Amin Gulgee
  • Home
  • About
  • Sculpture
  • Public Work | Installation
  • Performance
  • Catalogues | Webinars
  • Amin Gulgee Gallery | Curatorial
  • Print Archive
  • Video Archive
Amin GulgeeAmin GulgeeAmin GulgeeAmin Gulgee
  • Home
  • About
  • Sculpture
  • Public Work | Installation
  • Performance
  • Catalogues | Webinars
  • Amin Gulgee Gallery | Curatorial
  • Print Archive
  • Video Archive
Category: Locations
Home / A Collective Dream: One Night Stand/Coup d’un soir /
One Night Stand - Coup d’un soir - Amin Gulgee
A Collective Dream: One Night Stand/Coup d’un soir, A Collective Dream: One Night Stand/Coup d’un soir, Curatorial, Paris, Performance

A Collective Dream: One Night Stand/Coup d’un soir by John McCarry

  • Posted By Amin Gulgee
  • on May 13,2019

On May 13, 2019, Amin Gulgee curated an exhibition of performance art featuring 32 international artists at the Cité internationale des arts in the Marais district of Paris. This was part of his two-month residency at the venerable art institution, established in 1965, with one campus in the Marais and the other in Montmartre. Some of the artists were fellow residents at the Cité internationale des arts, while others were people Amin had met during his regular visits to Paris over the past decade.

Amin, of course, is no stranger to performance art. Over the past two decades, he has presented his own performance works in Karachi, Lahore, Dubai, Kula Lumpur, Nagoya, London and Rome. He has also curated and co-curated performance at his own noncommercial space in Karachi and included a strong performance element in the Karachi Biennale 2017, of which he was Chief Curator as well as in “The Quantuam City: Territory/Space/Place,” which he co-curated with Zarmeene Shah and Sara Pagganwala for the International Public Art Festival in Karachi in March 2019.

A Collective Dream - One Night Stand - Coup d’un soirAida - Amin Gulgee and Nosrat

Amin’s group exhibition of performance in Paris was his first major curatorial effort outside of Pakistan. Amin titled the exhibition “One Night Stand/Coup d’un Soir” in a nod to “Riwhyti: One Night Stand,” which he had curated at his own gallery in 2013, in which over 20 Karachi-based artists simultaneously enacted performance works over the course of a single evening. For the Paris exhibition, as in most of Amin’s curatorial projects, the approach was multidisciplinary. The artists he invited to participate included not just those who dedicate their practice to performance but also photographers, painters, sculptors, actors, musicians, fashion designers and writers. Some who performed had no direct relation to the world of art. Yohan Kim, a native of South Korea who owns a pastry shop in the 18tharrondissement of Paris called Monsieur Caramel, made caramel in a Proustian attempt to trigger memory through taste/smell. Similarly, Benjamin Daman, a student of philosophy at the Sorbonne, ground spices with a mortar and pestle, taking him back to his childhood on the French island of Réunion in the Indian Ocean. Saad Zeroual, a Frenchman of Algerian descent who works as a security guard at Amin’s favorite café in the Marais, agreed to perform a work he called Le physionomiste, in which he moved through the milling crowd of the show studying their faces. Just as in his Karachi exhibitions, the idea was to get people at large—both as participants as well as those who came to watch them—to not only engage with performance art, but to briefly enter a collective consciousness.

The show, which took place over the course of 70 minutes, began at the main entrance of the Cité internationale des arts on the rue de l’Hôtel de Ville, facing the Seine, and led to its auditorium and back again. Walking through the gates the visitor was greeted by electronic sound that the Saudi musician Muhanned E. Nassar played from the courtyard. The British artist Stephen Sheehan stood on a ledge facing the gate, recreating a work called We Are Giants Standing on Mountains that he had performed at the Tate Modern in London in which he urinated inside his jeans for an hour. Moving inside, two performative videos played. In one, called What Is He Doing Here? the Indian artist Baptist Coelho, dressed in army khakis, marched through a London park. In the other, called Set Free, the Finnish artist Salla Myllylä painted in white on windowpanes in a dialogue with the landscape she viewed through them. Juxtaposed with the videos, the French singer and composer André Fernandez, wearing a red kerchief over his eyes, improvised lyrics for his work Pentacost/Glossalalia. Nearby the Lebanese actor Raymond Hosny wore and spoke to a bronze mask titled Pain that Amin had made in the 1990s. Positioned behind a nearby staircase, Yohan Kim made his caramels while opposite him Tatyana Jinto Rutherston, who is of mixed Japanese and English parentage, kneeled and repeatedly wrote the word “token” on pieces of paper while dressed as a Japanese schoolgirl.

