KARACHI: In William Shakespeare’s play King Lear, at one point, Lear, who has been wronged by his two elder daughters, says, “No, I will be the pattern of all patience. I will say nothing.” Here the word pattern may mean ‘sample’ or ‘model’. But if one goes deep into the profundity of the line, it will occur that the character is hinting at the habits that human beings adopt over a period of time, altering which becomes a gigantic task in a lifetime. They can be both worthy and undesirable, and humans can’t avoid them.

A three-person show underway at the Canvas Art Gallery is titled Patterns. The plural form of the word underlines the complexity of existence the three participating artists — Waleed Zaman, Tahira Noreen and Mahbub Jokhio — are dealing with.

Why complexity? The answer is that even after a slight, fleeting look at the 20 artworks on display one can sense that they have tremendous kinetic energy symbolising the regularity that the whirlpool of life sucks man into; and at the same time the exhibits, in a subtle way, speak of the inertia that sometime causes a rupture in these regular gongs-on. This is a difficult subject to broach and the three artists do it very well.

In that connection, Noreen’s ‘A world within’ (precision cutter on wasli), Zaman’s ‘Radiant’ (egg tempera and gold on paper) and Jokhio’s ‘The diamond’ (charcoal on paper) are examples that catch the eye instantly.

These pieces have the ability to invite the viewer into an unfamiliar domain whose unfamiliarity turns into known territory once the viewer gets or start to get their drift. Of course, the energy does not necessarily have to appear in a physical form or shape, that is, moving from point A to point B; it can also have an interiority manifesting itself in the world outside.

The show will conclude on May 9.

Published in Dawn, May 5th, 2024