My self

Mandeep Singh Manu
(Self-Taught Artist)
203-B, East Mohan Nagar, Amritsar-143006, Punjab, India
Contact Numbers:0183-2580258 (Resi.), 09356442194

about my art
Where I am…
All art and all creations, in any discipline, whether a painting, a sculpture, a picture or a graphic are independent identities. This can be further elucidated that when an artist sits in front of a blank canvas (in my case the blank screen of my PC), his mind, like his canvas, is also blank.

Like meditation it is a dialogue between one blankness with another. The nothingness addressing the myriad layers of nothingness within the artist and the shapes, the sounds, the colours, the flames, the angels and the demons all start waking up and they reverberate.

When I was growing, I saw, heard and imbibed a little more than the other children of my age. And today when I sit in front of my PC I am in fact trying to catch and snare my memories and all that which went into my making. Needless to say that I chose to be a graphic artist because I am physically challenged and cannot move about. So this challenge to exist, to somehow control certain realities eggs me continuously.

So far I have worked in my graphics with existing forms and form less entities and I am not very satisfied with my harvest. Now I am trying to go a little deeper into this challenging ocean without any tools or with VERY minimalist tools and shall delve deeper into colours. I actually wish to go beyond the established format which most of the graphic artists are using. I only want to work with basic colours and then add different elements in there in order to enrich my creations.

Till now my artistic process did not have many layers and I want a breakthrough wherein there is no cerebral activity nor attention, nor groping but a journey of simplicity going towards the heart bypassing the mind.

During this project/tenure, as I have already said I plan to work in such a way that colours imbued with elements will harmoniously co-exist and the visual will speak about no intervention of the tools of the craft. So far my journey has been to master the tools, to master the craft, to master the fusion and the synthesis of the colours and the forms. But now the tools will vanish, the craft will vanish and there will be a very eloquent soliloquey of colours.

Am I setting myself onto a path which, hitherto none has ventured so far? Even if the answer is no I am committed to do something that hasn't 'been' so far. How an artist is supposed to venture into alien shores without any tools? Chasing memories, giving them shapes only in colours? The most powerful example and visual I can give here is that of Michaelangelo during the period he was doing the Sestine Frescoes. The Pope had asked him to paint God Whom he hadn't even seen. And the rest is history. Hu

mbly I say here I am neither being presumptuous or over-ambitious because I know that colours have a way of unfolding and throbbing and if one's receivers and antennaes are properly tuned, mesmerising and miraculous creations can always be fished.

Coming back to my work so far I have relied heavily on religio-classic and ecclesiastical imagery, mostly lying dormant in my mind with whom I am in a comfortable dialogue. But now it seems that my journey with that is coming to pass. May be that is because I have felt a very strong pull of doing 'simple' things which in fact have always been extremely challenging.

Hence the colours, hence a graphic made without any tools, interacting with elements. Its a challenge I have set myself up with so that I can set an examplary path for my other artist brethren, so that one day a more simple, a more functional PC will be made which will take people like me away from being crafty and cerebral.


article


THE SOUNDS OF RAGA AASA

A call from a friend
“A boy from Amritsar wishes to meet you.
He is an artist, Manu is his name,
He has been nominated and awarded by some prestigious institutions,
his elder brother Sandeep will call you soon they are in Delhi these days”

“so you have come from ‘Guru ka Ghar’( Amritsar )
.. welcome Manu, Your work is really very good, imaginative, soulful, living, lots of colors, hues and variations.”
No, these paintings are not coming from age experience; they are coming from within and a bliss from some where unknown, unexplained existence
He is very young, he has not learnt techniques to paint.
He is working on a virtual surface of computer screen on a very high-tech software
with the help of sixteen million colors and unlimited hues.

All over the world, these days artists are using different mediums to express themselves. The role of Multimedia is very important in art expression.
Expressing ones ideas is a virtual reality. On internet blogs and web pages are becoming more important means of communication, faster and necessary.

Manu is expressing himself with this new medium
Working on the virtual space and get them printed on the real space of paper.
These wonderful graphic prints, could be enlarged up to any size, on the canvas media, to the vinyl and on the archival paper which could last for a century and more.

