‘The Onrushing – 1’ celebrates surging artists

Islamabad :‘The Onrushing -1,’ the first exhibition of a series of group shows of artists who participated in the national Arjumand Painting Award 2017, opens today (Friday) at Gallery 6, with Asif Shah, former commerce secretary and now a director in Bestway Cement performing the inauration.

When Gallery 6 convened the Arjumand Painting Award 2017 in May this year, the judges of the award recommended that outstanding participating artists be rewarded with group exhibitions; the current exhibition has been arranged in compliance of the said suggestion. The artists in the first show are Abdul Aziz Meer, Ahsan Javaid, Kanwal Zafar and Muhammad Faheem Tufail.

Kanwal Zafar did Masters in Fine Arts from Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi, in 2001. Besides Islamabad, she has been fortunate to exhibit her works in California, Dubai, London, Lisbon, Porto and Rome. Last month, she attended ‘Hemera Tending Spaces Fellowship for Artists,’ a training programme in the United States, while in June, she carried out a 10-days ‘Art Inspiration Research’ in different parts of Turkey.

Kanwal loves to play with energy of colours on canvas in order to harness positivity and spiritual healing. She stated, “Within my humble capacity, I’ve tried to address the theme of ‘KUN’ through painting. A theme as vast as ‘Be and It Is,’ our minds cannot fathom but truly our hearts can grasp. It is the act of manifesting, existing or being and a sign of the Creator’s mystical creative powers. Apart from seeing colours all the time, I often contemplate on their effects. I am trying to use Chromotherapy to affect a person’s mood and physical or mental health. The unique frequencies and vibrations of various colours can influence emotions, thus enabling the body to heal. In this way, art can be used for healing in addition to its visual appeal.”

Muhammad Faheem Tufail also has MA (Hons.) in Visual Art, which he acquired from National College of Art, Lahore, in 2012. He has exhibited in Lahore and Faisalabad and has curated some shows in Faisalabad to promote art in that city.

Faheem has experimented with different textures and surfaces and the basic form of different objects in the past. He has also explored mixing the basics of textiles with other disciplines of painting. Discussing his work in the exhibition, he stated ,“Sometime back, I realized that I want to break free from all restrictions of medium and surfaces and bring about a composite of techniques, surfaces, and textures into a creative expression. Not restricted to a single medium but to show a complete unified thought process. My object is to give a visual language to my inner urges of combining different mediums and materials in a meaningful piece of art. Most of my done work is abstract and may be categorized as contemporary. I personally feel that I wish to uncover many hidden layers of the society in which we are living.”

Ahsan Javaid did his bachelors degree in Fine Arts from NCA, Lahore, in January 2016. However, he has been participating in group shows from 2013 and has been well applauded. Discussing his current work, he vividly narrated, “My practice deals with the ideas of originality, reality and representation. These are all relative terms and could not be assumed to form a universal understanding. Information that reaches us is a collection of cropped ideas some times by us, sometimes by others. It depends on how well we paste them together to form a picture of our very own reality. But human brain works in various ways and tries to find similar ideas to validate its own; hence together, we start establishing shared realities and conventional understandings. I use my practice as a tool to critique and comment on such understandings and construct a new meaning to generate a dialogue among work, viewers and myself. I have been using various methods to crop, cut and paste information from a variety of media including references from newspapers, magazines, popular imagery and history.”

Abdul Aziz Meer was born and raised in Chitral. He joined NCA, Lahore, in 2013 and graduated earlier this year with miniature painting as his major. However, currently he is making large paintings in abstract impressionism, which are being much appreciated. He uses his own body as a medium to make impressions on paper and then treats them with Siah Qalam and Neem Rang – the two techniques of miniature painting. He described this excitedly: “It creates a tactile texture of the body, with distorted forms that carry a mysterious ambiguity.” He continued emotionally, “I also see certain elements of fear and suffering in my work. When I stand in front of my work, I see a rush of memories hitting me like waves.” The exhibition will continue till September 22 daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., including Sunday.