Ayesha Quraishi’s latest body of work was recently on display at the Koel Gallery, Karachi, where her abstract paintings, prints and sculptural pieces came together as a kind of mental portrait of the artist. Devoid of any direct representation, the works are rather felt on a deep sensory level in order to be fully understood, as the artist goes beyond the obvious to bring into open presence unseen vocabularies.
Quraishi has an interesting process behind her work, working tirelessly for hours at a stretch on one piece, playing with form and erasure of form to reach a state of compromise between the two. Her practice is an intimate and meditative exploration of the medium’s interaction with the surface. Mark-making is achieved with one hand and simultaneously removed with the other creating layered textures and rich color.
The work is then in a kind of purgatory state, existing in a transitional space between being formed and formless. Quraishi says in her artist statement, “Open presence is an acknowledgment of the space of consciousness, an intermediate space between senses and states. A place one may come to observation without preferences. A holding place between the ordinary and sublime at once.”
The resulting body of work is thus very personal and reads as an exploration of the artists own cerebral space. When writing about her work she talks of vocabularies, referring not to the spoken word but to the ways in which elusive concepts are articulated, such as breath/air, weight or bones. The abstract nature of these works, however, makes them open to countless interpretations. They do not impose any worldview upon the audience but rather evoke emotive responses. By removing representational forms from the works, they are no longer tied to the artist but may represent anyone or anything.
Ayesha Quraishi plays with form and erasure of form to reach a state of compromise between the two
The accompanying texts, which seem like snippets lifted out of a poem, act as rather lengthy titles for the pieces. They light a spark of thought that may lead each individual on a different tangent, helping decipher the artworks in their own way. Like the work itself these are not very specific but rather vague suggestions to nudge us along. It almost seems as though an entire poem was broken down, each phrase given physical form in its accompanying artwork.