EXHIBITION: SYMPHONIES IN GLASS

Published March 11, 2018
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The recent Chawkandi Gallery show

Tran­saparance, a collection of paintings and glass-art panels, is a modest spotlight on Masood Kohari’s diverse oeuvre. Proficient in drawing and painting, Kohari is essentially a modernist of the old guard who has advanced as a contemporary abstractionist, articulating through exciting mixes of clay, glass, glaze and miscellanea like iron nets and copper wires.

Art education at the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts (1958-59), subsequent exhibitions at Pakistan American Cultural Centre, Alliance Francaise and Arts Council Karachi and Alhamra, Lahore, and his association with the National College of Arts (NCA) academia of the ’60s and with intellectuals such as Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Enver Sajjad, Naeem Tahir, Sarmad Sehbai and Saeed Asghar spell out the early years of the artist’s story. For a free spirit who craved experiment and innovation, this was also a constraining period as he struggled to define himself in an orthodox art environment where only oil paintings or watercolours were perceived as art forms. The understanding that an artist is free to choose any material for his creative urges was non-existent and he was pigeonholed as a conventional ‘ceramist.’

A modernist painter from the ’70s, Masood Kohari has an assorted portfolio of oil on canvas, abstract crystal collages and fire paintings

In 1969, he left for France to join The Ecole des Beaux-Arts. New aesthetic encounters relative to living, working and exhibiting in French cities and galleries, all expanded and diversified his art practice. His subsequent return to Gujranwala, during 1973-76, to work with local potters in non-ceramic materials combining clay, glass and glazes resulted in ‘Ceramic Collages’ and ‘Fire Paintings.’ Using discarded material such as car batteries, broken bottles, window glass, iron nets and metallic pieces to make glazes and colours, Kohari and his team of local potters’ baked ceramic objects on wood-fire. Fire is used to bind and hold the material together for ceramics and glass, just as oil is the binding medium for an oil painting; this is why the works were called ‘Fire Paintings.’

By the ’80s, Kohari had simplified his processes as clay gave way to glass, glazes and metal as his preferred medium. Shuttling between Pakistan and Europe, he benefited from his visits to glass studios and workshops in glass-art cities, such as Murano in Venice and Blangy sur Bresle and Boit in France. By now, his crystal collages had begun to materialise. Exhibitions, accolades and awards at home and abroad followed. A year-long residency at the National Art Gallery in Islamabad, in 2008-09, and a succeeding retrospective show are among his recent major exhibitions on home turf.

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Currently, Kohari’s paintings at Chawkandi Gallery are an assortment of abstract musings, montages centred on the many faces of Eve, and mother-and-child projections. The works exemplify his draughtsmanship and painterly styles but echo the temperament of the modernist seventies. Here he is not breaking new grounds, rather he is reverting to a past of which he was once a part of.

His singularity lies in the chemistry that underscores his ‘Tile and Fire’ paintings and ‘Crystal Collages.’ Only a limited number of works are on display at Chawkandi Gallery. The brilliantly hued and boldly executed collage medleys that bear influences of works by avant-garde giants like Kadinsky, Miro and Chagall (also shown in previous exhibitions), are missing — save for one piece that mimics Vincet van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night’. In glass art, the use of chemistry and firing techniques allow a transformation process that give results full of surprises. The light behaves in diverse and interesting ways because glass provides a variety of intense colours, transparency, translucency and opacity.

Contemporary innovation and traditional glass art traditions are recognised art forms in our neighbouring countries such as Iran, Turkey and Afghanistan. In Pakistan, the emphasis is on ceramic ware and tile craft ; glass art, as a discipline, has no profile. If there were artists like Kohari abroad, they would be considered pioneers of contemporary glass art.

“Transaparance” was displayed at the Chawkandi Gallery in Karachi from February 15 to February 21, 2018

Published in Dawn, EOS, March 11th, 2018

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