It has become an emerging trend for the Canvas Gallery in Karachi to turn its attention to the medium of painting from time to time. Its most recent show brings together three seasoned artists and their heavily conceptual paintings which appear to be a product of personal inspections interacting with influences of circumstances and surroundings. The title of the show, Triple A, is a sort of tongue-in-cheek play on words, referring to both the first name initials of the three artists and the calibre of their artistic careers.

Some of the most striking works in the show are by Ahmed Ali Manganhar, whose imagery borrows from European art history and his personal icons of local cinema. His visuals are particularly striking, creating interest through the dynamics between contrasting styles; while the technique contains aspects of illustrative pop art, there is a certain variance and translucency in his application. The technique is at once controlled and messy, deliberated and spontaneous, elusive in the ways it creates impressions of an image through a combination of shapes and strokes. The layered imagery adds a certain depth and nuance to each work and hides complex truths that elude the cursory observer.

Manganhar attempts to reconcile ‘high’ and ‘low’ art forms and his self-referential concepts raise pertinent questions about the contemporary market-driven art institutions. The works layer a collection of snippets from various sources, stitched together to make a comment. In ‘Cobwebs’, Manet’s ‘The Picnic’ can be glimpsed, while in ‘Tamashaghar’, the characters from Alice in Wonderland float over what appears to be a local crowd. These works become a contrasted amalgam on multiple levels, of cultures, art forms and ideas. A series of diptychs and triptychs executed on slates display an interesting use of medium, evoking the chalkboards used in school lessons. Together with titles such as ‘Reviewing Art’, ‘Solo Show’ and ‘Mentor’s Memorandum’, they seem to explore and perhaps critique the didactic and structured approach to art today.

Three seasoned artists explore complex personal narratives through painting

Afshar Malik’s paintings for this show seem to take a slight departure from his iconic surrealist imagery, even while the stylisation remains present. The works are more in the vein of landscapes; nowhere near realism but still carrying some semblance of reality, in contrast to the fantastical compositions of his previous works. Yet, the visual directness of the content somehow gives the narrative a greater sense of ambiguity. There is an aura of mystery in these works which indicates that there is more than what meets the eye at play here, and the titles and the artist’s statement suggest that the story has personal origins, almost like an inside joke the audience is not privy to.

The main subjects of certain paintings seem rather out of place in their surroundings, almost as isfforcefully inserted into the landscape, for instance ‘A Horse’, ‘A House’ and ‘From Here I Can See’. Perhaps the purpose here is to not tell us a story, but to provide us with a starting point to create our own.

Ali Kazim also seems to explore landscapes of sorts, his evocative monotone paintings almost like photographs of desolate elements of nature. Depictions of sprawling sandy land is decontextualised into a texture, while elements of nature, such as lighting, are drawn parallel to elements of drawing; wavering lines on a dark field. There is emptiness within each space — a minimalism far removed from our busy landscapes — which brings a feeling of endlessness and a quiet loneliness. There is a subdued darkness in the images, a dustiness which is perhaps courtesy of the medium and surface, evoking the feel of an old black and white photograph.

With artists of such diverse explorations, it becomes imperative to situate the current body within the entire oeuvre for a better understanding of their trajectory. Yet, the beauty of the painting lies in its submission to the narrative, the subtleties of the language evoking various narratives for each individual the simpler the visual gets, turning it into one of the most engaging mediums of art production.

“Triple A” was on display at the Canvas Gallery in Karachi from July 17 till July 26, 2018

Published in Dawn, EOS, August 5th, 2018