Everything has a purpose, or so goes the modernist dictum. This applies not only to the natural laws that govern the universe, but go on so far as to trace the reason behind every wall that an architect puts up, to an author’s every word and pause. So then should art be an exception?

The exceptionality of art becomes extremely important when one considers how easily art is kicked towards the elitist goal post. Today art serves a purpose, to connect with the issues and the world at large, and not a camera like representation.

Amin Rehman’s work is the perfect foundation for such an argument, for his dualities, and makes answering these questions a digestible task. He is an artist who has worked in the confines of a gallery / museum space and in public art projects in Canada. His art has served a purpose in a world that changed far too quickly post 9/11, highlighting the issues of globalisation and the chaos of the capitalist society and creation of an understanding “for the cultural effects of global trade”.

Amin Rehman’s work demands close inspection as every word requires attention as well as a closer look at the colours and layering of words in between words to determine their meaning

His recent show, “Other Histories” at the Chawkandi Art Gallery, Karachi, curated by art critic Amra Ali, has travelled from Toronto and Chetham, Ontario to Karachi, with a final showing to be followed at the National College of Arts (NCA), Lahore. Her dialogue with Rehman began over two years ago, ensuring that the layering and the concerns behind the artist’s work are highlighted. After an artist-curator conversation in Karachi, the co-curator, Aasim Akhtar will engage in discussion with the writer Tariq Ali, at its opening in Lahore.

As you enter the space, the first two works ‘Who knows …’ and ‘But all this …’, vinyl installations, with lettering stencilled to the gallery wall, set the tone for the exhibition. The artist takes the words of Fakhr Zaman, a Punjabi poet and blurs it with Arabic script, to a point of abstraction, where they lose their own identity and become hard to recognise — reflective of the way in which words have been redefined to lose their meanings and become in essence only of what they originally were.

Similarly, in the metal installations, the lines and words alternate so much so that it takes a few readings before one is able to comprehend the meaning behind these, and again when one is talking of subjects like the UN stance on Palestine and Israel, and arms race between Pakistan and India, where nothing tends to make sense, these techniques seem to capture the frustration more than the words themselves.

The “coins” series is also an interesting aspect of this exhibition. They hold within them, typical of Rehman’s work, multiple meanings and layers. The coins are reminiscent of the coins that were found in this region belonging to the pre-and-post Islamic era. There is, firstly for those who by this time are able to grasp his philosophy, the understanding that coins represent the beginning of globalisation and the capitalist society. But those who know the artist personally will be able to make another connection, that of his roots and his archaeologist maternal grandfather, who donated his large coin collection to the Lahore Museum.

Rehman’s work demands close inspection; the layering of text, shape and colour necessitates a different kind of attention in the art gallery context.

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, November 22nd, 2015