Catalogue Exhibition: Shrewsbury Museum-UK
06/05/1997 , By Tony Phillips
FOREWORD
In an age when the influence of technology upon art is commonly visible, one is confronted with a dilemma concerning the value of technological know-how in artworks as compared with more purely aesthetic values. Often, this ‘cleverness’ of technique becomes a primary effect of the work, and the achievement is one of inventiveness of method.
In Diwan Manna’s colour photography a raw seduction by colour and human form takes place which at once abandons one’s concerns with the techniques used for its production – fascinating or complex though that may be.
When body and colour appeal as tangible elements of life, each with a power of its own, each with a power to enliven the other with atmosphere, drama, and suggestiveness, one is aware that the artist has found a language at once effective and meaningful. Here colour distortion is not a gimmick, neither is the pose of the naked model. Both are live experiences for the viewer, the symbols are raw, like the body, which, whether distorted with subtle veiled tones, or with brash violent reds or greens, explores our own endless fascination with the naked human – an endless reflection of human predicaments. So this work is ‘tested’ rather than interpreted by the viewer. The colour is on you before you know how it has been produced – even before you know you are standing in front of a photograph.
If the variety of contemporary visual art methods and mediums seems in continuous expansion, one finds oneself seeking hallmarks by which to identify the significance and value of one art work from another. For me, directness and passion are the key elements that invest a work with real power. And directness and passion are what we find successfully obscuring the techniques within Diwan’s colour photography.
