tar Trek, the popular TV series introduced the notion of instantaneous travel. By simply pressing a button one was transported to another location in the blink of an eye. With a slight twist, the sci-fi fantasy has ended up becoming a reality in our times. By clicking a tab or touching a digit, we can bring distant locations in front of us. No matter whether we are lying in bed, walking in a street, riding a train or sitting in a class room, we are able to summon sites in real time on the luminous screenof a TV, computer, tablet or mobile phone.

Surrounded by such options, reality ceases to be single or pure; blended, it appears in several layers. For instance, a person driving down a peaceful neighbourhood of spacious houses may evoke the footage of some apartment blocks in Gaza turned into ruins by the Israeli Defence Force as witnessed on TV news or in yesterday’s papers. It’s rare, almost impossible, to view reality with virgin eyes. (This has always been the case.) More often that a shadow of the past, reality now emerges as a mix of simultaneous scenarios from various, disconnected locations.

Mian Ijaz-ul Hassan’s art is a collection of reality from diverse sources. The combination is not based on formal or aesthetic necessities alone. It is also linked to his life as a political activist, a social commentator and a public intellectual. In the past, he has juxtaposed images of women from a guerrilla war next to those exploited by a popular consumer culture (Thah, 1973, and Rifle Butt, 1974). At his current solo exhibition Reality Revisited (September 3-12, Canvas Gallery, Karachi) one can see how reality is perceived and presented with multiple meanings. On the surface, a visitor recognises leaves, plants, trees and other vegetation, but more than belonging to the genre of landscape these paintings facilitate a narrative about the visible, as well as social, political and economic realities. These are segments of nature transformed into metaphors to describe or comment on a situation, familiar or unseen, near or distant, local or international.

Hassan, now 84, still takes to painting, on watching the latest atrocities unfolding in Gaza. He has repeatedly expressed his exasperation with producing art while innocent Palestinians are the target of such genocide. Yet he goes to his studio and picks the brush to communicate his response and criticism employing the language of images. Like a work of literature, Hassan’s canvases do not announce the artist’s position or political views. Instead, these indicate ways of looking at the reality through a deeper, wider and societal lens.

Like a work of literature, Hassan’s canvases do not announce the artist’s position or political views. Instead, these indicate ways of looking at the reality through a deeper, wider and societal lens.

For example the painting comprising a huge leaf (Banana Leaf, 1990) against lines of barbed wires, signifies and lauds the element of resilience. The large canvas (Banana Leaves, 2019), containing a couple of leaves with a tinge of (blood like) red on their edge is a similar work. Both depict nature, as well as the fabric of an unjust and oppressive society, a community thriving on separation. Irrespective of whether it stems in the realm of faith, politics or class, the divide is clearly visible and irreparable.

In the urban planning of a city like Lahore, it manifests in concrete, as pedestrians (read the poor) have been deprived of their right to walk on main streets. In the absence of footpaths, these roads emulate motorways and ring roads that establish barriers between the riders of high-power vehicles and pedestrians and bike riders. In one of Hassan’s paintings (Sunset, 2013), this phenomenon is reversed. It suggests points of meeting and merger: of day and night, of light and darkness, of earth and sky (in the form of branches hanging in the sky, but in the direction of shrubs rooted in the soil). The final meeting/ merger is between this and the other world, as birds are rendered in their flight returning to somewhere far, invisible and mysterious. However, the work also alludes to a split, since electricity poles and wires separate nature from built structures.

What seems natural and ordinary includes content that can be deciphered from diverse angles. A chair missing some parts (Broken Chair, 2022) can be a still life but its flat background daubed in the colours and pattern of Pakistan’s flag, elevates it to a critique on the nature of power and how the state (represented by chair) is losing its grip and grasp in the present circumstances. The power of state is again referred to in another painting, Teaching a Lesson (2023), in which a group clad in helmets and uniform is beating a man with batons. The victim is lying on the floor in a pool of blood. To some the imagery may be direct but it maps an occurrence beyond the boundaries of time and place. The scene could belong to Chile after the 1973 military coup, Pakistan during Gen Zia’s regime or a public square in Kenya from this year.

The current exhibition includes a number of portraits too. These relate to recent conflicts; which can eventually turn a human into a monster and others into casualties. These portraits have their roots in violence. These include Kashmir Landscape III, which portrays a female’s enlarged face poked with pellet gun spots, and The Wailing Valley depicting a crying veiled woman. The act, composition and background of the painting refer to Edvard Munch’s The Scream, but Hassan has brought Munch’s abstraction into an unbearable reality witnessed in the Indian-Held Kashmir.

Mian Ijaz-ul Hassan returns to these subjects, but instead of focusing outside, he looks at his normal and familiar surroundings with an unusual approach and discovers features of demons within mundane things like a paper napkin, a sliced tomato, a bowl of ice cream, in Untitled II, V, VI, IX. He photographs segments of his breakfast/ dinner table, and blowing up a tiny portion, makes us see the contorted faces of terrible brutes in our surroundings and imagination. In these prints on canvas, he also adds some brush strokes to enhance what he has deciphered and discovered. In its formal solution and pictorial appearance this body of work may not resemble paintings the veteran artist is famous for, but intrinsically these canvases are part of the artist’s vision: not only through his eyes, but also an inquiring mind that observes, investigates, understands and acts in a personal and profound manner. What he fabricates offers a range of meanings to an intelligent audience.

Hassan prefers to call himself a ‘painter,’ rather than an ‘artist.’ The minor distinction is significant in that it indicates an individual’s position. For him, making of images, either through paint, print, pencil or pen, is a physical act, not merely an intellectual pursuit. It is an engaging activity and a joyful journey. The delight of putting a brush loaded with paint on a canvas and bringing a reality out of a blank surface, is a miraculous occurrence that fascinates the painter, who defying the limitations of an advanced age, spends time every day to create new work.

Reality Revisited is a unique opportunity to see some of his latest paintings, finished days before the exhibition. This work discloses a new dimension and shift in his oeuvre. Ijaz-ul Hassan has a logical mind that noticed every minute detail. However, he once wished to see less while making art. The most recent canvases in the show suggest that the painter has attained what he had always desired. Hence one sees greater lucidity, fluidity, freshness and freeness in these unmatchable visuals, confirming the presence of a constantly thinking mind and a continuously inventing hand.

The writer is an art critic, curator and a professor at the School of Visual Arts and Design, Beaconhouse National University, Lahore