Manjunath Kamath

Image Credit - Gallery Espace

Manjunath Kamath creates art in a diverse range of media, including clay, digital art, painting, and drawing. His artwork is influenced by a variety of cultural references, including the sculptures, frescoes, and carvings in the basadis (Jain temples) near where he was raised in south Karnataka; the elaborately costumed characters in Yakshagana plays; the tales and myths from the Indian epics; the paintings of Raja Ravi Varma and, further away, he is also influenced by Michelangelo and Rembrandt; Persian and Indian miniatures; Middle Eastern architecture's arabesque patterns, chinese ceramics and Victorian upholstery.

Image Credit - Gallery Espace

Kamath has studied traditional (classical/religious) iconography in depth, and his artwork reflects his comprehension of how cultural elements—such as conventions for portraying people in paintings or sculptures or patterns and motifs—travel across time and space, changing even as they retain the imprint of their original contexts.

Image Credit - Gallery Espace

Kamath is fascinated by time and its effects, particularly the erasures and distortions it brings about in material culture, and he meticulously recreates these effects on his canvases using multiple layers.

Image Credit - Gallery Espace

Kamath stages these seamless interactions with fragmented imagery, the surface shattered into parts from paintings or sculptures "a hand here, a foot there, the curve of a cheek or a portion of a bird" merged with geometric patterns, golden textile prints, or cupola ornaments.

Image Credit - Gallery Espace

Like a mosaic or unfinished jigsaw puzzle, the artist seems to be inviting spectators to decipher the meaning or story. Kamath's practise is characterised by playfulness and eccentricity, but below it all is a deeper, more serious point: a recognition of the connectivity of cultures and their shared ancestry, which is a crucial message given the current political climate.