he relationship between the work and its material substance is as complex as that between body and soul.”

– Arthur C Danto

“Visibility is a form of growth,” writes John Berger. What Berger means, in part, is that visibility is a process. Appearance is flux and interdependence, and “looking is submitting the sense of sight to the experience of that interdependence.” But Berger also alludes to a very particular, and hauntingly elusive, sense in which the distinction between animate and inanimate can be seen to dissolve under close observation, a quality of seeing that is central to Umar Nawaz’s work, recently on show at Khaas Contemporary in Islamabad, titled Decennium – sculptures spanning over the last ten years.

In larger installations on the walls and the free-standing column, Nawaz’s work is endowed with a presence that is simultaneously geological and human. Indeed, although all sculptures can be said to participate in the fourth dimension, demanding from viewers a physical engagement that takes place over time, Nawaz’s sculptures cross a further threshold between still imagery and moving pictures. Their scratched and chased surfaces and distinct, eccentrically shaped facets create isolated images that assemble themselves, as one engages with them in turn, into almost filmic sequences.

All of Nawaz’s work on show situates itself on the borders between abstraction and representation. The sculptures accommodate, more or less equally, a primarily formalist mode of exegesis as well as more subjective readings founded on the work’s evocation of various objects in the real world. Even the most cursory overview of Nawaz’s work as a whole will, for instance, reveal an abundance of formal echoes of various archaic artefacts.

The work can be discussed in the wake of the various strains of modernist abstraction, both organic and geometric, that preceded and informed it. Another crucial aspect of this work is the sculptor’s ongoing investigation into the properties of sameness and difference.

It is pertinent that throughout his practice, Nawaz favours stainless steel that is changeable. Mutability is what interests him. This sensitivity to inherent instability contributes to the distinctive liveliness of the sculptures in steel, a material that often lends itself to obdurate stasis. Nawaz has devoted himself to a new material that has no history and which cannot be ascribed to traditional meanings, namely stainless steel. He appreciates the neutrality and perfection of brushed steel’s reflective surface.

These sculptures owe their impact not only to the powers of illusion but also to their literal properties of the bearing structure and simplicity of design. With a great measure of confidence, they occupy the same space as the viewer. As silent counterparts, they confront him with their presence.

Similarly, some pieces have some of the protean fluidity with which the material could be associated. It can be seen in the instability of their forms, a resistance to formal resolution that echoes the relief work. That fluidity is also apparent in the glazed black surface of one of the pieces. It shimmers and gleams with a lustre that is specifically watery. This solidly based, brooding mass is dark black in colour. Its imposing bulk at first belies the complexity of its surface topology.

Its round-angled, multifaceted surface ensures that the viewer’s perception of its basic outline changes dramatically depending on the vantage point from which it is viewed. Moving around it, we are likely to find ourselves as persistently surprised and confused as an amateur climber faced with a difficult and intimidating mountain peak.

The result is a vortex of oscillation, which radiates out into the room, a dynamic structure, a concentration of antagonistic forces. The force of progress seems to have turned against itself in this three-dimensional knot.

Generous though their invitation is to figurative metaphors, Nawaz’s sculptures at a human scale are nonetheless resolutely abstract. Their relationship to living form can be defined in the terms that for modernists, sculpture is a medium peculiarly located at the juncture between stillness and motion. To the extent that this equation holds, it is quite clearly part of the artist’s inheritance.

Nawaz’s work ardently embraces personal subjectivity, the only position from which psychological engagement can be generated. While most sculptors’ version of a column is produced from the addition of identical, crystalline-looking elements, Nawaz creates an impression of organic growth by bending and folding the steel.

The choice of material and its contribution to a work of art is no longer determined by tradition and meaning as in idealistic aesthetics nor is it determined by its existential natural quality as in materialistic aesthetics. It is as if nature is no longer the sole source and authority. In other words, it can be argued that irrespective of its other functions, stainless steel that the sculptor has employed always conveys a certain meaning. Furthermore, the manner in which the material is treated also says something about the prevailing ideas on intellect and material in a society.

Guided by the action of his hand and body, respectively, Nawaz executes stroke after stroke, until the fine system of marks and lines takes on concrete shape. The alphabet that he employs in the feasibility of his ‘design’ does not consist of letters but of fine lines and marks which at first sight hardly seem to differ, and whose diversity at closer inspection amazes all the more.

We can say that the incisions barely differ in width, length, intensity and above all the way they behave towards the pulsating system of lines. Sometimes, they are so closely crowded together that the intensity suggests density and tension. In other places they are sufficiently spaced apart to allow a glimpse through the network of lines.

The artist’s thoughts, actions and gestures are effectively stored in these ‘drawings’ on stainless steel. The entire body of work presents a carefully balanced relationship between volume and surface. In the process it initiates a sculptural act that would not have been possible without such a lengthy, intensely physical process of clarification.

Every shape and mark enriches and extends the sculptor’s repertoire. They appear severe in their simplicity and firmness, brilliant in their experimentation with symmetries, masterful in their illustration of spatial conceptions.

Thanks to their texture, the lines exert an influence on the shimmering surface. The works on show derive their persuasiveness from the extremely varied texture this material can assume. The spectator could perhaps project himself into the sheets of steel, but his experience would never be authentically the same as the artist’s.

The work is not to be a window, but a door through which the viewer could pass, that would admit the outside world to the inside, as well as acting as a transition from inside to outside. In order to understand the work fully, we have to imagine moving our position along the way and taking different points of view. There is a kinetic quality to the viewing experience. As a result, there are two spaces in the mirror-like sheet; the surface, marked out by the photographic image, and the reflected depth.

In one of the Untitled installations on the wall, the orbs of steel that form a cluster appear to be genetic mutations. Ordered through solidified pieces of steel with chisel marks on them, they bring to mind the cracking rests of ponds and lakes or seem like ice shoals. This accumulation of sorts makes one think of fungus growths, mushrooming fungi, a shoal of fish, making the installation is as complicated as an anthill, and as fearsome as a rain of meteorites. Umar Nawaz has expressed his feelings and rhythm in a material, intrinsically cold and solid. That is the reason this seemingly ‘different’ work carries a rare but universal power.

The writer is an art critic based in Islamabad