‘Dosage as prescribed’

KARACHI: Khalfishaar, a three-day exhibition of Safwan Subzwari’s artworks, concluded at Commune Artist Colony on Saturday.

The solo show has an Urdu title that can be translated into English as chaos, disorder or even commotion — the commotion that artists often experience within themselves when they yearn to express their views on a subject they feel strongly about.

Safwan and his work are marked by a certain perturbed state of mind. And he chooses a very effective way of conveying his feelings: by using child art. This means the kind of artworks that you see in books published for minors. What the artist achieves by doing this is that he evokes a certain innocence through his mixed-media works which both express befuddlement as to what’s happening in society as well as the incorruptibility (of a child) with which he sees things.

The first piece in the show is a give-away. It’s called ‘Coming to terms’. However, the sequence moves from simple to complex, because next up is a series titled ‘The concept of love’. Here the travails associated with love can be detected that the artist seems to be drawing the viewer’s attention to.

The enigmatic concept leads him to probe the personal side of things with the two ‘Self Dilemma’ pieces. Love has resulted in exploring the self, and yet, the confusion, the commotion has not been resolved. (Because it is difficult to make the child within you understand complicated issues.)

‘Marketing malice’

As a logical corollary, the ‘Dosage as Prescribed’ widens the circle of investigation with society becoming the artist’s focus of attention. The potpourri of figures, faces and shapes employing eye-catching lines and colours is a symbolically displayed khalfishaar.

Then the journey moves to ‘Marketing malice’ and from there to ‘Zero gravity’ and ‘Chaotic prose’ to reach ‘The mundane’. After all, it is the mundane stuff that makes our nightmares and fears all the more poignant.

Published in Dawn, August 30th, 2015

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