Binary opens at Canvas art gallery
KARACHI: There’s almost an antithesis to, or direct opposite of, everything we encounter in our daily lives. With the good comes the bad. Day is preceded by night. Life is followed by death.
This twofold aspect of existence is the subject of an exhibition of Adeel uz Zafar’s artworks titled Binary, which began at the Canvas art gallery on Tuesday. It is a fascinating study of not just an artist but a person who seems to be quite taken with the things that exist side by side and yet draw out diametrically opposed reactions.
However, Zafar is not passing any judgement here. Mind you, we know about the binaries that he wants us to see. He wants us, the viewer, to look at them, perhaps, with a different angle, which means that sometimes predetermined notions make us visualise things the way we should not be seeing them. Let’s rephrase the observation: sometimes sameness can create dualities.
Zafar’s art in the exhibition reaches the viewer on, ironically, two levels. If on the one hand he pushes things into a domain where there are masks and wraps involved, hence creating an urge in the viewer to unmask them despite knowing the result, on the other hand he shows characters, from pop culture, which are readily recognisable and need to be revisited. In the former case ‘Drawing appendage — conjunctive symbiosis skulls’ (engraved drawing on plastic vinyl) is a fine example. There’s nothing violent about it that should remind anyone of Francis Bacon’s work, nor is it the kind of head that Shakespeare’s gravedigger would comment on; rather it is the bandaged emptiness of being that he is trying to highlight.
But in ‘Iconic masks — Guy Fawkes / Darth Vader’ (diptych) the artist makes things simpler for the viewer. A well-known cinematic character from the dark side of the planet and an Englishman who was involved in a famous plot appear to be different, if not poles-apart, individuals. And yet, by putting them together under the ‘binary’ caption reinforces the suggestion that Zafar does not like things at face value.
The exhibition, curated by Zarmeene Shah, will run till Nov 10.
Published in Dawn November 2nd, 2016