Nisar Ahmed’s exhibition at the Collector’s Galleria and the Iqbal Hussain show in Ejaz Art Gallery sent several art lovers hopping around town to see the works put up by these artists.
Nisar Ahmed’s show was vivid and bright in acrylics and oil on canvas. This Karachi- based artist has made a cautious practice to produce a kind of decorative art meant to attract the taste of buyers.
His canvases are astonishingly dominated by sensuous female figures, usually in a unique profile, surrounded by decorative patterns and designs.
Nisar Ahmed’s female figures are juxtaposed by the image of an imaginative bird like a sparrow resulting from his belief that women and birds have similar anguish in our society and both struggle to come out of their cages.
His backgrounds are also very interestingly painted in a traditional miniature manner; in most compositions female figures are placed before the “Havelli” interior with Islamic canopies in a Chughtai style, however some are carefully rendered with unusual textures or with chess-like designs for filling the open space in the background. Beautiful imagery of flowers, birds, pottery and other traditional ornaments are used as complimentary elements for narrating stories inspired from local literature.
A few of the paintings in the show, surprisingly and entirely, are different from the rest of his painting style. These paintings have nude female figures sitting in an odd space, surrounded by swirl like imagery which indicates that it might be a kind of diversion or reaction to his overly repetitive subjects and similar compositions or they might have painted as experiment in a popular fashion, with dynamic compositions. Here nude figures are placed upfront, outlined very carefully with bold brush strokes and passive colours.
IQBAL HUSSAIN: Hussain’s new collection has attracted many at its opening. The controversial artist has a distinct style in immortalising his subjects by translating the old Lahore’s culture into his work. His work is a photograph of moments in time, and of the common man, who has common aspirations or work. Hussain is also inspired by the working class. Usually his work comprises the images of courtesans, dancers, musicians and landscapes.
In his current exhibition too, he has tackled landscapes, profiles and other scenes. But his choice of scenes is controversial and thought provoking at the same time. His depiction of a tied up women, being tugged on either sides by other women, shows the traps that are present in society thanks to social norms, while there may even be a spark on underlying violence in some of his other paintings.
He captures the voluptuousness of big beautiful women courtesans, with the earthy form of a Punjabi jatti or a country girl. His works convey all of these emotions and bring to life extraordinary characters that are often neglected or spurned by our hypocritical culture.
Iqbal Hussain’s paintings have been requested by the Jordanian Princess Wijdan Ali for the Jordanian Gallery of Fine Arts. His paintings/works were the only ones from Pakistan nominated in 34 out of 321 paintings selected for UNESCO Headquarters Prize in 1995, Paris. In 1998 one of his paintings was auctioned at the Sotheby’s auction house in London.
