KARACHI: Young Salman Farooqi, a graduate of the unsung Karachi School of Art, sprang a surprise at many when he put on display his canvases painted in acrylic in scintillating colours. They are not all bright but they are all exhilarating. Some compositions like the one done in different hues of orange are quite unusual. His lines are simplified. He does cityscapes, not the posh areas but modest lower middle class, ill-planned localities, and infuses beauty in them, which is by no means an easy job.

There are houses, rectangular in shape. Then there are clothes lines and a maze of electric and telephone wires, with crows resting on them. There are trees too, not all of which are green. Sometimes they merge into the houses, sometimes they don’t. To say that Salman Farooqi’s paintings are aesthetically pleasing is to state the very obvious.

Farooqi, who now teaches at his alma mater, has put up 27 colourful canvases at the new Shakil Ismail Gallery. The exhibition will continue till Aug 22. —AN