August 14, 2004

In a group show at a critical time of their artistic careers, four painters embark on a journey that started just two or three years after their graduation from the art school. Mehnaz Lakha, Iesha Khan, Fizza Saleem and Seema Nusrat from the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture and Qamar Siddiqui from the Karachi School of Art exhibited their work at the inaugural exhibition for the season at Chawkandi Art, Karachi.

The test of an artist’s perseverance comes into focus in the years following graduation, when there are no longer teachers who can guide, and peers who can stimulate, understand and provide an environment for enabling a critical discourse. Unlike students in other fields, the self-employed artists find themselves in an oasis, perhaps a vacuum, wondering where and how to begin. It is said that the fear of empty space or ‘Horror Vacuii’ can be a very real one. Similarly, fear of a blank canvas or paper can equally be unnerving and sometimes even discouraging for a young artist.

When speaking about their experiences these painters share similar concerns and wonder about the lack of communal or open studios, an ideal situation where the emphasis shifts from the end-product to the process that makes it to the end-product. It was heartening to see these artists show a genuine concern to understand their paintings in the context of the gallery and their interaction with each other’s works.

There were other young people exchanging views with them, something which is fast becoming a rarity at a time when pressures of the art market focus solely on sales. Sales, too, regrets a gallery owner, are now being carried on increasingly from artists’ homes. With no gallery commission to worry about, the artist and the buyer both save money.

A most disturbing trend that is now developing is of art that is only seen by the collector and his inner circle. The end result would be more art with less of it ever seen, and the creation of an art-illiterate generation. Art students would, then, naturally get their references from text books, their education devoid of a first hand experience and hence, have little or no understanding of local art; those who can afford it will go abroad and experience the art in the galleries and museums. Art made here will remain behind closed doors, let alone enter a national discourse, if things continue on their current path.

The present exhibition brings out many issues often ignored in our rat race to cover all shows. It goes to the credit of a commercial gallery to take the risk of showing the work of unknown artists, which will not be financially feasible. So far it has been the V.M. gallery which enjoys the patronage of the Rangoonwala Trust and has been able to push for more experimental work and hence for much ignored art to be able to breathe freely. The paintings on show at Chawkandi are a welcome change from the work of known and established artists, most of which has saturated the art market, not to mention the repetition that we are constantly exposed to.

Iesha Khan and Fizza Saleem worked two years ago on their thesis under the tutorship of Sumayya Durrani. A distinct quality of their work then was the abundance in scale. Fizza shows a painting while the rest of her works are drawings on canvas. With large spaces of the virgin canvas exposed, there is sensitivity in her line that she should continue to explore. The division of compositional elements that has to do with less than more creates a particular ambiance of space and rhythm.

The hands, says Fizza, symbolize the body. There are hair-like roots that extend from the hands invoking a sense of timelessness and the pure exercise of drawing. But there is no doubt a feeling of incompleteness and an abruptness in the overall rhythm that asks for more work and more experimentation.

Iesha Khan’s earlier drawings in charcoal are now replaced by oils on canvas. An energy that emits form within, her marks on her surface speak of the subconscious, dreams and an unidentifiable entity. There is no beginning and hence no end in her exploration of space, a quality that makes the viewer’s participation necessary to complete the experience. There are no solutions here, but more questions; a sense of ambiguity that leads to confusion or giving a sense of non-distinct boundaries. Iesha’s use of paint and colour could be used with more intensity and variation. She is using colour and paint in a monochromatic palette, which might be out of habit rather than by a conscious choice.

Mahnaz Lakha paints with an intuitive energy, which reveals her intensity in mixing paint to her advantage. Organic shapes such as seaweeds become the starting point for further studies in form and content. Her form, says Mahnaz, symbolizes her relationships in life. Entwined and interconnected, the painter revels in pure submission to her material. Her painting as such is often at a risk of becoming overshadowed by a strong narrative.

Cynthia Freeland discusses Greenberg’s defence of Pollock because he (Pollock) ‘celebrated form as the quality through which a painting or sculpture refers to its medium and to its own condition of creation. Seeing what is in a work or what it ‘says’ is not the point; the astute viewer (with taste) is meant to see the work’s very flatness or its way of dealing with paint as paint..’ Mahnaz stands at a point in her career where she could submit to her artistic intuition combined with the narrative that may be the by-product of that process. Or she could become more focused on her narrative and let her intuition develop the painterliness of her work.

Qamar Siddiqui shows three large paintings which are very different in tempo and approach form the rest of the work on view. After a somewhat confrontational discussion with the artist, questions still loom as to why this type of work needed to be shown when it disturbs the overall ambiance of experimentation and nature of the other work. It contradicts, and negates the freedom felt around it. Highly stylized painted images of pots and vessels, with embellishment in unmixed colours present a picture of stark crudity.

Perhaps, as the artist says, it was his intention to paint ‘realistically’. That very realism becomes hard to swallow at a time when copying from nature is no longer the only purpose of art. What, for example, is the intention of the artist in depicting what is out there. A mere imitation of reality on a two-dimensional surface remains an illusory reflection at best — not real anymore.

“We are missing the point,” confronts the artist, who says that he has worked hard to create this illusion. In his opinion, we have trained ourselves to slot art in specific boxes and what does not fit a slot is discarded. A true reading of our times, but the fundamental question remains unanswered: who is to judge what ‘good’ art is and what is ‘bad’? What is the observer’s point of view? How do we define ‘taste’?

There are contradictions as we move from one definition to the next. However, we are in search of a truer meaning when we try to contextualize a work of art in relation to other works done prior to it and in relation to the long history of art before it. To place work in a context helps in surfacing the undercurrents involved; but if work happens to lack an intensity or search within it, that failing is automatically sensed.

The miniature paintings of Seema Nusrat are worked in the new tradition of the ‘neo-miniature’, belonging to the Mughal ‘gharana’ or family. Elaborate arabesques mark the borders or ‘haasheeas’ enclosed within which are wonderfully detailed and sensitive renderings of the self in the technique of the miniature. Instead of the royal courts, these paintings document the current time.

A light-heartedness comes into play, as the artist avoids the use of political statements, bringing into focus the ordinary and the mundane. The self as the central image highlights an individualism that celebrates its superiority. The significance of the self remains contradictory to the original purpose of miniature painting when only the emperor or very high officials were the central subjects of the artist. Where Miniature ends and becomes other painting remains a boundary that is distinct due to the use of material and technique. Somewhere, in between our past and present, its potential as a potent form of expression remains to be seen.