KARACHI: A four-person show titled Seeing and Being Seen opened at the Canvas Gallery on Tuesday.

The artists – Ahsan Javaid, Arsalan Farooqi, Ehsan Memon and Hamid Ali Hanbhi – are graduates of the National College of Arts (NCA). But this does not suggest that their subject matter, by any stretch of the imagination, has similarities. All of them have their distinct ways of absorbing life, accentuated by the diversity of media that they use to put their message across.

The exhibit that’s bound to get everyone’s attention is Arsalan’s sculpture ‘Flying elephant’ (silicon and fiberglass). It is a striking work of art for one main reason: the overwhelmed state of the animal. Yes, there could be multiple reasons for the posture that the artist has given to the sculpture, but at the heart of it is an image that on surface gives the impression of a living being with great powers, but in reality the case is otherwise.

Ahsan is interested in the way we put our visual sense to the test. This means the results that we draw after ‘seeing’ something, which contributes to our experiential understanding of things, cannot carry finality unless we consider it [final] so. In ‘Taaron bhari raat’ (fabric in acrylic box) this visual challenge is treated like a cerebral challenge.

Ehsan is also fascinated by the way we communicate through a language that comes into being by virtue of ‘looking’ at something or someone. There’s a difference, though: his work deals in abstraction, not of his art, but of his creative process. ‘Suff’ (oil on canvas) is a nice example.

Hamid brings all of it into the private domain. With him, it seems, the impersonal (or social) is inalienably linked to the personal. The ‘Divorced’ series (graphite on archival paper) highlights this aptly. However, it would be a mistake not to marvel at his craft — the manner in which images speak in his artworks — that makes him a pretty special artist.

The exhibition concludes on Feb 1.

Published in Dawn, January 24th, 2018