By By Shahab Ansari
ARTISTIC works showcasing artistic brilliance and power of a unique imagination with an unparalleled mastery over palate and brushes are on display at Rohtas 2.
The latest exhibition of Ali Azmat’s paintings opened at the art gallery in Model Town on Monday evening. The present exhibition titled “Moorat’ is about humans by a sensitive, touchy human who paints intricate human experiences on the canvas.
“I express reactions to life through painting to integrate art and life. The humans from is my major source of inspiration and dominates my paintings,” he says. “I use space to emphasize the isolation of the model. The most important aspect of my work is the rhythmic arrangement of the figure,” he says.
“Recently I became interested in plants which have aspects resembling human features-eyes, nose, ears etc. Although aware of differences, I have found strange similarities in the colour and texture of their skin; the cactus is one example,” he says.
“A future challenge for me as a painter would be to capture both male and female characteristics in one person. I have painted the types of ‘Moorat’ who display themselves every day on the streets of the city-with their womanly attitudes, their daily shaving, their spending more on make-up than on food.
“Moorats earn living by presenting themselves in various roles: sometimes as dancers available to perform at social functions, at other times as prostitutes, or sometimes as beggars. These are not the sort of beggar’s normally encountered on the street: shouting expletives in a masculine voice, their palms meeting crossways in a trademark clap, they prey on susceptible passers-by. One thing is certain: whatever they do, they get insulted, degraded and cursed by society. They go through all this with determination and carelessness. Yet they are considered ‘aliens’. They have become something to be feared. Nobody wants to be accosted by one of them, to be nudged by their elbows, stroked on the cheek, taunted, cursed and flashed at.
Far from their homes and real parents, these aliens have accepted this bitter reality of life as their fate. I have tried to grasp the true ‘moorat’ on canvas.
This series of works in an attempt to discover, behind the cheap rouge, kajal powder and lipstick, their real face and true feelings in my paintings...those unspoken words that are not to be uttered are very keenly felt,” he says. “I found a strange similarity between the roughness of colour and texture of their skin and in their lives, with that of the cactus plant. I have tried to grasp the true ‘Moorat’ on my canvas. This series of work is a conscious effort to find the real face with true emotions behind this made-up face that we caked in cheep rouge, Kajal, powder and lipstick. In my paintings, I try to convey those unspoken words that are never uttered but are deeply felt,” he says.
Ali was born in Multan but now lives and works in Lahore. He is a lecturer at College of Art and Design, University of the Punjab, Lahore. He did his BFA (Bachelor in Fine Arts) in 1997 from the Department of Fine Arts, the Punjab University, and in 1999 Master in Fine Arts from the same institution with a distinction.
He is a recipient of the prestigious “National Excellence Award” Pakistan National Council of the Arts, Islamabad, in 2003.