A Collective Dream - One Night Stand - Coup d’un soir - Amber-Arifeen

Climbing down the staircase, the audience jostled with performers, some stationary, others moving along a narrow corridor that led to an auditorium. Florencio Botas Verdes, an artist from Venezuela, sonorously blew into a conch shell before an installation of Christian and personal imagery. The Colombian artist, Chéo Cruz, his seemingly nude body covered in yellow and black paint, stood in a circle of wire mesh rimmed with fairy lights and turmeric performing a shamanistic dance. The Pakistani artist Amber Arifeen, wearing a hijab, knelt upon an installation of posters from 1950s French-controlled Algeria, urging women to take off the veil, while she scribbled, over and over again, on the reproduced posters, “Dévoilez,” (sic) or, Unveil Yourself. Next to her the Paris-based Pakistani artist Abi Tariq, his back to the passing crowd, intoned into a sampler for his work Hexentanz II, referencing the original work, choreographed by Mary Wigman circa 1914.

Opposite him, the French artist Alex Ayivi sat behind a desk piled high with a currency that he had created and called the MUA (Monnaie Unique Africaine), “a utopian device,” in his words, that he imagines as an alternative to the CFA franc, a currency whose origins date to colonial days that is still in circulation in many parts of Africa. He signed and gave away his handmade banknotes because, as he said, “I have too many.” Nearby, in a similar gesture of magnanimity, the Brazilian artist Otiniel Lins, covered head to foot in roses, plucked petals from himself and distributed them to the audience, “as a part of me, of my memories…fragile scales of my own skin, blood, tears,” he stated. Roses also appeared in the British artist Amy Kingsmill’s work, Fairy Tale, which she had previously performed at the Karachi Biennale 2017, in which she bled over a bouquet of white roses.

The French writer and filmmaker Laurence Hugues read from the recently unearthed diaries of a woman who had been her neighbor during the artist’s childhood in a village in Forez, a former province of France that is now part of the Loire department. Pas vu Maurice, chroniques de l’infraordinaire, a text based on the diaries, including photographs by Claude Benoit à la Guillaume, will be published by Creaphis Éditions in July 2019. Just around the corner from where Hugues sat reading the original diaries, the Paris-based American James Carlson photographed visitors’ eyes for an ongoing project he calls Eyes of Gaia. For this, he proposes to create a mosaic of the planet Earth from the reliefs and contrasts of 10,000 human irises. Situated next to him was a performance/installation by the Mauritian Nirveda Alleck, called Insular Variations III, in which the artist enacted, in her words, “an imagined ritual around a fictional landmass.” Next to her, the Egyptian artist Therese Antoine Louis obsessively taped together small cardboard boxes for a work she called Repetitive Forms while, at the entrance of the auditorium, the Berlin-based Australian artist Honi Ryan presented LISTEN in, an installation where participants were invited, two at a time, to sit side by side and listen to one another’s heartbeats through a stethoscope for a minimum of four minutes.

Entering the darkened auditorium, the visitor came upon Guillaume Pecquet, a Parisian computer programmer, lying crosswise upon its seats watching videos from YouTube depicting aerial bombing over Syria. On the stage, the Brazilian composer Mateus Araujo improvised his own arrangements on a piano while, accompanying him, the Iranian musician Aida Nosrat moved about the stage, singing incomprehensible phrases in a style influenced by her classical Persian training. Also on the stage, Amin Gulgee performed his own work, Ablution. For this, he sat before a ring of unlit white candles and pantomimed washing his face from an empty white bowl. Behind him, a projection of his algorithm/computer program 7 randomly rearranged elements of Arabic text.

Other performers were itinerant. Some encroached upon the stage, including the Iranian Hura Mirshekari, who confronted the audience and other performers with multiple masks created by her sculptor husband Mehdi Yamohammadi for their work Changing the Face. Tijana Todovic, a native of Montenegro, who is writing her Ph.D. thesis for the University of Ljubljana on clothes as visual symbols in the contemporary arts and practices of the former Yugoslavia, wore a coat that she had made of compressed wool that onlookers could stitch upon with red thread for an interactive word she called Omnia Mea Mecum Porto (My Body is My House I Am My Home.) Thierry Lo Shung Line, who grew up on the island of Réunion, performed objects, including a Buddha, a Ganesh, a cross, a compass, feathers and a crystal, attached to himself, also with red thread, while Paris-based journalist Eliane Volang distributed cakes that she had baked for a work called Epices and Love. Omar Didi, an LGBT activist from Tunisia who is pursuing his Master’s degree in International Studies at the Sorbonne, engaged random members of the audience in conversation in an attempt to make them question and deconstruct stereotypes in a piece he called One Sentence to Love Like Thunder. And the Congolese sculptor/performance artist Precy Numbi presented his work Kimabalambala, whose title borrows a Lingala word that refers to old cars exported to Africa from Europe. Numbi created a 23-kilo suit made of scrap metal and plastic from the carcases of these cars, which he wore as he ambled, robot-like, throughout the exhibition space in a political and ecological commentary.

