Anas Ghauri presented human forms and emotions in a peculiar way in his paintings in a solo exhibition titled "Seedha Ulta" at Sanat Gallery, Karachi. The intangible human figures and feelings were made tangible and felt by the artist through clothes.
As the saying goes the dress speaks about your personality. Various clothes in Anas's paintings revealed the person and its personality to the viewers skilfully. The attire reflects the persons approach towards society. In a way the graphite and charcoal artworks explained clearly some social figures belonged to politics and state departments who supposed to carry out certain structured works so that a system of state works properly.
But the other members of society see them in other perspective. The images showed what a person could not represent as boldly as the clothes did. The invisible human bodies seemed to rebel against the imitation and limitation within society.
The portraits of eight political figures were painted downside up as the title disclosed. These portraits were done in the Thatcher Effect, also known as the Thatcher illusion.
The illusion is named after Margaret Thatcher, former British Prime Minister, because her photo was used to famously illustrate the illusion.
"The Thatcher Effect illustrates that the brain can't properly process a photo of a face that is upside down. The interesting part is that the brain thinks it can so you get a confident feeling that everything is alright, until you turn it over. Once its right side up the way your brain is used it, it becomes quite obvious that something is wrong. In fact what you see is that the mouth and eyes are upside down."
Keeping this fact in mind the artist tried to make people ponder what they know and what they don't know bout our politicians.
Almost all the artworks were untitled except a few. A painting titled 'Policeman' depicted the police uniform upside down. Another work titled 'Phatti bunyan' showed a torn vest but a new tie revealing a phenomenon of middle-class who wrapped up their problems in fine clothes trying to made both ends meet.
The artwork titled 'Mr.' portrayed an upper-class person who has dual personality upper half is entirely different from the lower half. The idea behind this painting was that the double standards of our society have become a norm now.
Be it politics or everyday encounters, the reality is entirely the opposite of what we see and hear regularly on day to day basis.
"I strongly feel that something negative survives with us all the time. We can also call it negative of a positive. My work is about social and political interests," he stated.
Graduated from National College of Arts, Lahore, in 2014 Anas Ghauri is a Lahore-based artist. His simple black and white paintings speak a lot. His works were suggestive of various conditions which were inflicted on people.
He wanted people to pay attention to political issues also other than their social issues as it is one of the most important social issues itself.
The viewers also got interested in his paintings as they saw familiar faces on untitled paintings. The artist wanted them to give titles to the paintings according to their understanding and approach.
Anas paintings were a good medium to exercise the range of people's perception about domestic politics. He is the first local artist to use the Thatcher Effect in his sketches of the country's political figures.
He simply interprets the socio-political issues in his paintings that viewers are familiar with and have their opinions on these issues as well. Politics has now become an integral part of our society. And politics have converted to an institution in a community world-wide.
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