Sagar Manandhar

In Sagar Manandhar's paintings, forms and colours are their own significances. The images are not references and representations to the objects, events and the people of the world. In other word, one can not take an image in the canvas and link to the recognizable thing of the external reality. They are rather the intuitive flow of colours and lines toward the unknown direction. Nevertheless, the images and coloured shapes have the proximity to the objects and things of our imagination and the unknown entities of the world. The works lead us to the zone where we have not traveled, and to the things which we have considered insignificant. In other words, they appeal to observe ourselves.

In a sense Sagar's process, actions and images are quite natural, for we have seen many things in the world but have not given distinct shapes and names to them by our language and culture. Sagar goes beyond the defined things and invents new ones. Of course, his works are the voyage to the virgin land. We know in our journey to the new land, we see new shapes, images, objects, places and people, and we feel naturally excited without bothering their meanings and significances. But they click to our imagination and aesthetic experience. That is the end of that.

However, the consistent viewing of the paintings, reveals one or the other recognizable images in open-ended and plural manner. The unending road approaches to the horizon signifying the journey to infinity, the pristine meadows and lush lawns expand on the both sides of the rural cottages signifying primitive settlement. Likewise, the eternal ebbs and flows strike the seashore to the infinity. The dream landscape of yellow soil appears and disappears. All these bizarre scenes persist for the moment and in next view, they seem to have melted like the snow into other shapes and forms. Thus, Sagar's paintings remain forever new.

There are innumerable shapes and images in the canvas. But rectangle and triangle are recurrent. Moreover, the triangles are more assertive, focused, centered and cherished in some of his canvas giving organization to the overall structure. Why is so? We can never know the artist's unconscious intention and desire but we can always interpret on the basis of our experience and imagination. The triangle represents the prakriti, female principle, the vulva and the source of creation.

We do not know where the line leads, where it takes rest, ascends up and again descends down. This is the spontaneous play with colours, lines and brush strokes. It is the record of the creative process, the unplanned and adventurous journey to the new land. Sagar has not painted the complete vision what he has identified in his mind, it is the search and voyage for constructing vision. It is not the presentation of achieved experience but the experience on process. As the forms are plural, open-ended and ever changing, their significances are provisional and ever shifting. Thus the forms remain ever new.