KARACHI: Shaan Taseer belongs to the illustrious Taseer family. But that’s not his claim to fame. He can paint also. With watercolours, at that. And if that is not his claim to fame, soon it will be.

This is precisely the reason that an exhibition of his artworks, which opens on March 11 (today) at the Chawkandi Art Gallery, has generated a fair amount of interest in both those who practise art and those who have a keen interest in it.

A preview of his show on Tuesday took art buffs by a pleasant surprise. The watercolour-on-paper artworks clearly give away two aspects of Shaan’s creative pursuits. One, he is an aesthete who has a holistic view of nature. Two, he is a socially aware person, which suggests that for him life needs to be dealt with, not escaped from, and therefore embraced warts and all. While the former is an individualistic trait, the latter speaks of a collective consciousness. This combines very well in the shape of his watercolour art.

Technically, Shaan has an understanding of the use of white space because the transparency of the colour white is not easy to handle, coupled with the fact that sometimes it lends an unnecessary lightness to the idea or concept that’s being propagated. So his delectable compositions of a series of houses, not separately constructed, indicate the artist’s quest for symmetry that is often quite elusive to grasp in a cluster. His artworks have clarity of thought, and for someone who imparts a Mediterranean feel to his subject, it is pretty essential.

Then there is the relatively known facet of the artist which is illuminated by his social awareness. As a result, the viewer cannot have a cursory look at the presence of the colour red in his work. It (red) doesn’t dominate his sceneries but makes significant intrusions — intrusions that are very important to identify.

The exhibition will run till March 18.

Published in Dawn, March 11th, 2015

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