Although the last of the performances unfolded in the auditorium, there was no ultimate destination in One Night Stand/Coup d’un soir. The viewer had to traverse, then re-traverse, the same constrained terrain upon which he/she had arrived, requiring him/her to make intuitive connections about the works on view. Sound changed as one journeyed back and forth through the exhibition, from Muhanned N. Naseer’s electronic beats in the courtyard, to André Fernandez’s fervent refrains in the reception area, to Florencio Botas Verdes’ soulful plaints at the foot of the stairwell, to Abi Tariq’s transmogrified voice in the corridor, to Aida Nosrat’s mysterious vocals projected from the stage of the auditorium. Smell/taste as a trigger for memory was also present throughout the exhibition, from Yohan Kim’s making of caramels, to Benjamin Daman’s mixing of spices, to Eliane Volang’s distribution of cakes that she had baked. Many performers enacted rituals, both personal and spiritual, including Chéo Cruz’s shamanistic movements, Otiniel Lins’ giving away of the flowers that he wore, Thierry Lo Shung Line’s performing of personalized talismans, Nivreda Alkleck’s interaction with the island-like installation that she had created, and Amy Kingsmill bleeding upon a bouquet of roses. Political concerns also emerged, especially those dealing with legacies of colonialism: Amber Arifeen commented upon a French colonial preoccupation with women unveiling themselves, while Alex Ayivi’s creation then dispersion of his own currency addressed legacies of Northern monetary control over the South, while Percy Numbi’s mutant robot spoke of Africa as a dumping ground for Europe’s unwanted cars.

Amin, as curator, wished the happening to be an immersive one. Sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste were all called upon to comprehend the totality of his intent, which was to invite both the performers and the audience into a collective dreamlike state. For this exhibition of group performance in Paris, as for those he has curated in Karachi, Amin referenced a quote by Yoko Ono: “A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is a reality.”

Author: John McCarry

Source: Art Now Pakistan


Curatorial, International Public Art Festival 2019, Karachi

IPAF Interview on Chai Toast Aur Host – DAWN

  • Posted By Amin Gulgee
  • on February 25,2019
https://youtu.be/aXokfHpoLf8

Amin Gulgee with Romana Husain talk about the International Public Art Festival held in Karachi on 1st, 2nd and 3rd of March 2019 on Chai Toast Aur Host – Dawn.

Source: Dvideos Social


7, 7.7, Rome, Solo Show

Press Review 7 / 7.7 – Rome

  • Posted By Amin Gulgee
  • on October 25,2018

Press Coverage of 7 and 7.7 in Rome, Italy

View Fullscreen


7.7, Rome, Solo Show

AMIN GULGEE “7.7”

  • Posted By Amin Gulgee
  • on August 6,2018

La Pelanda, free entry

The internationally renowned Pakistani artist Amin Gulgee presents at the Mattatoio the exhibition “7.7” curated by Paolo De Grandis and Claudio Crescentini and co-curated by Carlotta Scarpa.

Promoted by Roma Capitale – Department for Cultural Growth and Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, the exhibition is organised in collaboration with PDG Arte Communications and with the Embassy of the Republic of Pakistan in Italy.

Amin Gulgee is an innovator of tradition, his medium is metal and he draws inspiration from the rich and varied artistic and spiritual history of his native country, Pakistan.

His expressive path, linked to Hindu mythology, to the figures of Buddhist thought and to Islamic calligraphy, has developed over the years through sculpture and installations. Copper, his chosen material, offers itself to the artist as a means of expression aimed at calligraphic synthesis and new sign expressions as at “7.7” where La Pelanda hosts two large installations that develop by contrast through full and empty, light and shade, to the synthesis of a video installation. Copper, carbon and the projection of an algorithm thus become the testimony of a symbolic path of change, a reflection that is both personal and universal, a path towards the future marked by the recovery of tradition.

Coal Carpet II, dettaglio |
Amin Gulgee con Ascension IV |
The verse in the Koran in which we learn that God “taught man what he did not know” (Koran, 96:5) is the leitmotiv of Amin Gulgee’s expressive search; it recurs at first legible, then gradually unstructured and finally in the form of fragments and fractions.

