In stark opposition: A timesecape of the organic nature of life

Metamorphosis of Time features four up and coming artists.

LAHORE: Metamorphosis of Time is about capturing the magic of passing time and the organic nature of life. The four-person show came to a close at the Ejaz Art Gallery on Friday. The works will now make their way to Dubai where these will be exhibited at Mussawir Art Gallery from February 17 to February 28.

National College of Arts Principal Murtaza Jaffery inaugurated the exhibition on Thursday.

The exhibit features works by Aroosha Khalil, Rahim Baloch, Romessa Khan and Ussama Bin Naveed. All except Khan completed their bachelor’s in fine arts from the NCA in 2014. Khan completed her masters in visual arts from the NCA in 2014. The artists share common interests.

Khalil’s work is about decay and decomposition.  Her six acrylic-on-wood pieces contrast decomposition and life. “I pair objects that shouldn’t be together...if I display an animal’s severed head in a piece, I place fresh fruit or flowers next to it.” Khalil says her work took her to a medical college where she sought to improve her knowledge and visual vocabulary of the decomposition of human body. “I learnt about how the body deteriorates and how it could be stopped from doing so. The question I came up with was what does a body look like if it’s not subject to time?”

Khalil says her inspiration came from nature. Nature always offers odd combinations and contrasting pairs, she says. This spares viewers the initial revulsion to decay, says Khalil. “My work depicts beauty in ugliness and vice versa.”

Baloch, a miniature artist, has showcased four gouache-on-wasli paintings that focus on love and time. Dandelions, featuring in his works, depict nostalgia and yearning for loved ones. “But time changes people and relationships. Leaves that were green once, turn brown and white flowers change colour and cannot revert to their original form,” he says.

Khan’s five ink-on-sheet pieces are all about lines. “It’s a meditative pleasure I get when I spend time with my canvas. When you meditate, you breathe in and out, drawing lines is my way of expressing that.” Khan focuses on human relationships and human beings, still breathing, but disintegrating with time.

Naveed has displayed five oil-on-canvas paintings titled Urban Wasteland. “I present Lahore as seen during my leisurely walks through its streets, its stills and motion.” Focusing on the street-level view Naveed has tried to capture a pedestrian’s interaction with the urban environment. “I want viewers to form a narrative after watching these paintings,” Naveed says.

Art critic Quddus Mirza, who was at the opening, said it was always exciting to see work of recent art graduates and compare it with what they were doing earlier and notice how far they had come.

“I think the most important thing to remember is that these artists have not given up...they do not have many facilities and connections, and therefore need to be commended on the scale that they work on.”

Mirza said people tended forget how difficult it was to work on such a scale... to transport art to various houses and sell their work. “Taking such risks for the sake of art is commendable,” he said.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 7^th, 2015.