Utopia

Seemah Niaz of the Unicorn Gallery in Karachi and her daughter Soraya share a penchant for exhibiting the works of bright young sparks of the local art world. They also have an eye for emerging talent. I belong to the tribe which is about to become extinct, more in the metaphysical rather than the biological sense, that believes that Pakistan has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to painting and sculpture and can hold its own against the flair and endowment of the Italians, French,  Mexicans and Vietnamese. The sheer number of young hopefuls, who emerge from our institutes and universities proudly clutching their certificates and degrees is fortunately growing. Some switch to designing or photography and make a career. Others stand like Epicurus, the discoverer of truth who parted the walls of the world asunder so he could see all things moving on through the void…and create. Regrettably, not all artists make it to the big league. Those that do are greatly sought after.

Two out of three Pakistani trail blazers were highly successful financially. One, unfortunately, was reduced to the point where he felt the need to sell finished canvases for the distilled essence of grain. Jamil Naqsh, who recognized the fact that this is the most misogynistic and testosterone fuelled place in the world satisfied the eternal male fantasy through his voluptuous, unattainable women. Ismail Gulgee, whose masterpieces in lapis lazuli have never been equaled often changed horses in midstream as he experimented with different styles and techniques, abandoned representational work and finally settled on modernism and churned out a succession of kaleidoscopic abstractions which were recognized by the inevitable blob of gold.  Ahmed Parvez who had a morbid fear of the unknown stuck to a single theme and relapsed into a cornucopia and profusion of colour that was mind boggling. In fact, the art world owes a debt of gratitude to artist Abdul Wahab Jaffer for preserving the works of one of Pakistan’s most creative artists and to Marjorie Husain for coming out with a book of Parvez’s tour de force. If you want to acquire a better understanding of what I am trying to say read Victor Anant’s homage to Ahmed Parvez entitled ‘In the kingdom of the blind only the mad are forgiven.’

In the Unicorn exhibition visitors were treated to the works of two bright sparks from NCA and Punjab University – two of Lahore’s catacombs of artistic profundity which in the past have produced a giddying amount of talent. At first glance Kiran Saeed’s miniatures appear childlike and somewhat naïve, as if the artist has just returned from a trip to the Swiss Alps and hasn’t quite left the place. But at a second glance I found these illustrations quite riveting. It was like walking into the Kingdom of Oz and expecting to be joined by the good fairy, the scarecrow, the tin man and the lion man. The four landscapes have a certain bucolic touch which is quite fetching. Take for example the picture with the snow-capped mountains embracing a rising yellow sun, while a rainbow floats in the top right hand corner. There is a bicycle which probably transports Frau Schofenberger to the market to sell her eggs, lots of big round flowers, a few toadstools, a fence to keep out the cows on which a cock is dancing the polka and a wooden gate with a heart in one of the windows. The house has a heart painted in one of the windows and the mother hen and her chicks in the foreground look quite content, totally unaware of the fate that will eventually befall them. The swing did appear a little incongruous, but then isn’t Utopia the land of make believe? Kiran’s other compositions have a gastronomic flavour and are doused with chocolate dripping from blue ice cubes, ice cream, marzipan and whipped cream. In one of the compositions even the clouds are shaped like spirally wound rolls of candy floss.

Raza-ur-Rehman is not the kind of artist one forgets in a hurry. His is the kind of work one has to examine under an eye-glass. In his private domain one enters a three-dimensional world of fantasy. His compositions produced in mixed media on Wasli are quite exquisite. They have an almost subliminal quality about them and have to be seen more than once to understand his obsession with the questions to which there is no answer. The symbol of temporal existence on which he has focused his attention is the universal rose – the rose of Babylon and the Renaissance, of the Hawaiian Islands and the Mughal princesses – the rose which is a symbol of beauty and life and unrequited love. In his five paintings which have turquoise, tobacco brown and grey backgrounds the flower has been allowed to survive above the surface and below, somewhat clinically dissected. The male form is trapped in a kind of despairing defiance. In one frame Universal Man has sprouted wings, perhaps to extricate himself from the eternal entrapment from which there is no escape. Both artists are on the right track and though their styles and themes are radically different. I wish them well in their endeavour to find a place in the sun.