AUTHOR: MOEEN FARUQI
PUBLICATIONS: DAWN
DATED: 3 APR 1997
KARACHI, April 2; Moeen Faruqi paints in a different style from most other painters in the Karachi art scene. He says he likes to have human faces in his works because they represent all of us, people we see and know but yet no body in particular.
Moeens new show at the Chawkandi which opened Wednesday has 35 paintings on display. He has used basically oils, oil pastels and acrylics to draw his interpretation of a sort of social sense of contemporary society around us.
“I use faces in my paintings because they tell us a lot, they are of people l know and have seen but not in the specific sense. Yes they could also be faces of people living in confused situations or maybe they are confused themselves. People who are on the younger side, like you or me,” he told Dawn.
Moeen says that he doesnt want to make any social comment anymore, not at least in his new exhibition, because as he says (in a lighter vein) that is something best left for the journalists.
Some of Moeens work, like his oil on canvas painting Apple, he says is different from his previous work and he is not sure whether people will like it. Apple had light colours, greens and blues, with a green apple in the right quadrant, a tree on top, and some other symbolic figures (not human through) in the other parts of the painting.
Another interesting painting in this new show is Plant and Fish, and thats what it is: a potted plant on the left and beside it laying a fish, a flora and fauna ensemble, a duality perhaps.
Inside/Outside, Moeen says, shows scenes inside a home and outside the home, and this interpretation of the esoteric and the obvious could be taken to a higher level.
The owner of the Chawkandi Art Gallery Zohra Hussain told Dawn that younger artistes were encouraged by the more established galleries but provided that their work showed promise.
She said the gallery owner had to draw a line somewhere and it was really up to him or her in the end to reject or accept any artistes request for a show. She said that contrary to what some people might think even young artistes who had shown abroad were sometimes turned down. She said in her opinion. Moeens work appealed particularly to younger people who could identify with it (perhaps sort of appealing to the new confused generation, Generation X).
The exhibition runs at the Chawkandi Art Gallery till April 12 every day from 10:30 am to 8 pm. – ORQ.