My art is called abstract,but that is just a label,like impressionism or anything else, says Prabhakar Kolte. The Mumbai-based artist believes that a painting is essentially just a painting and his are expressions of imagination. This is also something he has consistently maintained over the years. But ever since these artwork earned the abstract tag in the early 80s,Koltes work has led him to steadily grow in stature,to a position where he is now considered one of the countrys finest abstractionists. For his current solo exhibition at Gallery 7,Kala Ghoda,titled Deconstruction which continues till September 30 Kolte has put together works he has done over the last three decades. There are a number of paintings on canvas,some ink on paper and watercolours. But the most intriguing of the lot is also the most recent a wall installation that was made for this show. Occupying almost an entire wall at the gallery,the work largely consists woodwork painted in charcoal black,but towards the centre is an assortment of objects. I called a carpenter,we did some woodwork,I painted it and I put together some objects from my studio, says Kolte,almost trivialising a process which,as the finished product suggests,must have been rather time consuming. The very fact that a wall installation manages to be the star of the show is fairly ironic. For among the things that became rather well-known about Kolte during his rise to prominence was his almost indifferent approach to installation art. While he says he respects his fellow artists installation work,he also indicates that he isnt sure of the form itself. Im not convinced with doing installations, he says. The idea of installations is present in our culture,but I dont think it has developed too much in the country, he adds. However,before he settled on abstractionism,Kolte not only dabbled in installations,but also did landscape painting for a fair amount of years. But even before that was the usual childish process of replicating existing images. I used to make graphs on the sheets and then copy the exact images, he recalls. We had calendars with religious figures on them,so I ended up drawing many. I thought this process was art, he adds. It wasnt until secondary school and his meeting with landscape painter Murlidhar Sadashiv Joshi,who founded the Model Art Institute in Dadar and went on to become a mentor in Koltes life for a period,that the 67-year-old began to discover other forms of art. Through his final years of school,Kolte informally learned from Joshi and consequently picked up his style of landscape painting. But Joshi insisted on Kolte joining Sir J J School of Art,as opposed to learning further from him,and Kolte did so in the mid 60s. While his first three years at the institute were spent trying to find his own style,in his fourth year,he came across the works of Swiss artist and teacher Paul Klee. That,he maintains,played a crucial role in shaping the course his work would take in future. I was asked to go look at a Paul Klee book. The book had Klee talk about an artists need to communicate,that he is a part of nature and so he should follow nature, says Kolte. He immediately proceeded to underline the word follow,for he realised that until then,he was imitating nature. After graduating from the institute in 1968,Kolte taught there between 1972 and 1994. His work had settled into the abstract genre,but continued to evolve nonetheless,as processes usually do. Around the mid-80s,I began to remove any identifiable forms from my paintings, he says. If I saw any forms,I would wipe them out in a painterly fashion,with another colour and then I realised that wiping was my painting. That has been the basis of his art ever since.