What images are appearing on his virtual space?
his own- the universal sounds from the deep rooted genes,
and I think these are letters to unknown
which have transferred in visual forums and colors.
He is singing a raga through his colorful virtual paintings.
While witnessing them
I could hear a morning prayer -
A raga aasa
The morning dev on the grass.
Like the jewels on the lotus.

Sidharth
New Delhi


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Blessing

Mandeep Singh Manu the young, budding artist has a great sense of colours and produces wonderful compositions by using mouse and keyboard as his tools, and monitor screen as his canvas.

At this young age, he has achieved so many goals. He has already a berth in the National Exhibition at Lalit Kala Acedamy New Delhi and some international exhibitions. His personality is going bettor and bettor after getting recognition in international exhibitions.

His colour sense, the flow of colours in his creations, the small and background figures, made him so strong to overcome his physical handicappedness. No doubt he will touch new heights in his creative world.


Avtar Singh Sculptor
Amrisat


my bio data


Mandeep Singh Manu
(Self-Taught Artist)
203-B, East Mohan Nagar, Amritsar-143006, Punjab, India
Contact Numbers:0183-2580258 (Resi.), 09356442194

Date of Birth: Oct 6, 1981

QUALIFICATION: B.A (Major in History from IGNOU)

Certificate Course in D.T.P

Awards

2nd Agnipath All India Art Competition and Exhibition in Travancore Art Galleries, Kasturba Gandhi Marg, Delhi (2006)

2nd Annual Indian Royal Academy Awards –2005 at Gulbarga, Karnataka

70th All India Exhibition of Fine Art in Amritsar - 2004

Vocational Award-2004 by Rotary Club Amritsar North.

Exhibitions/Participations

2008
International Touring Collection art exhibition in Common Ground 2008, which will be organized
at Beijing During Olympics. And that will tour around 20 countries up to 2010.

Group Exhibition held at Virsa Vihar Society in Amritsar 2008

2007
Participated in Visual Aid’s “Get Out of Jail Free” art exhibition at the Sisters of
Perpetual Indulgence Gallery in the San Francisco LGBT Community
Center from CA April 2 – May 12, 2007.

Participated in 9th Tehran International Poster Biennial 2007 at Iran.

Participated in 20th All India Art Exhibition 2007at Lokemany Tilak Smarak
Mandir, Pune.

Group exhibition “Young Call” held at Bharat Bhawan, Bhopal (Sep. 2007).

2006

Participated in 2nd Agnipath All India Art Competition and Exhibition at Artist’s
Centre, Mumbai & Travancore Art Galleries, Kasturba Gandhi Marg, Delhi (2006)

Participated in 71st All India Annual Art Exhibition at Academy of Fine Arts,
Kolkata (2006)

2005

Participated in 71st All India Exhibition of Fine Art in Amritsar (2005)

Participated in 2nd Annual Indian Royal Academy Awards –2005 at Gulbarga, Karnataka

2004
Participated in 46th National Exhibition of Art 2004 at Lalit Kala Akedemi Delhi, held at Kerla

Participated in 76th Annual Art Exhibition 2004 at AIFACS Delhi.

Participated in 70th All India Exhibition of Fine Art in Amritsar (2004)

Solo exhibition held at Punjab Natshala, Amritsar. (May 2004)

2003

Participated in 69th All India Exhibition of Fine Art in Amritsar (2003)

Solo exhibition held at S.G.Thakur Singh Art Gallery Amritsar, with collaboration
of IAFA (Oct. 2003).

Solo exhibition held at Guru Nanak Dev University Amritsar. (Dec 2003)

Camp/Workshop

Senior Students Graphics Workshop organized at Bharat Bhavan in Bhopal (2006)

Collections

S.G.Thakur Singh Art Gallery Amritsar, Heritage Fashion House New Delhi, Padamshree Dr.Daljit Singh Eye Surgeon, GNDU, USA, China, Japan, Delhi, Punjab at some private collections

Publications

Catalog of IAFA, AIFACS, GNDU, Title of a book JNU Delhi and many titles of books and magazines Published

my website


http://www.artmajeur.com/manusingh/