This calligraphic text has been appearing and returning now for some time as a persistent, almost obsessive concern in the artist’s works, manifesting itself in various sculptural compositions, sometimes in the form of geometrical constructions, signs that are ideally nourished by fractal geometry. The fragment is the image of the whole. With his artistic intuition, Amin Gulgee demonstrates the profound link that exists between mathematics, art, spirit and nature, and, once again, the fil rouge is beauty.

Hovering between “Apollonian” and “Dionysian” beauty, the letters decomposed and freed from semantics take on a symbolic meaning that, as such, has, on the one hand, a character of aesthetic-sensitive immediacy and, on the other, moves towards a relationship that rejects domination and possession, thus offering the possibility of establishing a real spiritual dialogue with the world. In search of the most intimate meaning, the visitor can unroll the symbolic ball of wool through this labyrinth.

There is always rhythm in all Amin Gulgee’s work. The continuously evolving signs and the outwardly dilated letters are real visible music and the architecture of the whole gains a new form. A perpetually evolving form, a sign to be decoded in a kind of timelessness where space, acting as counterpoint, stimulates reflection and becomes a cognitive instrument, a table on which to measure past and present.

Source: mattatoioroma.it


7.7, Rome, Solo Show

Amin Gulgee protagonista a Roma con la personale “7.7”

  • Posted By Amin Gulgee
  • on July 26,2018
Scritto in data 26/07/2018, 14:17:20

L’artista e performer pakistano Amin Gulgee arriva al Mattatoio di Roma, dal 26 luglio al 26 agosto 2018, con la mostra “7.7” a cura di Paolo De Grandis e Claudio Crescentini e co-curata da Carlotta Scarpa. Amin Gulgee è un innovatore della tradizione, il suo medium è il metallo e trae ispirazione dalla ricca e variegata storia artistica e spirituale del suo paese nativo, il Pakistan. Il suo percorso espressivo, legato alla mitologia indù, alle figure di pensiero buddiste e alla calligrafia islamica, si è sviluppato negli anni attraverso la scultura e le installazioni.

L’evento prevede la presentazione di due grandi installazioni che si sviluppano per contrasto attraverso il pieno ed il vuoto, la luce e l’ombra fino alla sintesi di una video installazione. Allestite negli spazi de La Pelanda, le due installazioni simboleggiano la ricerca espressiva dell’artista partita da un versetto del Corano che recita che Dio “ha insegnato all’uomo quello che non sapeva” (Corano, 96:5). Questo, in sostanza è il leit motiv dell’artista che ricorre da principio leggibile e poi progressivamente destrutturato ed infine frammentato e frazionato.

Questo testo calligrafico appare e ritorna ormai da tempo come preoccupazione persistente, quasi ossessiva, nelle opere dell’artista, manifestandosi in varie composizioni scultoree talvolta sotto forma di costruzioni geometriche, segni che si nutrono idealmente della geometria dei frattali. Il frammento è immagine del tutto. Con la sua intuizione artistica Amin Gulgee dimostra quale profondo legame esista tra matematica, arte, spirito e natura ed il filo conduttore, ancora una volta, è la bellezza.
In bilico tra bellezza “apollinea” e “dionisiaca”, le lettere decomposte e rese libere dalla semantica assumono un’accezione simbolica che in quanto tale ha da un lato carattere d’immediatezza estetico-sensibile e dall’altro si muove verso un rapporto con l’altro che rifiuta il dominio e il possesso, offrendo così la possibilità di instaurare un concreto dialogo spirituale con il mondo. Alla recherche del significato più intimo, il visitatore potrà quindi dipanare il filo del gomitolo in questo labirintico percorso.
In definitiva tutta l’opera di Amin Gulgee è sempre e comunque ritmica. I segni in continuo divenire e le lettere estroflesse sono vera musica visibile e l’architettura d’insieme trova così una forma nuova. Forma in perpetuo divenire, segno da decodificare in una sorta di atemporalità a cui fa da contrappunto lo spazio che sollecita alla riflessione e diventa esso stesso strumento cognitivo, tavolo dove misurare passato e presente.

Per realizzare le due opere, Gulgee ha scelto il rame che insieme al carbone e la proiezione di un algoritmo diventa la testimonianza di un percorso simbolico di cambiamento, riflessione personale e universale insieme, un cammino scandito nel recupero della tradizione verso il futuro.

La mostra è promossa da Roma Capitale – Assessorato alla Crescita Culturale e Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, organizzata in collaborazione con PDG Arte Communications e l’Ambasciata della Repubblica del Pakistan in Italia.
L’ingresso è libero.

