KARACHI: What does one do when one sees the work of Mohsen Keiyani, Kohari, Tasadduq Sohail, Omar Farid, Rind, Akram Spaul and a host of other master artists, not to mention some extraordinary young ones, under one roof? Nothing. One is spoilt for choice. This is the feeling that art lovers had when they visited a group exhibition that opened at the Grandeur Art Gallery on Tuesday evening.

The show has been arranged in connection with Independence Day celebrations. Perhaps that is why a stellar cast of artists (read: their work) is there to greet art buffs. Mansoor Rahi, Wahab Jaffer and Nahid Raza never cease to amaze us. These top-notch painters have time and again proved that art is not understood on a cognitive level (or not just on a cognitive level) but more on a plane where imagination overtakes reason without beating it hollow.

This is felt more strongly when the viewer gets to see in Tasadduq Sohail’s paintings how the fertile imagination of an artist can make assorted ideas gel like a well-connected story. In one artwork there are three layers of subjects: blue (birds), yellow (trees and ambience) and blue (the creatures in water). These layers are not apparent. They form a unity that becomes clear in a dream-like situation. Once the eyes are open, the clarity dissolves into a wish.

Rubina Malkani’s artwork

Iqbal Husain, another master, gives geriatrics a life that oscillates between timelessness and a finite period that’s frozen out of compulsion. And Husain does that only with colours and contours. Cool.

But Omar Farid’s effort that takes a different route altogether. Call it abstract, non-figurative or whatever. The fact of the matter is that Omar Farid paints giving a hoot about classification. Hence the visual momentum in his art! There are organisms, there are shapes, there are ideas… all crammed into a square or a rectangle. This is life imitating art.

The other artists whose artworks are on view, and no less impressive, are: Hajra Mansoor, Ather Jamal, Dr Wasif, Shaista Momin, Rubina Malkani, Zarmina Bakhtiar, Shahzad Zar, Sadiq Hussain and Kohari.

The exhibition will continue till Aug 28.

Published in Dawn, August 21st, 2014