WAYS OF DECEIVING

by Zainab Siddiqui at Rohtas2, Lahore, 7^th – 16^th feb, 2013.

I walk into the gallery and encounter an empty space or rather, a space unoccupied by objects, “strange” I thought to myself! And without any conscious attempt, I noticed, my ‘self’, drawn towards the farthest end of the gallery, housing ‘objects’. Objects that are both, more conscious of their presence as Art, such as; bricks of resin, on top of objects that are more conscious of their customary usage as a ‘base’ or ‘stand’, such as; gallery plinths. Enclosed in the bricks of resin, are more objects or rather ‘images’ of objects, but “image when printed ‘on’ a material is itself an object”, I thought to myself.  These images, “are these relics from the past?” I asked, “to simulate loss or the desire to encapsulate time with/in objects”, I supposed. “Is it, ‘the’ dressing table, ‘the’ lamp, ‘the’ page from ‘the’ book, ‘the’ corridor,……….?” I wondered. But the banality of the tiltes; ‘corridor I’, ‘corridor II’,…….‘object I’, ‘object II’….., suggested otherwise. Also, these images, printed on transparency sheet are fragmented into planes; broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled as abstracted forms, removing a coherent sense of depth, a thing from all sides at once, yet 2 dimensional, like a cubist painting, reducing volumes into planes, yet sculptural, gathering planes, back into volumes. A shift from perceptual to conceptual or the opposite, perhaps. Or somewhere in-between ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’, only if they were not so small, or placed not so low and approachable from all sides instead of the front alone. “Did the back side of the dressing table actually have the image of the backside of the dressing table?”, I try to remember. “I want to pick them up, hold them, feel them, look at it from various vantage points”, I desired. “Its placement, its making, its scale, its demand for a more active engagement, its materials, its form, needed a lot more finesse and attention”, I concluded. “Do we see 2 or 3 or 4 dimensionally?”, I asked.

            I turn around and notice that the two full-length windows in the gallery are layered with a full-length image of the window, printed on transparent sheet, pressed in-between sheets of glass and mounted-against/blocking the original windows. These ‘re-presentations’ of ‘the windows’, titled ‘Window I’ and ‘Window II’ respectively, embody the very space but from a different time. Why? Because the glass panes of this window reflect not what ‘is’ in the gallery but what ‘was’ in the gallery when the image was captured, such as; a tripod and some paintings on the walls, referring to the ‘eye’ and ‘I’ of the camera. “perhaps an awareness of the ephemeral nature of all material form or the material nature of ephemeral form and thus of our physical body in physical space, ceaselessly renewing itself”, I nodded. And so I contemplated the relationship of my body to the work in the context of the space that I have inhabited countless times, on my visits to the gallery. The physical object constituting a small yet an important part of perceptual experience, “but how much of tangibility is needed to comprehend the ‘concept of a perception’?”, I questioned. Why? Because the overwhelming materiality of the thick and grandiose glass sheets used to press the image, is in conflict with the incorporeal quality of the subject, focusing its efforts primarily on the physical object. Where as, a subtler iteration or a rather ghostly presence, could have helped create a fine balance between the laws of spirit and matter.

            Think it was Quddus Mirza, who once reviewing some exhibition, wrote about the fact that artists are like magicians. What is extraordinary about ‘art activity’ is; that it gives a new character to otherwise very common occurences or rather, it's the unique combination of otherwise ordinary phenomena, where the power of the spectacle lies. Perhaps like Art the only difference between successful magic and unsuccessful magic is, the flawlessness in performing the task without revealing the trick in one continuous motion.