A graduate from the L.S. Raheja School of Art, Bombay based artist, Manish Nai, is the hot new talent around the town.
Owing to his father's deteriorating jute business, Nai turned failure into success by finding a novel purpose for the ordinary jute sacks. With a godown full of supplies, he experimented with the raw material and realized that by calculatedly removing strings from certain parts of the jute sacks, intricate patterns could be achieved. Nai set to work on the fabric; reconstructing it, he mounted the jute to his canvas, layered it with butter paper and washed this over with transparent paints of a similar shade. The result is an enticing work of art. Up-close, the canvas appears to be almost monotone, but it is from a slight distance that Nai's works truly come alive as the intricacy of his shapes and patterns are revealed. His creations since 2006 comprise of many large-format diptychs, and Nai has increasingly begun to experiment with the surface and depth of his art form.
Manish Nai has exhibited his works at the Apparao Galleries within India, and has held shows in Singapore and Japan as well. He has also been awarded the Pollok Krasner Foundation Award for Art from New York.
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