Appreciating art calls for unending imagination
Karachi: Like a host of art galleries in town, the Canvas Art Gallery in Clifton also hosted an exhibition based on the works of nine artists on Friday. This came close at the heels of the exhibition of British artist Howard Hodgkin’s works.
Also, like all other exhibitions, this one also comprised works where the artists seem to be totally gripped by their tantrums.
The works could be termed as a mix of abstractism and surrealism, a queer blend of the two. Of course, some are specimens of refreshing colour schemes and bring out the real artist. The artists are lyrical colourists indeed.
The opening piece is a floor-sized laser-cutting and laser-scoring on paper. It depicts large colourful squares with smaller squares of equally gaudy colours.
While the work may not be connotative of any particular emotion or situation, it certainly brings out the colourist in the artist, the artist being Muhammad Zeeshan. The piece is titled Meeting House.
Two other works by Zeeshan are totally different from his first one. One is an antelope’s head amid a very cloudy surreal background. It is called Special Siri Series; the other one of the series being a nebulous figure carrying a chopped off human head. It looks – and sounds – weird.
One is at a loss to figure out as to what could be going on in the artist’s head while he was working at it. What emotion he was trying to depict remains a mystery.
Perhaps one that does not look so much an exercise in abstraction is Mansoor Rahi’s The Bull. It is a bull in a charging position; again perhaps, the artist was captive to his rambling imagination.
Similarly, there’s again a nebulous work showing a roaring lion in a reclining position, titled Sabr (‘patience’ in Urdu). It is certainly not an abstraction and could appeal to the preferences of a layman.
Perhaps the one and only that could make sense viewed from any perspective was one titled Light Your Fire by Amir Habib. It is a picturesque landscape (or mountainscape).
The art exhibition at the Canvas gallery will be running until the last day of Ramazan.
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