Titled Modern Vision — Exhibition of Paintings by Generation Rahi, the collection features a total of 35 students of Rahi besides his own and Hajra’s art pieces. Each artist has displayed up to two art pieces, with some exceptions displaying up to five in the exhibition.
“All of the artists in this exhibition have been Rahi’s students at some point and they all follow the modern vision and a progressive point-of-view in painting. This series is a continuation of that process, to keep progressing with time,” said Aania Sajjad Khan, curator of the exhibition and a participating artist.
She added that the artworks on display will keep on changing since all of them could not be displayed at once owing to the space restrictions.
In her own work, Khan explores surrealism through creation, creating art pieces that are both classic and modernist at the same time.
Like the plethora of themes at the display, the media used in the artworks, vary. The artists have worked around a wide array of subjects such as landscapes and architecture, floral arrangements, figurative form and portraits, using a diversity of media such as oil paint, water colour, pastel and pencil work. The artists come from different levels of art practice.
Rahi, whose artistic evolution spans about five decades, has reached a stage of cubical expressionism with a combination of Rayonistic activity and psychedelic play of forms and colour.
Commenting on the exhibition, he said, “This is a mission to preach the modern concepts in the painting world to the coming generation.” He added that the previous generation of master painters were good at their craft but did not follow conceptual process of realistic track painting.
Meanwhile, Hajra’s paintings are distinct for their representation of evolutionary periods such as academic realism, classism, oriental intuitionism, oriental formalism and neo-romanticism.
Shireen Gheba Najib, another featured artist, has exhibited a piece of art that is based on a famous verse of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, “Mujhse pehli si muhabbat mere mehboob na maang”, depicting how a woman keeps emerging from time to time. “The art piece it’s two phases – her past and her present,” said Najib, who has been a student of Rahi for many years now.
The show was inaugurated by the European Union Ambassador Lars-Gunnar Wigemark, who commended the artists for practicing, upholding and promoting the tradition of modern art in the country.
Published in The Express Tribune, October 27th, 2014.
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