KARACHI: Naveed Sadiq is a thinking artist. This does not suggest that other artists do not have that faculty. It means he prefers reason to imagination, and while doing so he brings imagination to the foreground in an imperceptible way. This is why with him the tussle between contemporariness and tradition and the difference between culture and religion assumes great importance. An exhibition of Naveed Sadiq’s latest works titled Umeed-i-Bahar Rakh opened at the Koel Art Gallery on Tuesday.

The show emphasises the artist’s quest for discovering the connection between ostensibly disparate aspects of life. The title of the exhibition, however, implies the innate optimism in him. Despite the asymmetry that one associates with things, the expectation that goodness will eventually prevail seems to be the overarching theme of his works.

It is clear from Naveed Sadiq’s artworks (gouache, tea stain plus embossing) that he is perturbed by what he has seen around him or in society.

The artist whispers his concerns and also tries to construe them. It is not easy to decipher his work. The viewer has to be very cognizant of the technique that he has used. The tiny dots and the scattered dashes, as the artist himself touches on in his statement, make a bigger picture. It is image-building of issues, of concerns and of, perhaps, solutions.

The most interesting bit of the exhibits is their embossed parts. They are in a manner of speaking symbolic of what takes place on the surface and what occurs around it. The subtlety is palpable. The artist himself says, “I’m silently speaking, as screaming takes the pleasure away.” This pleasure is not to do with the subject matter of his artworks, but of the process of creating art and trying to convey it to the viewer.

The exhibition will be open till Oct 27.