Aesthetically pleasing : Mix media, miniature artwork on display

Exhibition represents understanding of artwork evolution

ISLAMABAD: A group show featuring the work of young artists opened on Friday at Aqs Art Gallery.

‘Kaleidoscope’ features everything from digital to mix media, miniature, oil and acrylics and a variety of different techniques.

One of the most unique aspects of the exhibition is that it gave young artists a chance to display their work providing a very fresh and varied look. “Most of the artists are fresh graduates from NCA and their work shows how they have grown over time and progressed in terms of art while working on their thesis,” said Shameen Arshad, curator at the gallery.

Hira Siddiqui, whose work particularly stands out, told The Express Tribune that she likes to extract the souls of worldwide famous paintings, photographs and visuals.

“I consciously and deliberately play with their colour palette, compositional element, placement of objects and their narrative, recreating them in an entirely different medium and technique. My work is a comment on museum quality art which we access in different derived forms, sometimes in a brilliant resolution and sometimes worst. What is left is so ambiguous and mysterious,” she said.

Kaleidoscope is a brilliant representation of the fact that even young artists understand art work evolution and the development an artist goes through over time.

Zakia Abbas admitted that her work is a response to places where she lived or travelled to. “My work keeps evolving and developing with time even though there are certain elements that have been there throughout my art practice,” she said. She said she started working with the idea of space. “The inspiration and source of my images came from architectural structures that led to geometrical visual vocabulary. Breaking rectangular frame of canvas and adding more dimensions to the painting is one of my major concerns,” she said.



Kazmi Batool stressed that art has a lot to do with perception. “When viewers look at my work, they can see a lot of things going on, but it depends on them what they want to take from it. The way they perceive it is the way their thought process works and how they relate to the objects in my work,” he said.

He told The Express Tribune that his work is a representation of the constant confusion going on in our brain. “I like to answer the questions in our mind therefore my work also over represents the thought process,” he added.

The exhibition is a breath of fresh air and one that must be visited to support and encourage the young artists to follow their passion.

The exhibition is ongoing at Aqs till October 2.

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