Manisha Gera Baswani, whose preview of her Mumbai exhibition at Jehangir Art Gallery was held at New Delhi at Art Inc, is an artist who has systematically worked on small formats, evolving from abstract or design-like elements to textured ones, and now, with all the richness of the Pahari miniature, but in the style of the popular Bazar art.The element that comes out most strongly in her work is that of ``the picture within a picture'', a format that may repeat the pietra dura patterns of Mughal art, as in Botanique to a three-dimensional window as in Thandi Havayain. There are other references in her work that range from the design element of late Mughal provincial miniatures to the curtained image of Nathdwara that found an irreverent expression in Bhupen Khakhar some 30 years ago.She shares a stylistic element with Khakhar, whose ``urban folk'' borrowings are reflected in works that evoke the art one finds in the barber shops, often worked into mirrors or painted on the walls. This is the new ``urban folk art'' of the feudal enclaves in our old cities that a number of our young artists have taken to in recent years.However, what singles this exhibition out is the fact that the artist has used these stylistic images of the middle class of our artisan-based towns to express the romanticism of the 19th century ghazal. One of the most interesting of such works is a bed that could also be a window with a bolster floating in it.A closer look reveals it is a bed with a sky-like bed-cover. And immediately the idea of "a bed of dreams" comes to the mind. There are a number of such works in this exhibition. And indeed, this exhibition would be a good thing as Mumbai has surfeit of abstraction and could do with a gentle lyrical figurative expression.
