Elements of diversity

A group exhibition at Art scene Gallery, Karachi titled “Organized Chaos” featured a collection of five artists. The paintings showed the creative art skills that depicted country’s different social and behavioural issues. The artworks hold an element of diversity and intensity which were highlighted by an effective play of light and dark hues.

Each artist uses his/her ability of visualizing the entire concept and then transformed their imaginations in to compositions with humans, objects, shapes, colours, and abstract formations.

The themes for the paintings were derived from the circumstances or events that have happened in the lives of the artists or are likely to occur in future. The thoughts of common person were translated on the canvases by these artists and thus involved each viewer in mysterious ways with the paintings.

The thought process behind the artworks can easily be seen in paintings which they executed through intricate and detailed compositions. The artists emphasise on symbolism to communicate with the viewers. The attentions to details and powerful thinking that reflected the issues emanating from personal discourse and their living experiences including current socio-political upheavals were evident in the paintings.

Aleena Mazhar’s paintings portrayed the current scenario of migration of people to safer grounds due to security reasons. She focused on the displacement process and the agony of people leaving behind their land and property in fear of lives.

She depicted skilfully the human behaviour and the victims of the situation created by certain elements. The faces of people painted by her say it all while the ones in veils and chaddar also portrayed their struggle to survive and carve a future.

“My work reflects the change, the sole constant that contours the ambiguity of life. I am using a familiar subject matter that is usually disregarded. By repeating the obvious, a significant dialogue is created with the viewer. Dividing events into frail yet profoundly real fragments, the existences of infinite possibilities are surfaced. This invites the viewer to move into a space of speculation while I rely on their desire for consistency. The intricate presence of the human pursuit towards the indefinite lies an “organized chaos,” she said in a statement.

Wasif Afridi’s paintings depicted current political issues of our country. He reflected the political behaviour of our politicians who made promises and just talk about the problems and do not solve them. He painted a landscape consisting of water, land and foliage arranged in such a way depicting boundaries that separate one part from other yet they are together.

“In this era of technology and advancement, warfare has become the easiest and common act to adopt both on individual to the International level. Since Science has progressed beyond the imagination, but according to my point of view it has increased the rate of destruction in a very pleasant and friendly way. Living in a gloomy environment with nothing productive or healthy all around one can only be obstructive. In short, power always wants to stay in power and innocent keeps on paying for his life,” Wasif said in a statement.

Hira Siddiqui portrayed her personal relations with the people around her and discussed the issues in creating and handling certain relationships in life. She talked about the kings and queens in life who showed courage and fight against the odds of society.

“In my recent work I am challenging myself to break conditioned narrative of famous images by visually amalgamating conditioned narratives. I enjoy the process of de-contextualizing images. I am using visuals as my pallet to construct painting. My practice is to extract the soul of worldwide famous paintings. I consciously and deliberately play with their color palate, compositional element, and placement of objects specifically their narratives and recreate them in entirely different mediums and techniques,” she said about her work.

Her work was a comment on museum quality art, which we access in different derived forms like prints of prints of prints and soft-copies, sometimes in a brilliant resolution and sometimes worst, what left is so ambiguous and mysterious.

She challenged the authenticity of inspiration of how work transforms as it moves from canvas of the Master to the canvas of an artist, where the process of artistry results in so many diverse dimensions. Not everyone can access the original masterpiece to experience its originality. The fact is that none of us is experiencing the museum quality art. Almost all of us are inspired by second hand version of original paintings.

Rabbiya Ilyas portrayed her views in a some what concealed way. She painted shadowy women figures. The images emerging from the shimmy backdrop created an ambiance of mystery. The known and unknown facts of life and an individual person are revealed by shadowy figures. The background shows the unknown from where the figure emerges to reveal some parts of its personality thus no one is totally understandable.

“My work portrays the odious character of the moralizing people in our society who are bamboozling around with their hypocritical miens, disguising their looks and doing immoral and disgraceful acts of shame. I have shown the different sides of such sacrilegious and fabricated people who are bluffing us with their deceptive identities,” she said in a statement.

Maha Rehan paintings depicted abstract figurative art imaginary work. She captured rare moments in life and love with compositions having bold colours balanced by lighter tones.

The work revolves around the emotional complexities of one’s life. It’s all about thoughts feelings and behaviours an individual was going through. The artist wants to present the positive or negative emotions one can feel through intricate lines.

“When you face different stages of life each challenges you in a different way. So, it’s interconnected with each other. It’s a complete state of mind that influences our behaviours and it can be short live or long lived,” she said.

She defined the multiple stages of emotions through these visual representations. Because it affects us in many ways negative or positive forces are always present there and being a woman emotions are always affecting and they left a strong impact and feelings behind.

All the artworks are created with some what same theme and ideas by the artists but all of them express their ideas through symbolic language.