KARACHI: Digital art is a form of expression that can guarantee precision of ideas but artists who practise it know well how difficult it is to create the kind of contextual depth that is required for any art genre to touch its followers.

An exhibition of Farshad Engineer’s digital artworks that opened at the Ocean Art Gallery on Saturday works on both counts to a decent extent. He executes his concepts well and does not let the subject matter get eclipsed by his technique.

Two influences are prominent in Engineer’s endeavour: nature and pop culture. It is interesting to note that both influences seem mutually reinforcing as well as individually self-sufficient. For example, in a series highlighting women, he shows a candid side to them that’s not often seen in our part of the world. There is an air of abandon about them. The same can be said about his depiction of a pop icon. Engineer covers his face and head in letters that give the image a textual feel, whereas the star is known for his musical notes. The element of abandon comes into the scheme of things with the candid attitude with which the digital artist merges the worlds of art and music giving it an interconnectedness that is essential for creative people to understand, and allows them to create what they will.

Then there is a line of artworks where nature, animals to be exact, becomes the focus of his attention. Through an image of a lioness he captures the posture of the animal where she is merely looking at something — perhaps a prey, perhaps a strange occurrence — but in that simple stare the grace of the creature is more prominent than her fierceness. This reiterates the fact that art, the kind of art that Engineer produces, has candidness at its heart, which is pretty engaging.

The exhibition concludes on July 24.

Published in Dawn, July 24th, 2017