Textured expressions

KATHMANDU:

For artist Gaurav Shrestha, coming up with creative ideas to create unique expressions in his collage is his freedom of expression. He has been into collage paintings for the last eight years and on May 30, his sixth solo exhibition titled ‘Material Scapes’ was inaugurated at Gallery 32, Dent Inn by the Ambassador of Israel to Nepal Dan Stav.

Shrestha uses different materials in his creations thus bringing out different forms of texture and expression to each piece. In this collection also he has used materials like lokta, fabric, lungta (prayer flag), cardboard, packing box, calendar, jute, keys and photos et cetera. According Shrestha, he has given much importance to the texture in this collection to bring out unique effects.

He has titled a painting ‘The Evolution’ and has pasted numbers form 0 to 12 and the first letter of the name of all 12 months in a red background. “In this particular painting I have cut out pieces of calendar and used numbers and letter which represents time.”

In another piece he has symbolised a situation where evil prevails over the good. He has used a photo of Lord Buddha praying but his face is covered by maroon colour. One can see a face of evil in that smeared colour and as per the artist this cloud of colour represents evil.

One piece titled ‘Image of Love’ has Lord Krishna while again ‘Anyol II’ has pieces of paper with numbers placed as hand of a clock. He also has number of pieces named Faces of nature, which have been made with bits and pieces of magazines pages.

The whole collection is rich in colours with bright hues of red, yellow and blue present in most of the creations.

The exhibition is on till June 30. — Krita Raut