Written by: Muhammad Hamza
Posted on: August 05, 2024 | 
| 中文
Untitled by Tahir Ali
The collection of three amazing artists was exhibited at the Tanzara Art Gallery, Next Nature, whose owner is Ms Noshi Qadir. The exhibition was curated by Asim Akhtar, a profound curator and writer in the art world. His eye for such philosophical artworks, including human consciousness and different textural languages, is keen enough to bring these artists from around the world into one group show.
Asim speaks about the artists being profound in their respective languages through the process of exploring different cultures and views about connecting to the invisible world around us. Thus, nature collides with all the living species. Artists have put forward their respective understandings to create various forms and structures within the paradigm of abstract languages.
A multi-medium researcher artist, Naqsh is a nomad by heart who paints in an abstract expression. Her works are often seen as gridlocks in layers. Naqsh uses oil paints, ink and chalk to create such layered pieces on a large scale, in her own language. Naqsh’s motif towards presenting these artworks is to explore a format of expressing the contemporary. Her stencil strokes are one of a kind and are repeated through harmonious personal perfection and satisfaction.
Before a Prayer by Naqsh Raj
In a conversation with Naqsh, she exclaims that the pieces are her own current mental image. She likes to explore with various different tools to craft a vivid layered narrative to what she believes in. In concord to the format of her story, it’s all about the journey she’s on. Her current works of art are more like binary coded—each comes with its own unique bar code and showcases her distorted performance in perfection via repetitive patterns and strokes.
The colors are different from what we usually see around paintings. The pigments are raw and bluntly slathered to find that balance of shade and tone. We sometimes find ourselves immersed enough when we’re looking at them from a distance. It feels like a window to an abyss; sometimes it collides with the background and yet it feels surreal to know that it’s been hand-painted with a mighty brush on canvas.
There are a few textures that are seen on her artworks. They really pop out of those grids, as if someone tried to cover up the mistake. Yet it’s a part of the process that aims for perfection. Naqsh’s definition of perfection comes from her own personal experiences, which are to be believed in such intricacy of life that whatever comes out shouldn’t be altered. Her method of painting these works is remarkably different and unique.
Her work titled ‘Infancy’ is a core example of how determined she is to produce a harmonic orange hue with slight variations in yellow to be mustard. So what if it’s looked at from a distance? It feels like a Bohemian era rug, which had multiple pop color tones in a weaving pattern through yarn. The gold hue-like border is complimenting the segregated colors in small grid-like stripes, consuming to give an immersive effect for the viewer.
Infancy by Naqsh Raj
An abstract painter with a profound thought process, Tahir creates works of art that depict and showcase the core memories that resurface in our present. He has worked through time and hopes to bring an optimistic approach towards the post-colonial times.
Tahir showcases themes of prehistoric wars and natural atrocities in his works of art. These are quite multidimensional approaches. His vivid blunt stroke schemes are also one of a kind, showing the importance of those earthy changes that happened throughout these times.
Untitled by Tahir Ali
As his analogy towards creating a series of artworks, Tahir showcases the importance of thinking about our connection in all three states of time: past, present, and future. Thinking about the times of the Covid pandemic, there was an ulterior relationship between communicating via different channels and platforms. It gave out its own language to speak. It was a temporary thing yet stayed on for long. People still find it way easier to understand situations in some of those languages.
His works speak of emotion that requires a subtle understanding with time. It is truly an immersive experience to go in-depth with blunt to precision strokes, unfailing the elements that make the experience unique.
A few of his untitled pieces are more complex than they seem. There is a lot of remembrance and emotion that had been a staple in his avatar that he owns in this life, showcased so naked that it strips down the entire timeline since his arrival. He truly inspires the audience with his structures that hang along the borders of canvases. The blunt pigments under those almost translucent lines are a treat to see and explore through his imagery.
An explorer of different behaviors in humans and their language towards creating a narrative with specialized characters, Zahra portrays the English language through an interior object like a chair. Her sequential view of creation, titled Zuban-e-Kursi, is one of a kind. She speaks about human emotions that can be expressed through an ordeal of emotional reactions.
Zahra’s work of art consists of oil acrylic washes on linen cloth that is stretched on a frame. Her pigments are splattered over as they’ve been blow-dried to form layers and layers of memories. In connection are those life forms she speaks about, such as humans, birds and microbes. All are interconnected with each other, having their own distinct personalities and experiences that can be shared via structures of chairs and creating English alphabets through them.
Singular Paradise by Zahra Jewanjee
The symbolic chair language is present in her paintings to depict the language of unheard voices in our surroundings. This is somewhat reminiscent of the anthropological context that resides within each abstract dimension of a singular existing human being. Thus, the birds represent the same species, and they represent the environment and course of life.
Her work Birth of A Colony is a blue-hued mesmerizing piece of art with a scenic pattern in the background. It shows the depth and beauty of any night sky. Yet we see a patterned version of the chair language forming a structure and encoding the reality of time and space. It is as if it were a planet skewed from its orbit, launching a peripheral star-like hollow point in space. There are many formats of chairs we see in it, each interlinked to a letter in the English alphabet, holding the power to communicate through the voices we heard through our minds and emotions.
Birth of a Colony by Zahra Jewanjee
From the beyond, these artists have been able to create unique language through exploring nature and human beings in their respective habitats. Each work of art holds the potential of lurking with a particular language of culture. We stand here, mesmerized by the complexity of life and abstraction that accompanies us. The exhibition has been designed to link the human to its roots and explore the languages that are rarely ever seen. From human behavior to holding a narrative that is a personal experience, precision and distortion are parallel to each other, hauntingly complex and beautiful creations with colors to contrast with our lives. This show has shown us everything from conscious contemporaneous emotions to the times when nothing existed.
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