Khalid Mahmood Mithu’s work focuses on the transformation and interplay of structure and form. He seeks a representation of the many-hued world around him in seemingly formless abstraction. His inner vision skews and geometricizes objects that allow it to depart from the familiar and the known. Ubiquity is replaced by an complex play of colour, texture and grain.

Mithu seeks to encode and depict auditory signals with colour. Mechanical and natural sounds are shaded and brought together in the canvas–sweet and harsh, high and fading all these opposing notes are handled with a rare virtuosity. Mithu consciously seeks to accommodate our inner desire to be free of the constant bombardment of noise. His soothing colours and mild hues reign in harmony and rhythm.
His felt-experience and realisation lends him a rare insight into the world of colour, line, sound and shade. As a student of Fine Arts he learned about the comparative strength of colours. His understanding was bolstered by his later involvement with cinematography and photography.

Mithu works simultaneously on paintings, photography and cinema. His ease of handling various media and multiple digital platforms has enriched his ideas and skill. It seems, even in painting, he often beholds the world through the lens. The aesthetics of painting and cinema are interwoven in his artwork.

Mithu’s paintings could be labelled ‘expressionist’. However obscure and shapeless a painting may seem, it is never bereft of the suggestion of the actual objects. His work is emotive, with a profusion of colours and motifs. He often required to ‘paint’ with a medley of colours on the camera. His active exposure to the practices and customs of minority groups and communities is manifest in the presence of ethnic motifs in his paintings. The oft-occurring images of tribal music instruments are testimony to his awareness and appreciation of the living patterns of other marginalised communities.

All artists are eventually drawn to their inner self. Mithu is no exception–he delves deep into himself, reminiscing with shreds of newsprint, obscure thumb impressions, parts of broken music instruments, lost images of the eyes and torn-off portions of the calendar. He builds his own universe, his work becoming his personal diary. Each day, a kind of theatre replete with forms and colours is being staged before us. To assimilate the elements of this personal theatre on paper, Mithu takes apart its inherent organisation. He creates his own art; lively, ever changing, like mother-nature itself, creating new references and imparting new meaning each day.

– Moinuddin Khaled

Date: 18/11/2007 – 30/11/2007
Exhibition regular hours: Everyday 12 – 8 PM
Venue: Bengal Gallery of Fine Arts
Entry condition: open to all