Seen/Unseen

The desire to create is tied to the inherent human tendency to express. Using visuals as a means to communicate is a primitive instinct, existing even before the writing systems we recognize emerged. Communication through visuals aestheticizes the diction of thought. Perhaps in the process of standardizing language as a tool, the more fluid aspirations of representing through pure visuals have seeped into a different genre of communication. Perhaps in art we find the most liberal interpretations of visuals a tool to communicate. Oscillating between the the ambiguous to the evident, from frail to the gluttonous, amorphous to the hexagonal, from the seen to the un-seen.

A recently concluded show at the Full Circle Gallery showcased works of artists Habib Phulphoto and Abdul Malik Channa.

Channa examines the premise of spectating through his paintings, his painted expressions rely on the engagement he has with his audience. His renditions break the fourth wall and allow room for introspection into the genre of introspecting. A tedious balance which has been articulated using a more traditional means of image-making. He revels in the most humble pursuit of art; a mere canvas which invokes a response in the audience. His process of creation thrives on the precedent of observation.

Channa’s use of color and play of medium complements Habib Phulphoto’s work. The gauzy pinks and the placid yellows against the earthen tones of blunt crimson and bed-ridden sage. Phulphoto’s work takes on a poetic approach to the precarious nature of life and the fruition of dreams. His rendering of isolated seeds and grains blown out of proportion represent the struggles of human pursuit and simple invocation of the process of nurturing and the beauty in witnessing growth.

Both artists in their unique manner have reconciled with the idea of creative processes on a spectrum of human pursuit. While Channa offers recourse in the idea of introspection, Phulphoto’s work is a manifest of creation in it’s most infantile stages; the seed. One renders the audience itself as an illustration, the process of looking itself; the Seen. And the other functions on the Unseen; the representation of a seed, a mere idea that will grow and spring; the intangible appearance of change as a concept.

Dissolving the peripheries of the Seen and Unseen, what remains is the visual diction of the works. Images and their role in allowing room for contemplation. Their vocation when observed in a space designed to allow visual culture to be curated towards a critical dialogue, allows for the didactic pursuit in communication to revived through representation. The creation of images relies on the objectivity of it’s creation and the subjectivity in its observation, meandering between the convulsed peripheries of such representations the role of such spaces offer redemption towards traditional means of artistic creation.