KARACHI: Colours eit­h­er look pleasing or jarring to the eye. This means that they serve a single purpose: to enrich or impoverish us aesthetically. That is not true. There’s more to it than meets the eye. Colours play multiple roles in our lives. Their contribution to our psychological growth and social progress cannot be understated. This is the idea that artist Komail Aijazuddin is working around in the latest exhibition of his artworks titled Secret History that kicked off at the Canvas Gallery on Tuesday.

Before touching upon the mixed media paintings on display, let’s take a look at Komail’s statement on the show in which he talks about attending a wedding which got him thinking “how shape and colour express meaning in culture” and that “the old shamiana came from a very specific visual lineage.” Two factors need to be taken into account here: culture and lineage. Are the two mutually exclusive? The answer is, no. Lineage has as much to do with the culture whose history, secret or not, is brought under the microscope.

The reference is, of course, to the milieu (of the subcontinent) that the artist associates himself with. This means loudness and garishness. But times change, so do aesthetics and, in some cases, moral values. Colours fall into the same scheme of things. Komail, however, treats them in a holistic fashion. His paintings have characters that get merged with the shapes, patterns, lines and hues that are ostensibly there to complement them. This is where the inherent symbolism of colours makes its presence felt forcefully. The piece ‘Readers’ is a potent example. It opens for the viewer a tiny window into Komail’s mind. The postures of a group of men, with one of them holding a book against a backdrop which suggests anything but a bookish atmosphere, basically signifies the change that has occurred in the collective visual approach of society to life that, in turn, impinges upon the way individuals see existence with all its manifestations on a daily basis. Therefore readers are not merely readers; they are the changing face of society.

The exhibition concludes on April 4.

Published in Dawn, March 28th, 2019