An exercise in abstract art

Karachi
True to the present-day trends, whereby more than a balm for the eye, art is used as a brain teaser to convey various themes, the Full Circle Art Gallery is also hosting an exhibition of works where, more than the eye, one has to strain his imagination to detect the themes of the works.
The exhibition, featuring the works of three artists, Babar Moghal, Zahid Farooqui and Nauman Abid, would make an ideal haunt for connoisseurs of modern or abstract art.
Among the 14 exhibits adorning the walls of the gallery is one showing a lone traffic light amid a very surreal background.
As the artist says in his statement, “It’s better to let a visual idea grow on itself rather than plainly stating its allegorical meaning.
“It’s far more potent when viewers are allowed to discover its mystery on their own”, and so, true to the statement, the viewer is left with an assortment of options to come to conclusions and guess the theme.
Similarly, there’s a work by Nauman Abid titled, “Flashbacks of a fool”, featuring a New York City avenue with an inset of a rearview mirror depicting the traffic scenario with rickshaws forming the main item of traffic.
Says, Abid, “The prime concerns entertained in my image making practice is of the contradiction between the virtual and the real worlds and displacement of ideology.”
Seeing the mixture of opposites entertained in the work, a highly affluent New York City with the traffic scenario juxtaposed on the image fully unveils this contradiction.
Similarly, Heaven’s Children, is a random version of the artists thought processes which engender among the meshwork of the strokes, images of children with somewhat weird expressions. He says, “Working with the idea of altering the real, my image making practice deals with the subject matters of deformation and deconstruction of reality.”
The deformation and deconstruction are so vividly displayed.
The exhibition which runs from September 18 to October 9 is a must-see for lovers of modern art but they must be more than amply equipped with an overly fertile imagination when they go to view it.