LAHORE: Had it been a gourmet item, it ought to have been delicious and rich, full filling or not it is for the reader to decide. Rohtas 2 held a one-day preview of works by Saba Khan titled ‘When in Boston’. The works not only possessed the quality to grasp solitude on subjects from life but were also pure eye-candy. Saba with her colourful, symbolic and elemental works cultivates a tale of the American dream, its fabled existence and finally the distortion of the dream. The artist’s palette is rather vibrant, filled with eye teasing colours that stand within bright contrasting patterns of each other. The symbols are both domestic as well as foreign. The style and use of material is quite experimental in some sense of the word and it does seem that Saba succeeded in this comfortably. One thing that is more interesting than the works presented here themselves is their names.
‘AMERICAN PLAYING WITH THE DOG BY THE LAKE’
The canvas, as the name suggests, captures a significant image of the American utopia. A fat American and a dog in total coordination and symmetry while the lake is a clear path on the whole work. Muddy background helps highlight the focus on the man and the dog, and the slight off centre placement of the lake, which here is basically a circular form, makes the image hard to miss.
‘APPLE PICKING’
This is another work that is eye catchy beyond the rules of aesthetic ingenious and creative grandeur. Simplistic yet filled with brutal colours and mesmerising imagery, it is one of those works that lingers in ones unconscious far after even it is forgotten. The characters in all of Saba’s works remain distant, like relics of a past long gone or a civilization lost. Every stoke bursts with energy and variance.
‘CAKE ON SILVER PLATTER’
This art work immortalizes a husky haired woman sitting on a stool in the act of devouring a cake. The expressions and the language of the body say it all in this one, whereas the centralized placement of the woman and the drooling mouth make this work full of sensuousness and sentimentality. Use of oranges, pinks and lemon yellow in selective compositional areas adds to the overall highlight of this work. Although this piece could have been complete with all these mentioned elements but the true ‘fun’ of it comes from the background of midnight blue on which red vehicles prevail in a vertical direction.
‘EXPLOSION I AND EXPLOSION II’
These are two individual pieces which tell the same story but from two strikingly different perspectives. The colours although remain muddy but the subjectivity and the originality of these works are striking. Done with powerful but simple renditions, these are works of humble approach towards a subject that is quite practically ripping though our social infrastructure.
‘SHOOTING TO PARADISE’
This artefact marks the boldest work by Saba yet, in this work the suicide bomber is literally flying to paradise or at least the head is. The head of an individual caught in midair as the explosion takes place reminds one of the classic interpretations of the Greeks and their gods, as one of them would be caught agonising the other over some minor displeasure. Similarly the focus of the later two works remains the highlighted explosion that has somewhat become a routine for most of us today. The artist deals with this trauma and violent wave of fear with symphony in line and great holdover tonal values. Here and there thick blobs of colours keep ones attention glued to the works. With bright circular back grounds and intricate detail within the elements, ‘Shooting to Paradise 2’ is much more evocative then its predecessor.
‘FUNERAL’
This one is a symbolic piece, full of reds, blacks and silent integrity. It is a relatively cold one too, whereas the other works are kinetic and mesmerizing in their use of energy, this one is somewhat simpler, much more eerie and utterly quite.
‘HOMELESS ON CAMPUS’
This showcases a much more personal and intricate side of the artist and the use of elements and colours in this one too is contrasting.
All in all the works seem to be one great orchestrated look at the American dream, its effects on us as a nation and cultural identity, the brain drain that is prevailing in between our two nations and the clash of civilizations that has effected us in many ways; that are both social and personal.
An American dream
