Serena Hotels and
SerenArts Present
Transient Glimpses October 18 - November 20
Transient Glimpses Ilona Yusuf | Lali Khalid | Fazal Rizvi | Bakr Hussain | Azanat Mansoor Satrang Gallery is proud to present Transient Glimpses; a multi-faceted photography-based exhibition preserving elapsed memories and exploring former relationships. Through the intricacies of texture, the rhythm of light, and the dimensionality of layering, these artists compose elaborate odes to the past. Photography is generally believed to be a truthful medium – an exact representation of what the artist sees before them. However, since the very beginning of photography, the power of a photograph lies within a photographer’s ability to maneuver a shot; artists are particular about what they include in their frames and what they leave out. Pre-printing and post-printing are also time consuming developments, where photographers control their representations, altering the medium upon, the method by which an image is printed and the clarity of the image itself. The five artists in this exhibition have manipulated photographic procedures and have combined them with other art-making processes to achieve specific combinations and themes. Each of the artists in Transient Glimpses is displaying a deeply intimate scenario, which they invite the viewer to share with them. However, this generosity is restricted to the particular moment that the artist has captured. It is frozen in time and immortalized. The before and after of that scene are unknown, yet the conversation that the artist has begun continues on indefinitely. A footprint in the mud in Bakr Hussain’s piece, or Azanat Mansoor’s depiction of a family, clearly posed, clutching a television set, invoke a new sense of familiarity. The artworks in this exhibition distort the lines between photography and printmaking, as these artists examine their unique construction and distinctiveness. Ilona Yusuf draws the viewer into the exhibition’s frontiers through her elegant renderings of Makli Hill, the heritage site of the ruins of one of the largest ancient necropolises in the world. Yusuf’s prints, which document her exploration of Makli, depict its crumbling and weathered edifices, and silently comment upon the passage of time. Her compositions emphasize the rapport between vivid light and visible texture.
Like Yusuf, Bakr Hussain explores man’s traces on the earth, by presenting his lasting impressions of his surroundings – be they a forgotten old rag in the dirt, or a solitary individual, curled up on the pavement. Hussain’s art captures those fleeting vestiges of wonderment, which might be why he chooses to print many of his pieces upon canvas, extending their life cycle and ensuring their survival. In the pieces that Fazal Rizvi has included in the show, he has worked upon similar themes of preservation; Rizvi edits and distorts old family photographs, re-creating the circumstances of these familial scenes, adding information which he is now privy to. The text in his collages conveys intimate, albeit one-sided conversations, inviting the audience to participate, yet never specifying who the speaker is. Rizvi’s conserved and revamped photographs are reminiscent of a shrine to his history. Some artworks in the show, like Azanat Mansoor’s, have an old fashioned air to them. Mansoor creates photo-transfers, merging photography and printmaking. Her creations bring the viewer even closer to the artists’ center, and forge a bridge between the forgotten past that Mansoor is struggling to regain, and her shifting present. Her pieces vacillate between comfortable scenes of joy, and solitary moments. Mansoor, like Rizvi, experiments with collage, as she overlays transfers of prints and replaces portions of her subjects’ faces, with jarring, contrasting images. The viewer is finally able to cross the threshold and temporarily gain access to the center of Lali Khalid’s home and the intimate aspects of her life. Many of Khalid’s pieces acknowledge the viewer – the subjects are looking straight out of the frame, or are deliberately disregarding their presence; adding another dimension to the work, one where the audience is a definite presence in the frame. Despite the intimacy and closeness of the viewer, Khalid’s radiant, delicate and approachable settings invite the viewer in but do not permit complete, unrestricted access to the world that she creates. There is always a strict separation between them and Khalid’s subjects, this is emphasized by the constant presence of a window in her pieces, a window into her past perhaps – a source of light, fresh air and escape.
Zahra Khan Curator
Ilona Yusuf b. 1962 Graduated from Kinniard College Lahore Lives and works in Islamabad
What came to my mind on visiting Makli were Shelley’s lines from Ozymandias. “I met a traveller from an antique land, Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stoneStand in the desert…My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” The vast plain is littered with the tombs of kings and queens, saints and scholars, all exquisitely decorated with sandstone carving or blue tile work, depending on which historical period they belong to.
