Mian Ijazul Hassan has a distinguished career as an artist, writer and chronicler of Pakistani art.

The 20 works on display at his latest show, ‘Reality Revisited’ at Canvas Gallery in Karachi, featured plants, objects, figuration and portraiture. For those familiar with the serenity of Mian Ijaz’s Lahore gardens, with their vibrant foliage and sun-dappled grass, the ‘revisiting’ in this show also brings the darker and far less sanguine reality of conflict to our attention.

Mian Ijaz states he draws wide inspiration from European, Chinese, Mughal and Rajput styles of painting. Indeed, the diagonal bough and the tracery of bare winter branches in the painting Reclining Kikar (2017) is reminiscent of Japanese depictions of trees in Ukiyo-e wood-cut prints that crossed into Europe in the late 19th century.

The colour patterns that made the 20th century Fauvist art movement remarkable may be seen in Broken Chair (2022), with its Matisse-like colour blocks. A study of water patterns in a swimming pool in Ripples (2012) immediately conjures David Hockney’s fascination for the swimming pool that dates back to the 1960s. Tropical Plant (2011) reminds us of Ahmed Pervaiz’s abstracted plant portraits.

Mian Ijaz’s stylistic eclecticism, unlike that of Gauguin (an artist greatly admired by him) — who sought tropical nature in the esoteric geography of Martinique and Tahiti — is rooted in everyday, ordinary imagery. The deep core within his stylistic diversity is an unfailing direct observation of matter in the spectrum of time and space, as experienced by him.

Mian Ijazul Hasan’s latest exhibition is a testament to his unique ability to confront us with both beauty and violence

His visual investigations go beyond aesthetic expression, towards a portrayal of the discord prevailing in the world. According to the artist, he is concerned with “live issues that were affecting the lives of people and nations — the Vietnam war, the Palestine struggle, and the struggle of the working class against the establishment. I could not look away from all this. How could any artist not address these questions?” Mian Ijaz, the artist, is also a political man of conscience.

Two works in ‘Reality Revisited’ make specific reference to Kashmir. In Kashmir Landscape III (2019), the entire 26 by 28-inch canvas is a close-up of a woman’s shrapnel-pocked face. Her eyes arrest us, with the ambiguous stare of a person who is dying or already dead. The Wailing Valley (2020) shows the head of a woman whose large eyes and open mouth contort her face in anguish.

Mian Ijaz’s more recent works from 2023 continue to grip us with their dramatisation of horror. In Teaching a Lesson, five figures, silhouetted in blue, set upon a hapless victim who has fallen to the ground. The narrative in the painting addresses generic humanity, or rather inhumanity, with its unceasing capacity for violence. The colour palette in the painting is red, blue and yellow.

This set of painterly primaries repeats periodically in paintings of other genres, such as the garden vignette Backyard (2022), and the still life of a child’s plastic chair titled Doosri Dunya (2013). Mian Ijaz has worked in oil on canvas in all but four mixed media works that also date from 2023. In these works, crumpled folds and contours form shockingly primordial face-like visages. They could be pre-human or sub-human in their raw impact.

As we stagger away from these works into the respite of Mian Ijaz’s gardens, we find our viewpoint has altered. We revisit seemingly anodyne paintings such as Banana Leaf and notice the chilling barbed wire in the background. The imperfections of tattered banana leaf edges and of broken chairs mirror the imperfections that drive humanity to extremes.

Within seemingly ordinary reality, the artist inserts clues that subvert ordinariness into something disturbing. Reality is that shape-shifting phenomenon between the paradise of gardens and the ghastliness of violence.

‘Reality Revisited’ was on display at Canvas Gallery from September 3-12, 2024

The writer is an independent researcher, writer, art critic and curator based in Karachi

Published in Dawn, EOS, September 22nd, 2024