KARACHI: Not very often do you come across an art exhibition that wows you with its contextual richness and artistic flair in equal measure. Ayaz Jokhio belongs to that breed of artists who are taking Pakistani art to newer heights. One expects quality stuff from him all the time. But what he has produced in his latest body of work, which can be viewed at the Canvas Art Gallery in a show titled Curtained, is stupendous – he has outdone himself.

The display is all about curtains or as they are commonly called in Urdu parday. The uttering of the very word itself conjures many an image. Ayaz is aware of it and makes the concept more intriguing by saying, “One of the very few differences between a painting and a curtain would be that a painting is usually hung on the wall whereas a curtain is often hung on the empty space within a wall. And one of the many similarities between the two is that both hide what’s behind them.”

A hard to deny thought! Some philosophers believe that man is what he hides. You can take issue with that. However, what the artist is striving to achieve here is more than what’s hidden behind a certain tangible screen. He is trying to expose the intangible, successfully so, for the viewer by showing what’s otherwise not visible to the eyes, and more importantly to the mind – or is it the heart? Doing that, he covers some important spheres of life such as the field of glitz and glamour, and the domain of politics.

One astounding piece is called Madhubala aur Dilip Kumar wali painting (oil on canvas). It’s a shot from a movie scene but since it projected on a curtain, the pleated look has not only physically distorted the picture of the two mega stars together but has also changed the perspective of the viewer of their reel and real life characters – it’s open to interpretation now. And this is the technique that Ayaz uses for all his artworks to see what’s not seeable to the eyes, mind and heart.

The exhibition concludes on Jan 13.

Published in Dawn, January 7th, 2022