Immagine: Amin Gulgee, Coal Carpet

Amin Gulgee protagonista a Roma con la personale “7.7”
Amin Gulgee protagonista a Roma con la personale “7.7”

Source: finestresullarte.info


7.7, Rome, Solo Show

Amin Gulgee. 7.7

  • Posted By Amin Gulgee
  • on July 25,2018

Amin Gulgee. 7.7

Amin Gulgee. 7.7

Dal 25 Luglio 2018 al 26 Agosto 2018

Roma

Luogo: Mattatoio

Curatori: Paolo De Grandis, Claudio Crescentini

Enti promotori:

  • Roma Capitale – Assessorato alla Crescita Culturale
  • Azienda Speciale Palaexpo
Comunicato Stampa:
L’artista pachistano di fama internazionale Amin Gulgee presenta al Mattatoio la mostra “7.7” curata da Paolo De Grandis e Claudio Crescentini e co-curata da Carlotta Scarpa.Promossa da Roma Capitale – Assessorato alla Crescita Culturale e Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, l’esposizione è organizzata in collaborazione con PDG Arte Communications e l’Ambasciata della Repubblica del Pakistan in Italia.
Amin Gulgee è un innovatore della tradizione, il suo medium è il metallo e trae ispirazione dalla ricca e variegata storia artistica e spirituale del suo paese nativo, il Pakistan.Il suo percorso espressivo, legato alla mitologia indù, alle figure di pensiero buddiste e alla calligrafia islamica, si è sviluppato negli anni attraverso la scultura e le installazioni. Il rame, quale materia eletta, si offre all’artista come mezzo di espressione volto alla sintesi calligrafica e a nuovi esprimenti segnici come in occasione di “7.7” dove gli spazi de La Pelanda ospitano due grandi installazioni che si sviluppano per contrasto attraverso il pieno ed il vuoto, la luce e l’ombra fino alla sintesi di una video installazione. Il rame, il carbone e la proiezione di un algoritmo diventano così la testimonianza di un percorso simbolico di cambiamento, riflessione personale e universale insieme, un cammino scandito nel recupero della tradizione verso il futuro.Il versetto del Corano in cui apprendiamo che Dio “ha insegnato all’uomo quello che non sapeva” (Corano, 96: 5) è il leit motiv della ricerca espressiva di Amin Gulgee; ricorre da principio leggibile e poi progressivamente destrutturato ed infine frammentato e frazionato.
Questo testo calligrafico appare e ritorna ormai da tempo come preoccupazione persistente, quasi ossessiva, nelle opere dell’artista, manifestandosi in varie composizioni scultoree talvolta sotto forma di costruzioni geometriche, segni che si nutrono idealmente della geometria dei frattali. Il frammento è immagine del tutto. Con la sua intuizione artistica Amin Gulgee dimostra quale profondo legame esista tra matematica, arte, spirito e natura ed il filo conduttore, ancora una volta, è la bellezza.

In bilico tra bellezza “apollinea” e “dionisiaca”, le lettere decomposte e rese libere dalla semantica assumono un’accezione simbolica che in quanto tale ha da un lato carattere d’immediatezza estetico-sensibile e dall’altro si muove verso un rapporto con l’altro che rifiuta il dominio e il possesso, offrendo così la possibilità di instaurare un concreto dialogo spirituale con il mondo. Alla recherche del significato più intimo, il visitatore potrà quindi dipanare il filo del gomitolo in questo labirintico percorso.

In definitiva tutta l’opera di Amin Gulgee è sempre e comunque ritmica. I segni in continuo divenire e le lettere estroflesse sono vera musica visibile e l’architettura d’insieme trova così una forma nuova. Forma in perpetuo divenire, segno da decodificare in una sorta di atemporalità a cui fa da contrappunto lo spazio che sollecita alla riflessione e diventa esso stesso strumento cognitivo, tavolo dove misurare passato e presente.

Inaugurazione con performance: Mercoledì 25 luglio alle ore 18.30
Nel corso dell’inaugurazione sarà presentata Love Letters una performance interattiva ed un atto performativo personale con la partecipazione di Ana Rusiniuc.

