veils of blues, greens, yellows, reds, touched at the edges with greys, pinks or white. The artist constructs both rural and urban spaces with a certain amount of decorative but lyrical luminosity. It is obvious he loves the sculpted hillocks of Idar, the village houses, and trees. This surrounding keeps changing from rural life to the urban experience.

Nabibakhsh Mansoori paints, as though he were playing with his forms, first starting with a realistic technique, with the use of elongated limbs, sometimes fused, with hands, appearing or disappearing in pathways running through an imaginary landscape. These are forged together with the use of multi-dimensional perspectives and prismatic colours.

In totality, the artist appears to play a topsy-turvy game in his canvases, where he creates a pictorial memoir of his life. Filtered through the sieve of memory, the colours in Nabibakhsh paintings are like those, as seen through a prism. The same prism, his father had gifted Nabibakhsh as a child, held against the sun as he sat under the rocks of Idar, weaving dreams about a colourful future.

Nabibakhsh Mansoori paintings have a certain friendly ambience, as he paints birds and animals with affection, like the goat strutting on a cobbled path, a dog emerging from the shadows and the cow walking in a silent street.

Interestingly, the artist does not merely paint the past, but also expresses the urban experience, which is almost always tinged with memories of trees, tendrils and the human form reclining endlessly along the horizon with a certain amount of poetry. Because, Nabibakhsh is often inspired by poetry, when he creates the essence of the twilight hour, the silence of lonely streets and a single peacock feather flying over the city, while the lotus-lips of the nayika, breaks into a melodious song as the artist tries to capture the play of life, while weaving colourful dreams, through these paintings.

Review by Esther David

ABOUT ESTHER DAVID

Esther David is an artist - critic - author of The Walled City, By The Sabarmati, Book of Esther. Book of Rachel. Catalogues written - Amit Ambalal, In search of Krishna, for Sakshi Gallery. Mumbai, The Raja Ravi Varma Press, for Marvel Art Gallery Ahmedabad, Ravishanker Raval and Somalal Shah for Gujarat State Lalit Kala Academy, Inner Line – Outer Space and Era Of The Masters, for Visual Arts Gallery, London.

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