Mansaram’s Collages On Display At NY Gallery

New York: The Burlington-based artist and collagist, P. Mansaram, was honoured with an exhibition of his work at the A.Jain Marunouchi Gallery in New York that opened this month. The communications guru, Marshall McLuhan, had said once of his work way back in 1973: “As the West loses its intense visual preference and enters the iconic world of sculptural and acoustic values,the painterly and graphic idiom of India gains steadily in western habits and acceptance. The work of Mansaram brings the mosaic forms of T.S.Eliot and James Joyce to the Orient in the very moment and by the same means that Mansaram enables us to contemplate the Orient as a variant modality of the The Waste Land.In short, Mansaram is kind of two way mirror, living simultaneously in the divided and distinguished worlds of the East and West”.

Mansaram explains, “I was aware of the presence of Collage all around me while growing up in India. It came in many forms; mom making stuffed parathas, halwai making samosas in the market, kites being collaged during certain festival, home made toys being sold made from recycled paper and bamboo at the village fair, mud walls being collaged with personal artifacts,mirrors,photos,oleographs in villages of Rajasthan. However, I did not adopt collage in my Art practice in the early part of my career.

“It was not until I went to Amsterdam in 1963 on a Dutch Govt. fellowship, when I noticed the map of Amsterdam had a graphic quality. I was compelled to use part of it in my first collage. Later visiting well- known Dutch Assemblage artist Jaap Waaghmaker reinforced my will to pursue collage as a medium for Art Making.”

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