Amin Gulgee, artista e performer di fama internazionale, è nato nel 1969 in Pakistan ed è figlio del famosissimo artista pakistano Ismail Gulgee. Laureato in “Storia dell’Arte ed Economia” presso la Yale University (U.S.A.), inizia la sua carriera artistica realizzando ed esponendo le sue opere, oltre che in Pakistan, negli Stati Uniti, in Europa e nel Medio Oriente. Per quanto riguarda l’Italia non ha mai esposto a Roma, ha partecipato, nel 1998 e nel 2017, a “OPEN – 20. Esposizione Internazionale di Sculture e Installazioni”, collegato alla “Mostra Internazionale d’Arte Cinematografica di Venezia” e rappresenterà il Pakistan alla prossima “Esposizione Internazionale d’Arte – La Biennale di Venezia”. Leggendarie le sue performances, un campo artistico emergente in Pakistan, realizzate anche in molti musei europei e del nord-America (Karachi, Lahore, Dubai, Nagoya, New York, Philadelphia, Dresda, ecc.), di cui l’ultima presso la Royal Albert Hall di Londra (2017). In queste performance, basate principalmente sulla parola, il segno e la fonetica, vengono spesso coinvolti altri artisti oltre che oltre il pubblico, in un contrasto artistico e creativo, fra Oriente e Occidente. Del resto Amin Gulgee è un innovatore della tradizione. Il suo medium principale è il metallo e trae ispirazione dalla ricca e variegata storia laica e spirituale del suo paese nativo, il Pakistan, con temi desunti, in particolare, dalla mitologia indù, dalle civiltà buddiste e dalla calligrafia islamica. Diverse componenti che nel suo lavoro s’influenzano e si alimentano a vicenda perché tutti cercano di rappresentare la spiritualità dell’uomo. Il principale critico d’arte del Washington Times, Joanna Shaw-Eagle ha scritto nella sua recensione della sua mostra personale al FMI nel 1999: “Amin Gulgee è un artista da guardare sia per l’originalità delle sue idee sia per la qualità sensuale e affascinante del suo lavoro.” Nel 1987 Amin Gulgee ha vinto il “Conger B. Goodyear Fine Arts Award” con la sua tesi-opera sui giardini Moghul. Nel 2005 ha ricevuto il prestigioso “President’s Pride of Performance”, che viene conferito solo ad esponenti che hanno raggiunto una statura iconica nel loro campo di eccellenza, dal Presidente del Pakistan. È stato incaricato dal governo pakistano di creare numerose sculture pubbliche, tra cui: Messaggio, per la Presidenza di Islamabad; Minar per l’aeroporto internazionale Quaid-e-Azam di Karachi; Forgotten Text, di 40 mt di altezza, per una rotonda importante a Karachi. Ha partecipato a numerose collettive internazionali, fra le quali: “Pakistan: Another Vision,” Brunei Gallery, Londra, UK (2000); Beijing Biennial (2003); “Beyond Borders,” National Gallery of Modern Art, Mumbai, India (2005); “Paradise Lost,” WAH Center, Brooklyn, NY, USA (2008); “Rites of Passage,” Ostrale, Dresden, Germany (2010) e “New Pathways: Contemporary Art from Pakistan,” UN Headquarters, New York, NY, USA (2016). Ha inoltre realizzato oltre trenta mostre personali in Pakistan, Malesia, Singapore, UAE, India, UK, Portogallo e US, fra le quali si ricordano le recentissime: “Walking on the Moon”, Wei-Ling Contemporary, Kuala Lumpur, Malesya (2015); “Washed Upon the Shore”, Canvas Gallery, Karachi, Pakistan (2015). Nel 2017, sulla scia dei grandi artisti/curatori internazionali ha ideato, progettato e curato la “I Biennale Karachi 17”.

SCARICA IL COMUNICATO IN PDF

Vai alla guida d’arte di Roma

amin gulgee · mattatoio

Source: arte.it


7, Karachi, Solo Show

7

  • Posted By Amin Gulgee
  • on July 24,2018

5ae46ec653511

7

by Ammara Jabbar

Following the slippery contours of alphabets, craning and unfurling, they become visual orators of a fractal monologue. Pinning and pulling them together to find that they have become a residue; cohesive in their elated state of ambivalence. Roaring with slippery symmetry, alphabets parading without a guise of a word; rampant and unabashed; a vexing tale crafted in copper and zest. An opera seized in a moment of time, the alphabets poised like

acrobats, held hostage to a state of steady symphony.

Amin Gulgee, a name that ushers with it a monolithic flair. A reigning magician in his own right, he has foraged

through the the decades of art and fashioned a risque space that

Dynamic Featured Image

resides unhinged on the brittle facade of yesteryear.

Like a pandemonium collected in momentary relief, the air around him ripples with brazen clamor. Frilled with opulence and unabashed gusto, Amin Gulgee is a powerhouse strung with operatic flair and robust whimsy.

A recently concluded show at the Amin Gulgee Gallery titled ‘7’ was an ensemble of the artist’s recent work. The show flippantly stands on a tepid binary of the personal and the public. Rooted in the fifth verse of the 96th Chapter of the Holy Quran (“The Clot”) translated as “taught man which he did not know” is the jugular of Gulgee’s sculptures. The intial verses of this chapter were the first to be revealed to Prophet Muhammad p.b.u.h; it is an auspicious moment that celebrates knowledge and man’s humility.

