Aqeel Solangi's paintings in a solo exhibition titled "Relocation Mapped" at Koel Gallery, Karachi devoid of human presence yet reflects various human beliefs, rituals, experiences and conditions in life around the globe. He portray human in general way as a human being but he chose symbols to define human presence.
The elements of nature appear symbolically in his artworks. It seems he is having a constant dialogue with nature. The water, clouds, river, flood, rain drops, red hibiscus flower, wide blue sky with hovering silver clouds, cactus, ancient dry well, perfumed sticks (Agarbatti), and makeshift huts like a tent, bridge and poles help describing his views in a peculiar way.
The new work shows improvement in his approach which is a good sign for an accelerating artist. His paintings are done in acrylic with a combination of different media and techniques. He uses geometrical shapes and designs to portray his subject even the currents and under currents of water in the form of waves is painted in geometrical shapes. He feels comfortable with geometrical shapes and designs to convey his views; oval, triangle, square; rectangle, circle and semi-circles help portray human feelings and experiences - the way of living in a particular place.
One of his paintings shows a window through which soft morning sunlight enter a dark room represent a new day, a hope for a fresh start in life, happiness and warmth and bright future.
He recreates imaginary locations keeping in mind the real locations thus relocating the actual location and forming new maps of the physical place thus "Relocation Mapped". His paintings have a sense of timelessness. Some of his works gives a feeling of freezing time while others seem in a high speed.
His paintings intimate landscape, but the elements are manipulated and twisted actually deliberately distorted. His colour choices and compositional balance are often exquisite. His use of colour is bold while his marks are sensitive with unique style of his own. He works in a broad range of colours and tones but tends to focus on one range of hues in each painting, from hot reds to bright white, from dark black to deep blues. The effect he creates is dream like but not quite surreal.
The presence of clouds and waves dominate his paintings sometimes the dark heavy clouds and in others white saturated clouds hovering on the blue sky. Water and clouds seems to fascinate him the most.
He uses clouds as a messenger who comes and goes like a memory. Clouds are temporary as they turn into water just like tents which are also temporary abode for humans and then become a memory.
The bright colours in his paintings evoke serene moments, the flower set against an imaginary background and the blue sky with white or grey clouds altogether take you to an imaginary world.
Hence the immediate impression one gets while viewing the artworks of Aqeel is of beauty and delicacy, subtle yet so pertinent. His paintings are full of movement with colours that enhance each other and create rhythm and depth.
The paintings show his search for cultural identity through remarkable images. The paintings are full of icons like the red hibiscus flower, silver clouds and cactus tree to name a few, which have become personal symbols which reminds him of certain event, place or a person.
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