‘Manifesting forms in shadows’

Karachi
A painting does not need a central idea or story- telling unlike a novel or a drama. Paintings cannot be expressed in words as they are the depiction of inner feelings and emotions of an artist. The fashion of seeking the artist’s statement on his work emerged from western art galleries, and it has been adopted in our eastern culture.
Maqool Ahmed shared these views while talking to The News at an exhibition of his paintings at Citi Art Gallery on Tuesday.
The title ‘Manifesting forms in shadows’ was written on the catalogue of the exhibition, but the artist said he did not believe in naming his art exhibition.
“There are several paintings of different emotions. How could I confine all of them in one word or in one line’s title?” he exclaimed.
Ahmed said viewers should decode the paintings according to their own understanding and interpret their experience out of them.
“I hate when someone asks me to explain my work. I stay silent and let my paintings do all the talking,” he remarked.
He believed the paintings could never be translated into words.
“Maqbool Ahmed has long achieved a signature style but it hasn’t made him confined to repeating the same mode; instead, he has retained his signature style and moved forward by experimenting and inventing, thus elaborating his original style, and hence acquired a diverse mode of painting to distinguish him among his contemporaries,” Nadeem Zuberi, renowned art critic, commented.
Zuberi said the artist had created an aura of mystery in ‘Manifesting forms in shadows’.
“His powerful brush strokes paint layers after layers, creating reflections of images and images of images. He artistically diffused figures and their reflections, making it impossible to identify the real image,” he stated.
He said the women in his paintings were connected with each other in an unseen thread, a deep feeling which only they shared.
“Soft and enlightened female images unveil emotional and intellectual dilemmas of women. His work is conceptual, portraying social issues regarding females. The women figures in his paintings seem to convey complex realities of life. Combining figurative, cubism and surrealistic forms in a single painting he achieved was an irreplaceable style of his own,” he said.
The art exhibition will end tomorrow.