VM Art Gallery exhibits works of five artists
By: Ahtesham Azhar
KARACHI: The VM Art Gallery recently organised two exhibitions, group and solo, entitled ‘Conversation IV’ and ‘Monolith’ which featured the work of five artists, here at its premises.
Conversation IV was a show of four friends who posses diverse skills. Sehba Maruf Ali said that her work was about the mind and heart’s tug of war to keep sanity in a period of insanity, where mind is in constant unrest. “Having a halo or wings doesn’t give you license to soar.
It only confuses your direction and focus when it is not respected and valued. In all of this turmoil when there is no peace of mind and one’s vision is distorted where do we look for redemption? The pain and anguish leads us to find salvation. The Creator’s compassion, forgiveness, and unwavering love hold no bounds. His love for all of his creations is unwavering and, never abandons anyone. People should listen to their inner voice in finding their way back to sanity. There is a solution if we try looking for it,” she said.
Aliya Yousuf said that she worked with clay, a material with no limits that gives forms that evoke thoughts having no boundaries either. They are open to interpretation and strive to create a dialogue between the material and art form itself. She had deconstructed and then reconstructed simple familiar forms Urdu letters to challenge traditional views about taaweez or numerology and its ambiguities as it opens up infinite thoughts.
Yasmeen Salman talking to the Daily Times said that the present body of work started off as a collaboration between her mother and herself. She wanted to make trousseau for her children, which her mother would cut and stitch, as the work grew and evolved, it just came down to the essence of the wedding trousseau-head dress of a bride and groom, the chaadar and the kullah.
The calligraphy on her work was done by Aamir Asghar. However, Monolith was a solo exhibition of emerging artist, Babar Moghal. He had done pencil work about drawings and religions. Moghal in his statement said, “Contrary to the forms in my work, I am a skeptic. Straight lines and clean surfaces remind me of school and office furniture. I fill the empty spaces in my artwork with smoke, mist, weed, fallen masonry, crawling creatures, cracked and cratered surfaces, and other clutters.”
He said that different belief systems and politics use fear as motivation to control man’s primal self. It’s a form of wishful thinking; ‘dove represents peace, let’s distribute pictures of dove,’ but in real life that dove is not so peaceful to a worm when it’s feeding time. It’s nature, senseless and prosaic, a shameless urge of consumption. Self love cannot be denied, all emanations are through the self and from its appeasement, only way to seek self is through desire, illusion is the first of all pleasures.
Director VM Rifat Alvi said that Conversation IV was a group show of friends who were doing shows in the name of conversation. She said their work was thought-provoking. Alvi said that this was his 3rd exhibition at the VM. His work depicts celerity and balance in his hands. The exhibition will continue till September 22.
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