Farrukh Adnan’s show at Karachi’s Koel Gallery, Enigmatic Spaces, features a set of abstract artworks with a distinct experimental quality. His black and white, pen and ink on canvas works are raw, and yet refined, making them a meeting point of art and design — a clear evidence of the artist’s graphic design and communication background. Through these works the artist approaches the complex relationship of physical environments, spaces and landscapes and their inherent histories as experienced by those who inhabit them.

The works read as a series of organic and flowing ink blots, oddly reminiscent of the Rorschach tests, forming familiar yet arbitrary shapes interspersed with various textures, geometric shapes and lines. The delicate mark-making and the apparent focus on composition benefit from the artist’s acute design sensibilities. The body of work is an extension of the artist’s research and archiving of his hometown through studies of maps, plans, photographs and various motifs of the area as well as visits to the site itself. In a way it is his personal “excavations” of the space through memory. This is particularly true of works such as the ‘Excavated Land” series and ‘Visible Invisible’.

The work was born from the artist’s interest and subsequent explorative studies of his ancestral home of Tulamba located in the Khanewal district of Punjab, which is home to the scattered remnants of the Harrappan civilisation. He was fascinated by the abandoned fort, the mounds of rubble, oxidised earth, and destroyed artefacts from a bygone era. Adnan took walks around the area, among the fragmented ruins of pottery and other manmade items — evidence of ancient human innovations. They trace the trajectory of human civilisation and are etched into the landscape, giving it its current shape.

Farrukh Adnan’s exhibition approaches the complex relationship of physical environments, spaces and landscapes

This journey is presented in the artist’s works which then becomes an emotive, rather than a documentative, cartographical account. The works do not use any direct visual representations of the location but is rather inspired from old maps, memory and geography of the land. While in some areas we seem to be looking at an abstracted personalised mapping of sorts, others seem to be relaying the essence of the space. From the layered translucence emerge dramatically varying shades of grey, some soft and subtle, others stark and coarse, with meandering lines running through, seemingly to map the artist’s own journey through the remains.

The complex imagery this results in seems to mimic history itself, with its subtly varying shades of grey and unwavering endless textures interspersed with dramatic dark blotches representing a rich mixture of experiences by a diverse collection of civilisations across a vast stretch of time, each with their own set of problems, innovations and achievements. Historical events that the land has experienced inevitably shape it, and as the work takes its form from the land itself it inevitably archives its complicated past. This seems to be translated well in pieces like ‘Land of Fables’ and ‘Bhir (Mound)’ which are a cacophony of violent splashes, squiggly lines, motifs, textures and dynamic shadows.

The works are thus more than just a physical or factual representation of the land or its history memorialised in textbooks, but a deeper investigation into the lives and experiences of the people who lived here and a more grounded understanding of their day to day struggles. It uses the nature of the land, the dirt, rocks, vegetation and landscape to uncover its hidden truths, instead of focusing on impersonal highlights. Titles such as ‘The Divided Land’, ‘The Mysterious Land’, and ‘Memory of the Land’ seem to evidence this.

Through these works the artist is trying to scan a space that holds great value to him, making this an archival exercise of a more intimate nature. In the process he gives various elusive concepts a tangible visual form, such as the idea of memory, history and the mere act of walking. More than that, however, the work is about the artist’s own relationship with his homeland, a subjective reimagining of factual evidences, abstracted to lend a personal flair. It seems to be allowing the land itself to reveal its layers of histories and embedded memories, an exercise in better understanding where we come from and what makes us who we are.

“Enigmatic Spaces” was on display at the Koel Gallery, Karachi from July 4 till July 18, 2017

Published in Dawn, EOS, July 23rd, 2017