Multitudes of Meanings

Three or four. That's the number of hues Mahesh Jagtap chooses for each of his canvases. The abundance we see in his works is not a riot of colours, but a dense interaction and expansion of the form, through a play of colour. With brisk brushstrokes, the artist lets the colour overlap and flow until defined by a contour, usually black. The mark he leaves is a myriad of forms- clouds that merge and emerge and connect lyrically.

We live in a connected world today, thanks to cloud computing - a field of operation that demands meticulous actions by back-end engineers who are always aware of error codes 100 to 215. Users have a flawless experience, so much so that they are almost unaware of the cloud architecture. Viewed vis-a-vis this digital experience, Mahesh Jagtap's paintings take us to a different world... they make us sense the unseen, unspoken networks that bind us with worlds that we call ours!

As an abstractionist, Mahesh Jagtap would never entertain questions about the 'meaning' or even descriptions of his forms. It is unto us- the viewers, to decode the meanings, and thereby ourselves. It may not be

'wrong' if a child spots a monkey while adults find Gulmohar petals in the same painting. Yet, the sense that these paintings aim to evoke is beyond animals or petals, it is beyond the form.

The Mumbai Abstractionist canon of art, in which Mahesh Jagtap would find his place, proposes a sensemaking strategy beyond colour, form and such other physical attributes of a painted work. Instead, the body of works, often repetitive in its appearance, is regarded as the artists' proposition. Thus viewed, the present suit of paintings would evoke memories of loss and of plentitude, the works might encourage us to see the sublimity of connections or empower us to sense the architecture of interdependent associations. Together, these works merge actions into affluence and emerge in a multitude of senses and meanings.

Abhijeet Tamhane

Mumbai, February 2023