Stone doorway, 2012 Photopolymer gravure on somerset paper | 6.8 x 5 inches
In the series of etchings based on photographs taken at Makli, one of my interests has been the effects of weathering—the way the hot dry desert wind has eaten into terracotta and sandstone. In the case of the former it has exposed the layers of brick, plaster and tile that make-up the structure, the anatomy of the buildings, architectural and decorative features. Sandstone weathers differently, the wind tunneling into the stone so that it resembles a honeycomb.
As a printmaker and a writer these prints are the beginning of a series which will include a book making project in which I intend to combine etchings with photo transfer and handwritten text.
Aperture, 2012 Photopolymer gravure, viscosity inking on somerset paper | 5 x 6.8 inches
Lali Khalid b. 1980 Graduated from National College of Arts and Pratt Institute Lives and works in USA
“As soon as we start putting our thoughts into words and sentences everything gets distorted, language is just no damn good—I use it because I have to, but I don’t put any trust in it. We never understand each other.” Marcel Duchamp
Empty package of chips will tell you, 2012 Ink jet print on archival paper | 6 x 9 inches
I use a Nikon full frame digital SLR camera and a Hasselblad medium format camera to isolate and frame tiny fragments of the world around me. Concomitantly, I use an active practice of reading to isolate and capture brief sections of prose. These phrases are used, not only to title work, but also to inspire and direct compositional strategies. Translations between the two are not literal. Instead, they aim for suggestions of similar poignant affect. Mixed between document and a subjective narrative, these works portray the way my life looks as it is happening. A background in printmaking has allowed me to
compliment and complicate my large scale, color photographs with the seductive technique of the phototransfer. This approach eliminates the color from a digital photograph and applies it to a cottonbased paper that is passed through the printing press. While some detail is lost in this process, the photo-transfer conflates the sensual touch of the hand with the mechanical processes of photography. My work is intensely personal, but not aloof. Bringing my hand into the image encourages a viewer to relate to the intimate scale of the photograph as an image, but also as a unique art object. The world and our vision are without defined boundaries. The photograph is not this way. It isolates and displaces. I choose and manipulate what parts of the world end up in my images, but I am never in complete control. My photographs are a form of pointing. To point is not to explain. The content created is not completely closed, or even definable. The settings court a range of intimacy. I have lain on that bed. I have watched the way light fell across that shirt. However, any given scene and a photograph of the same scene are not equivalents. To point is not to own, or to classify. To point is to focus and shape collective consideration. These are images of how the world looked with me in it, but it is not only my world. Notice the light.
Taimur & I, Jenson’s house, 2012 Photo transfer on archival paper | 3.5 x 3.5 inches
Fazal Rizvi b. 1987 Graduated from National College of Arts Lives and works in Lahore
“I usually find myself gravitating towards things and ideas to do with loss. Loss of objects, memories, places, of time, of love and of people. Loss of both the tangible and the intangible. As an artist that is where I live, that is where I process and that is where I respond from.�
What is left of the right, 2012 Print of a scan of a print | 7.5 x 11 inches
You know I never stay, and am happier this way, 2012 Print of a scan of a print | 11 x 14.5 inches
Bakr Hussain b. 1988 Graduated from National College of Arts Lives and works in Lahore
Contrary to what you often hear humans are a surprisingly empathetic and altruistic bunch. To a degree that is probably unheard of for any other species. We are human.
Opposition to Socialism, 2011 Digital print on canvas | 50 x 35 inches
There is no suffering, 2011 Digital print on canvas and paint | 24 x 48 inches
Azanat Mansoor b. 1989 Graduated from National College of Arts Lives and works in Islamabad
2011 Photo tranfer print | 16.5 x 11.7 inches
2012 Photo tranfer print | 11.7 x 16.5 inches
Asma Rashid Khan - Director Zahra Khan - Curator
Maimoona Riaz- Gallery Assistant Azanat Mansoor- Gallery Assistant
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