Ying and Yang

Quivering lines featured most prominently in the work of a group of Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture graduates displayed at the Chawkandi gallery. Yet for the most part, the lines seemed too impetuously wild and unrestrained, dissolving entire canvases in insubstantial whorls of threadlike fiber.
The most arresting works were where the line was tamed and controlled to delineate a specific purpose and made to balance with the other elements of designs as shape and colour. Left on its own, as in most works, the lines seemed more akin to a mass of chaos.
Qamar Siddique was the exception to linear preoccupations. Her work veering to the other extreme is of weighty, stolid still lifes set in dark tenebrous colours from which patterned objects sparkle out They are attractive enough in their use of line and colour, and painting skill to an extent. Though more textural diversity could have created interest. Something cerebral seemed amiss which would have taken the works beyond mere still lifes executed by an art student.
Line predominated Fizza Saleem's hands. She was perhaps inspired by Michael Anglo's fine, febrile anatomic hand studies, (or those of Leonardo da Vinci.) In which his feeling lines explore the skeletal structure beneath the flesh and skin revealing the formation of the muscles and bones and how they meld together. The lines in his sketches thicken and thin as they probe the crevices of the bones or disappear into larger areas of light and planes as they feel their way around.
Fizza's works does nothing of the sort, entirely missing the point of the studies. Rather the lines take over, have a life of their own, dance over and obscure the anatomy, reducing the structure they were meant to define into mere play of linear design. The hands are, at best, formless, disjointed or swollen and disproportionate as a bunch of bananas. .She definitely needs to return to the drawing board of an anatomy class. Especially if she wishes to embark on such a theme.
The beauty of the great masters such as Michealanglo's or Leonardo da Vinci's drawings lay in the fact that they managed to instill in the human body and its gestures such a power of expression and depth of feeling . In the image of God giving Adam life, which she has borrowed, from Michealanglo's Sistine Chapel, by a touch of the hand just the meeting of the hands and the placing of the fingers encapsulate and convey the feelings of hope and redemption.
This feeling and emotion is completely lacking in her disembodied broken forms, which fail to add anything, original to the theme as well.
Iesha Khan 's oils are again linear abstract colour with nothing exciting happening. Suspended seemingly whorls of fibre in dry pinks blue echoed reechoed in the darkly brooding background. The colours are not very appealing nor is the effect much more than splashes of colour slashed across the canvas. Reds, greens, blues all scrambled together to give a murky overall effect, like city smoke and pollution. There is no sense of nuanced colour and no spatial elements to pin down the composition which appears lacking in thought and design and is easily quickly passed by.
Mahnaz Nusrat 's work are more thoughtful of plantlike forms. Pollen seeds, flower petals seem to be the leitmotif of her work. With soft lines balanced by larger planes of colour, thick painted areas balanced well by more nuanced gently limned planes of colour. In some of her works, bright garish colours work well within a tightly packed design to creative a visually balanced yet happening work. If bright colours appeal to you these works are not bad. The nuanced white long stretch of canvas against which are set thread like fibres in peacock blue- green hues in rich textures is specially striking as is the one with warm yellows and purples.
Seema Nusrat's work stands heads and shoulders above the crowd for its maturity of thought and perception. It boasts of balanced, visually interesting compositions with an interesting juxtaposition of elements. A graceful line quality is balanced by emotive colour, enigmatic images and excellent drawing set within beautiful floral or leafy borders with an antiquated effect. The paintings are also tactilely appealing. Different textural effects are set off against each other to give an overall impression of another realm, hovering uncertainly between that of a fairy tale or the more prosaic current century.
One of her miniatures appears to be an irreverent take on Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper. Not a mere attempt at imitation, she takes off from the original by showing the personages with their backs to the audience slumped over or leaning over each other, in courtly and jester-like garments after a night of revelry(?). Their figures make an interesting play of undulating line, form and colour. Two miniatures have a female figure in profile, (herself?). One in western clothes in beautiful bluey hues while in the other she is draped in a white dupatta, with a pigeon, almost enigmatically merging into the background with only the striking white of the dupatta salvaging her from dissolving into ambiguity. The red is alluringly attractive yet the sullen detached expression of the girl oblivious to our gaze heightens the underlying sense of the red as a warning to keep away.
The seemingly old leafy/ floral borders contrast effectively with the modern subject and attire, attenuated by the oil painting type effect of the textured realistic sky and ground. Birds or pigeons echo throughout the works but in mysterious ways. As the figures, they are silent, detached, looking inwards. The figure in all the works looks away from the viewers, almost oblivious to their presence.
The two females in profile add to the sense of uncommunicative remoteness, which is slightly disturbing, as are the not-very- happy, emotionless faces. In one work the girl has her back turned to the viewers as she sits on an hour glass type object watching the birds in the sky.
Withdrawn, in her own world. One feels as if intruding into someone's private hidden world. A hushed stilled silence pervades the works. Yet the effect of an enchanted realm is not all-complete.
There is something dissonant in the subject's refusal to lookout. Which is enhanced by the juxtaposition of the modern with the archaic so that one is unsure to which era the paintings belong. As in the case of the image showing a funeral which could be out of any 15th century miniature painting with its beautiful golden sky, with the texturally beautiful crusted effect of crumbling old gold paper.
A Chinese influence in the clouds and flowers enhance the beauty and fairy tale effect of the works. Still waters run deep and beneath the seemingly tranquil serene and well-composed waters of the young artist's work, lies a promising deceptive brooding appeal.