Afshar Malik is an ardent practitioner of the print aesthetic. His printmaking expertise is characterised by incredibly inventive technical explorations which evolve in tandem with his surreal thoughts to conjure magically wondrous compositions. His exhibitions often centralise on visually attractive mindscapes that tease and tantalise the eye as much with their enigmatic narrative, rendered in exciting bold chromatics, as with the unusual surface treatments of his printmaking process.

A recent showing of his latest series “So Curious this Tale is” at the Canvas Gallery, Karachi, adds yet another dimension to his existing repertoire of fantasy and experiment. Unlike his earlier procedures of grafting a painting by embedding or implanting an assortment of irrational additives like old photographs, coins, buttons, etc, within his imagery, creating abrasive textural fragments or inserting collage segments, in this series he has opted to concentrate only on soft metal wire as his medium of expression.

The extravagant, multi-hued, tragicomic fantasia so typical of an Afshar Malik original has also been tamed to a more focused and acute representation of quasi-comic philosophical musings rendered just with bent wire in natural or single colour tones.

Wire is an amazing art medium. It can be bent to form a variety of lines, shapes, letters and images almost like their single line pencil drawn counterparts. In his exhibition statement, Malik has written about his longing to engage with a narrative and a medium in order to “construct running sequences of an image”. In soft wire he has found an element that can be wilfully manipulated and fashioned / constructed at length.

Afshar Malik’s decorative, metal wire reliefs can be interpreted as a commentary on the vagaries of life

Relishing the challenge of sitting, “for hours to shape the wire loops by tying knots to construct images of vehicles, canons, courtesans, power games or some musical, happy moments in life, romance and tragedy, nostalgic past times, birds, animals, fish and monsters as well” he feels his “childlike doodles” are the beginning of an absorbing learning process.

The pliancy of the wire and the artist’s instinctive weave and creation of images, particularly human figurative forms speaks of a well-synthesised coordination between hand and mind. This creative journey of handiwork, cued to inner prompts, evokes Paul Klee’s pictorial thinking about ‘Taking a line for a walk’ except that here the line is a soft wire that is the vehicle between concept and its graphic manifestation.

Malik’s decorative, metal wire reliefs on mount board are visual stories of an inner narrative that can also be interpreted as a commentary on the vagaries of life or as reflections of the times. Works like ‘Jugalbandi’, ‘Same to same in heavens’, ‘Deals and deeds of tribesmen’ can easily be framed in a socio-political perspective, while ‘Chills, cheers and loops’ and ‘In the shadow of thick affections’ have familial connotations.

Photos by Fahim Siddiqi / White Star..../Chills, cheers and loops

Unlike the artist’s flamboyant, chromatically loud mix media paintings / prints, these reliefs have a delicate craft oriented sensibility. Apparently childlike and naïve, the soft thin wire imagery is endowed with a remarkable linear fluidity in spite of the intricate loops and knots required to build its physical shape.

‘Wire reliefs’, ‘Tuning for a long play’, ‘So curious this tale is’ and ‘Odd one in’ are unusually complex yet meticulously crafted pieces. Unlike some of his earlier extremely abstruse works the current prints, having profound as well as entertaining moments, reveal themselves, albeit to some extent.

Graduating from the National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore in 1978, Malik joined his alma mater as an educator in 1983 and is associated with it to date. He acquired a postgraduate degree in printmaking from the Slade School of Art in 1988. Presently a NCA professor and driving force at the Cowasjee Printmaking Studio he has worked as a lecturer, cartoonist, visualiser and illustrator for noted media concerns and newspapers, and has a considerable number of solos and group shows, at home and abroad, to his credit. A seasoned printmaker, he continues to think out of the box to devise new methodologies to express his concerns.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 31, 2014