aruki Murakami, in his new novel, The City and Its Uncertain Walls, delineates a town that simultaneously belongs to our familiar world and another parallel world. It’s a realm where humans like us live but have long abandoned their shadows; also “just as the people of the town had no horizontal curiosity about geography, they lacked any vertical curiosity about history.”

Though Ashkan Sanei is from Iran – born in Urumieh and having studied at the universities of Isfahan and Tehran, and currently living in Tehran where he has held six solo exhibitions at various galleries – he seems to be an inhabitant of that fictional place conjured up by the Japanese author in his book. His art describes the scenario, situation and sense of that imaginary land.

Looking at his recent work in the solo exhibition From Behind the Silk Flower, December 13, 2024, to January 10, 2025, at White Wall Gallery, Lahore), one realises that the reality created by Sanei exists more convincingly than our mundane and daily experience and is removed from the usual web of actuality that surrounds us. Disposing of shadows not only occurs in Murakami’s text; it happens in Sanei’s visuals too. Here, we stroll in a terrain without reflections, reproductions and beyond the illusion of receding space. There is no reading of the horizon and no perception of verticality. Everything is turned flat, two-dimensional and geometry-centred.

There are maps of external and intimate geography in his art (a blend of multiple mediums, techniques and sources). Eroded, erased, fragmented shapes keep reminding us of their previous presence – whether in memory, dreams or anecdotes – since the Iranian artist employs figments of photographs and fleeting phrases. Torn and tiny pictures and segments of unreadable language, imbibed in sensitive surfaces – which could be walls, windows, much-trodden ground, particles of atmosphere, or pages of a dysfunctional script – are features of his creative production.

A work of art contains a residue of the past, no matter if it envisages the future, deals with sci-fi themes or imagines an emerging universe, because whatever is created is seen afterwards – initially by the maker, then by contemporaries and later by millions of spectators across cultures and continents. A novel, a piece of music, a movie, or a work of visual art, in its nature and making, contains that ingredient of the past. Occasionally the fact is acknowledged and absorbed in the practice of a creative individual so that their work emanates and wafts the scent of bygone eras.

Ashkan Sanei combines layers of marks, textures and materials to fabricate imagery that not only relates to optical sensibility but also simulates other exposures. For example, the body of work with the common title Rough Wind appears to be an attempt to document and describe the sound, speed, vibration and vitality of a natural phenomenon. Sanei accomplishes this with the sporadic sways of black mediums on a pale yellow page. The textured surface of hand-made Indian paper and the archiving of irregular, multi-directional and seismic flows of lines in varying thickness and width communicate the noise and fury of fierce wind in a tropical region or on a mountainous range.

The overwhelming scale, amount and ever-engaging diversity of black marks take a viewer of Sanei’s art on a visit of vast and open fields. However, at the same instance, one speculates if all that is portrayed does not solely lie around but is within the inner self of each person who gazes at Ashkan Sanei’s recent work, shown for the first time in Lahore.

Though the artist has never exhibited in Pakistan before, like winds, clouds and birds, the art from a territory does not stumble upon or care for national-political boundaries. A human’s encounter with a built environment and their contact with physical phenomena extend beyond borders – especially in lands that are not only joined by geography but also interwoven through history, language, rituals and beliefs. Pakistan and Iran merge into each other through their soil, stones and water, much like our country meets its other neighbours: India, Afghanistan and China. Sanei recognises the essence of humanity, the sections of shared history and the outcome of interlocked identity that manifest in tongues, the spontaneous movements of human beings and interaction with natural forces.

A frequent pattern in Sanei’s art is the manipulation of language. Written, spoken, muted, erased – the script assumes a multiplicity of disguises. In the series singularly named Word/ Meaning, one deciphers wavering traces of alphabets, messages and scrawls. Constructed in the format of a page, these timeless texts are drawn or penned (some of the tools used by the artist include solid markers and pencils!), denoting the Persian substitutes for “word” and “meaning.” This is supported by the artist’s decision to produce work in the configuration of a handwritten manuscript or a notebook.

An important aspect of these richly fabricated surfaces (some reminiscent of the aesthetics of Cy Twombly) is the addition of portions of photographs. Bits and patches of old, black-and-white snapshots are glued onto a visual, so that it simultaneously conveys being real and fictional; solid and agile; an object and its interpretation. These small and torn parts of pictures look as if they were transported from their places of origin or exposure to other locations on the wings of wind.

Wind is a natural element that brings seeds from distant terrains while also possessing the potential to disrupt the peaceful harmony of things. Hurricanes and storms destroy human settlements, while the spring breeze promises the growth of new life. Sanei’s “aesthetics is based on themes of destruction and repetition” as “he swings between creation and destruction.”

Poetry, music and faith from West Asia and South Asia often revolve around the motifs of life and death; creation and resurrection; and death and reincarnation. Geometry, particularly Islamic geometry, is about the re-assembling of natural forms. Living flowers are converted into intersecting circles and shapes. In the hands of Sanei, geometry is further modified, serving as a scaffolding to elaborate personal, private and poetic narratives.

Derived from the observation of the outside world – such as a wall, a chequered fence, a wooden blackboard with remnants of chalk phrases, strips of coloured or white papers and casual scribblings – his imagery transforms into a field of contemplation, transcendence and sublimity. As the introduction about the artist notes, “in his practice, there is a tangible connection between the subject and the material.” One can conclude that the pictorial strategies of the Iranian-born artist establish a prolonged bond between an art object and its varying views and viewers.

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