A asim Akhtar’s drawings jump at you, in an optic sense – and later psychologically. The layout of their display at his solo exhibition, Scarecrow, curated by Sajid Khan, at the White Wall Gallery, Lahore, (June 6-July 6) is impressive and highly professional. Against the dark walls these works on paper glow as if mounted on light boxes.
Every piece demands and attracts a viewer’s attention to explore the creations of a person known more for his writings and photography than drawing and painting. In a way, the sensitive, subtle and delicate drawings are linked to Akhtar’s two well known pursuits: language and camera. Both language and camera are formidable tools capable of articulating an artist’s view of the world outside as well as the inner realm.
Both have a built-in element of ness about them. A text can be a piece of poetry, a work of fiction, factual information, research, a reflection on politics, sports news, fashion report or a review of literature, visual arts, music, cinema. , It always has a structure.
It may end abruptly, but the sentences/ verses follow the syntax of one or another language. Likewise a photograph can by a panoramic view, a detail, a blow-up; under the blazing sun or within a dim interior; focused or blurred but always adheres to a key principle: it shows reality as through the lens of a camera. The lens and the syntax thus become the cages to contain a creation.
One can produce “automatic writing, or automatism, which sought to rele.
