‘The Spirit of the Time’ on display

LAHORE
‘Zeitgeist’ (The Spirit of the Time), is a group show of five brilliant young artists, which opened at the Ejaz Art Gallery, MM Alam Road, Thursday.
The exhibition has been organised by Mariam Hanif, an emerging young and vibrant visual artist and curator, who lives and works in Lahore and got her BFA hons and MA hons degrees from NCA. The other four artists included Anil Waghela, Scheherezade Junejo, Sausan Saulat and Kiran Saleem.
Explaining the concept of the exhibition, Curator Mariam Hanif explained ‘The inspiration of the title was derived from German Philosopher Hegel’s philosophical arguments on the concept of Zeitgeist meaning ‘The Spirit (Geist) of the Time (Zeit). Hegel argued that history was a constant process of dialectic clash. The clash of both provokes purification process, a conjunction that preserves the contradiction between thesis and its antithesis. Without the active opposition of an antithesis working through the dialect, Hegel asserts, existence is simply an empty task the periods of happiness are empty pages in history, for they are the periods of harmony, times when the antithesis is missing. What is left to life is simply a habit, activity without opposition. Concisely, the theory revolves around the conceptual and cultural environment of a period or generation of the time’, Mariam maintained.
The exhibition will encompass the individualistic approach of the artists on the characteristics and dilemmas of time we are living in. The subject matter will lead the artist to thin in numerous fresh perspectives and dialectics on multi-layered culture and period we experience. The unique as well as modern working style of the five artists participating in this brilliant show of artistic skills and fertile imagination makes this event even more interesting and appreciable. As for the artists, work being showcased in this exhibition, Kiran Saleem’s hyper-realistic oil paintings visually deceive you to rethink what is real and what is not. Her unique style of replicating Western old masters with new visual twist is highly commendable.
Susan Saulat’s intense pattern-oriented work figures and portraits investigate implication of cultural baggage and the dysfunctionality of retrogressive gender role as perpetuated by Pakistani media. Scheherezade Junejo paints black/white semi-nude figures as a metaphor to polarity found in human behaviour. Anil Waghela has developed his own Sui generic technique of executing multiple stripes of masking tape to create images in patternistic style. His subject matter interrogates famous old paintings by zooming in/out and finding similarities between art works produced in different periods and cultures in history.
Lastly, Mariam Hanif’s (also the curator of the show and a participating artist) painting style is highly intricate, using mix media and mark making to develop vocabulary of an image makes her painting unique in itself. In her semi-surrealistic style of painting, she uses animals, organic life, portraits, daily use domestic items as a metaphor to create a dialogue with embedded isolation, fear, hope and mystery.