KARACHI: Melancholy and blues, in a manner of speaking, are synonyms, denoting a state of affairs that’s enveloped in innate sadness. Renowned artist Dr Syed Ali Wasif puts the two together in a latest exhibition of his works, which opened at the Citi Art Gallery on Saturday, adding in his note on the show that the feeling eventually leads to a ‘state of helplessness’.

A close examination of his paintings on display will clarify his argument.

The overwhelming blueness in the paintings on view signifies grief, both on personal and societal plains. There are a couple of things to take note of. The artist makes sad, glum faces. Each face cannot be studied with single-mindedness. Every countenance is a world unto itself, and this is given away in the beginning of the display with ‘Metamorphosis’ (oil on canvas). The set of eyes speak of two different realms. The eye with concentric circles is a poignant work of art. It takes away the attention from the other eye, but then both have depths of their own. The metamorphosis is more to do with the psychological turmoil that the viewer interprets looking at the painting, not with the physical attributes of a subject that the artist has drawn.

‘State of Helplessness I’ (oil on canvas) allows the theme to shift from the intensely individual to the glaringly collective. Again the faces do the trick. There can be multiple interpretations of the way they are resting on one another, and yet the element of sorrow, of anguish is unmistakable.

Dr Wasif also doesn’t hide his fondness for master artists, both hailing from his own soil and from the West. This is evident from artworks like ‘Despair’ and ‘Mother of All Evil’. And a fascinating angle to the whole show is added with a piece ‘Under the Banyan Tree’. The symbolism is not easy to crack. However, here’s one way of trying to construe the idea. The Banyan tree, in some cultures, symbolises immortality. The way Dr Wasif personifies it hints at immortality of another kind: of grief.

The exhibition will run until Jan 16.

Published in Dawn, January 10th, 2016