Gulgee asserts that his personal relationship with the line, almost an obsessive one, has manifested into a profound state of incoherence over the years, yet the testament to the origins stay with him. Deconstructed and reconfigured over the years, resigned into a visual exercise. A constant reiteration; condensed into a latent state of recluse. An intrinsically personal endeavor into a spiritual state of cognizance. While inconspicuous, the language merely functions as a cryptic code; a momentary relief for the content that has been dissected into a state of prudent introversion.

The verse has been broken into seven parts; reconfigured and arranged into spatial entities. Alphabets poised atop one another in demure grace, an earthen offspring of a manic pursuit. Through his musings the viewer negotiates with the private and public binary within the manifestation of the work.

Gulgee also laid out a carpet of coal with alphabets strewn with steady tact. He asserts the coal as an earthen element, elected for the sake of it’s humble virtue. The work itself, laid out in grandeur, is a sanctimonious gesture towards the profound state of simply being. Gulgee’s work has a primal quality; a quivering virtue guised in subtle poetics.

This exhibition is set to travel to Rome later this year, Gulgee muses about the work being set in a moment of time, as it becomes a nomad traveling to foreign lands it will resign to a different moment in time.

Like an ancient breath stringing beads along a febrile thread, the clink of the beads against one another as they are strung together, slipping into a state of continuity..the works assume a tranquil quality of being held together by an imagined reality; resting in consort, a state of harmony and salient equilibrium. Braving through the winds and vagaries of time it shifts with each witness.

Gulgee also invited the viewers to leave notes in bottles which would later be destroyed; this engagement allowed for the personal to be confronted within the diction of his work; the curtains left open for a still moment, the viewer becomes a bearer of secret knowledge that is revealed only to be destroyed without it being heard.

The secret stolen moments and the symphony of the acrobatic alphabets made for a transcendental experience. As words become alphabets, the content becomes a insurgent witness to a sacred quest, the folly of man-made languages set against the profound state of experiencing sans conditioning..thought in it’s elemental state, incommunicable, but elongated through the breadth of it’s pursuit.

To conclude in Zarmeene’s words “This moment of the personal is at the core of this body of work – where the origin, the idea, the process, and the manifestation, all are internalized, absorbed within the self to once again be iterated anew (it is only when that which we know is forgotten, can we then begin to learn once again). This then is at the heart of Gulgee’s practice: a search for the unknown through acts of remembering and forgetting, constructing and deconstructing, fracturing, rupturing and reconfiguring, again and again: repetition, difference, différance.”1

Source: artnowpakistan.com


7.7, Rome, Solo Show

AMIN GULGEE al Mattatoio

  • Posted By Amin Gulgee
  • on July 24,2018

Amin Gulgee è un famoso scultore pakistano che ha esposto in tutto il mondo. Ora espone fino al 26 agosto 2018 una serie di opere con titolo 7.7. in una mostra Macro Testaccioora detto Mattatoio. Curatori Paolo De Grandis e Claudio Crescentini con Carlotta Scarpa. Ingresso libero.

 

Amin Gulgee è figlio di un importante artista pakistano, ma si differenzia totalmente dalla linea paterna. E’ uno scultore che usa come mezzo il rame e il bronzo che ritiene metalli malleabili. Le sue creazioni sintetizzano la filosofia indù, l’ascetismo buddista, e la calligrafia islamica per trovare in questo contesto la spiritualità dell’uomo. Le sue opere mostrano la lotta individuale che l’artista compie per conoscere se stesso e avvicinarsi alla Divinità.

 

Quest’esposizione che fa parte dell’accordo tra Macro e PDG Arte Comunications per mostrare anche a Roma artisti che hanno esposto con successo durante la Biennale Veneziana, è promossa da Roma Capitale, Assessorato alla Crescita Culturale, AziendaSpeciale Palaexpo, e organizzata da PDG Arte Comunications e  Ambasciata della Repubblica del Pakistanin Italia. L’artista con il metallo compone gioielli, installazioni, grandi sculture, e nel suo medium calligrafo destrutturato, e persino grandi tappeti.

