FAMILIAR NAMES

Art exhibitions bearing the name of a curator but often lacking a curatorial perspective is a common situation. But the artist-as-curator, especially when his/her work is part of the show is a rather new phenomenon in Pakistani art circle. And such incidents makes one wonder if it is to challenge/critique the art establishments, to explore new ways of seeing, to find ways of introducing/empowering a certain muscled out group or a rather experimental art or for any other number of reasons? Similarly when I heard about Familiar Names displayed at the Drawing room gallery in Lahore, in Novemeber 2011, showing the works of 12 young BNU graduates, curated by Shiblee Munir (one of the artists in the group) I began to wonder about the significance of the title of the show, the choice of the works...e.t.c, only to realize at the end that its pretty random. Curating and organizing exhibitions, even though looks quite impressive on one’s resume, needs to address the characteristics and responsibilities of curators as interpreter, facilitator, catalyst, instigator, e.t.c, more seriously.

If I were to discern some commonality between the works in the show, it would have to be the interplay between conception, construction and representation. This effort to try and balance the conceptual and the material, exploratory and explanatory or individualist and idealist aspects of the work, is only natural for these young artists, whose experience of making and presenting their BFA degree shows, is not so distant. Which is why, despite the widespread diffusion of computer-aided art, most of the works in the show were made from traditional materials and techniques, in a deliberate attempt to exhibit their skills.

Shahzad Ali’s metal rack with glass jars, containing rubber casts of minar-e-Pakistan, titled The showcase, is a very straightforward representation of the country’s troubled identity. Making reference to the pickle jars, it makes one wonder, if the miniature minarets were actually pickled or at least preserved in a similar solution instead of water, it may have made more sense in the context of the meanings attached to the word ‘pickle’, making the irony more prominent, visually. His other work, titled White! Back ground, is an installation of dead doves scattered on the floor of the gallery. My first guess was that these birds are real, but on close encounter they appeared to be made from cotton or some other soft material. These silicon birds are made very realistically, located in a space between the actual and the virtual.

This space in-between real and fictional is also a feature of Pratima Thakali’s surreal painting, titled Little Flyer. Resembling the print media, particularly advertisement, in design aesthetics and color compositions, a simultaneous reality exists within the frame of this large canvas, juxtaposing nonlinear mutidimentional realms of experience across time and space, that appears to be operating through chance, independent of the author’s will, yet also making references to the everyday/familiar world.

Simultaneous realities are also the subject of Haroon Mughal’s photomontages, made by overlapping different images off the street that are paired with silhouettes of a familiar object or another reference to the street, voicing his concerns about the socio-political confusion of the present and the uncertainty of the future.

Shiblee Munir’s minimalist representation of Another Realistic Painting done with black watercolor on a white board is in my humble opinion, a dialogue with the medium primarily, perhaps an attempt to get in touch with one’s rather instinctive/unconscious side through almost automatic drawing. Munir may not need to support his abstract work with more abstract words, like in the artist statement.

Fahad Hameed’s Point Zero and Breeze, is not only an optical illusion but an endurance test. Breeze, with black thin ribbons stretched vertically across a frame, hanging against a white wall is almost impossible to look at, without feeling noxious. Not as a particularly disgusting encounter but as a natural consequence of looking at those black stripes that are continuously moving from right to left and left to right because of the fan installed on the ceiling. Concerning the interaction between illusion and picture plane, between understanding and seeing, existing in the midst of limits and possibilities of making, seeing, looking, experiencing, changing perception and revelation.

Movement is also inherent in Hira Rafi’s paintings. These landscapes, as if experienced while in a car, although painted in acrylics on canvas, note the presence of the camera. A possible impediment for the viewer in actually experiencing this movement is perhaps the scale, I wish that the canvases were much larger than 8 x 10 inches.

Shahzad Hassan Ghazi’s exploration of the mediums is demonstrated in scratching, drawing and painting the cityscapes on rusted tin. Waqas Anees’s Fossils is a similar investigation of materials and process. His bricks, encasing non-recyclable plastic items speaks of outdated (or perhaps not) ideas of technological advancement, industrialization and its affects on environment. Faiza Bashir, Ayesha Yousaf and Salman Hassan’s mixed media works also have a lot of potential that perhaps needs a lot more time to simmer before presenting it for viewing or may be I’m being severely critical and its premature to be making such judgements, most of it is thesis work after all.