Il suo motivo principale è un versetto del Corano che dice “Dio ha insegnato all’uomo quello che non sapeva” che Amin Gulgee mostra destrutturato, è presente in tutte le sue opere. Al Macro LaPelandra presenta due installazioni che si sviluppano per contrasto attraverso il pieno e il vuoto, tra luce e ombra arrivando a una video installazione. Il rame, il carbone e la proiezione di un algoritmo divengono una dimostrazione del percorso di cambiamento, riflessione personale e una strada verso il futuro. Nella suo lavoro  Amin Gulgee dimostra come la sua opera sia una sintesi di matematica, arte, spirito, natura dove il legame è la bellezza.

Amin Gulgee ha realizzato mostre in tutto il mondo e anche opere pubbliche in Pakistan come The Message per la presidenza di Islamabad e Minar all’aeroporto internazionale di Karachi ed è premiato con il Prize of Performance la più alta onorificenza che concede il Governo del Pakistan. Il prossimo anno rappresenterà il Pakistan alla mostra internazionale La Biennale di Venezia.  

Un’esposizione da visitare.

Emilia Dodi

 

PDF/PRINT clicca qui
Da Emilia Dodi –
24 luglio 2018
Source: visumnews.it

7.7, Rome, Solo Show

Amin Gulgee al Mattatoio di Roma con la mostra “7.7”

  • Posted By Amin Gulgee
  • on July 23,2018

Amin Gulgee al Mattatoio di Roma con la mostra “7.7”

Coal Carpet II, dettaglio

Mercoledì 25 luglio alle ore 18.30 l’esposizione inaugura con la performance interattiva “Love Letters” e un atto performativo personale con la partecipazione di Ana Rusiniuc

ROMA –  L’artista e performer pakistano di fama internazionale, Amin Gulgee, presenta al Mattatoio di Roma la sua mostra “7.7”, a cura di Paolo De Grandis e Claudio Crescentini e co-curata da Carlotta Scarpa.

Gli spazi de La Pelanda ospitano, dal 25 luglio al 26 agosto 2018, due grandi installazioni che si sviluppano per contrasto attraverso il pieno ed il vuoto, la luce e l’ombra fino alla sintesi di una video installazione. 

Gulgee per le sue opere predilige il metallo e trae ispirazione dalla ricca e variegata storia artistica e spirituale del suo paese nativo. Il rame è la materia eletta dall’artista, che insieme al carbone e la proiezione di un algoritmo diventa la testimonianza di un percorso simbolico di cambiamento, riflessione personale e universale insieme, un cammino scandito nel recupero della tradizione verso il futuro.

La ricerca espressiva dell’artista parte da un versetto del Corano che recita che Dio “ha insegnato all’uomo quello che non sapeva” (Corano, 96: 5). Il versetto ricorre da principio leggibile e poi progressivamente destrutturato ed infine frammentato e frazionato.

Questo testo calligrafico appare e ritorna ormai da tempo come preoccupazione persistente, quasi ossessiva, nelle opere dell’artista, manifestandosi in varie composizioni scultoree talvolta sotto forma di costruzioni geometriche, segni che si nutrono idealmente della geometria dei frattali. Il frammento è immagine del tutto. Con la sua intuizione artistica Amin Gulgee dimostra quale profondo legame esista tra matematica, arte, spirito e natura ed il filo conduttore, ancora una volta, è la bellezza.

La mostra è promossa da Roma Capitale – Assessorato alla Crescita Culturale e Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, organizzata in collaborazione con PDG Arte Communications e l’Ambasciata della Repubblica del Pakistan in Italia.

Source: arteonline.biz


7.7, Rome, Solo Show

Amin Gulgee al Mattatoio di Roma con la mostra “7.7”

  • Posted By Amin Gulgee
  • on July 23,2018

Mercoledì 25 luglio alle ore 18.30 l’esposizione inaugura con la performance interattiva “Love Letters” e un atto performativo personale con la partecipazione di Ana Rusiniuc

ROMA –  L’artista e performer pakistano di fama internazionale, Amin Gulgee, presenta al Mattatoio di Roma la sua mostra “7.7”, a cura di Paolo De Grandis e Claudio Crescentini e co-curata da Carlotta Scarpa.

Gli spazi de La Pelanda ospitano, dal 25 luglio al 26 agosto 2018, due grandi installazioni che si sviluppano per contrasto attraverso il pieno ed il vuoto, la luce e l’ombra fino alla sintesi di una video installazione. 

Gulgee per le sue opere predilige il metallo e trae ispirazione dalla ricca e variegata storia artistica e spirituale del suo paese nativo. Il rame è la materia eletta dall’artista, che insieme al carbone e la proiezione di un algoritmo diventa la testimonianza di un percorso simbolico di cambiamento, riflessione personale e universale insieme, un cammino scandito nel recupero della tradizione verso il futuro.

La ricerca espressiva dell’artista parte da un versetto del Corano che recita che Dio “ha insegnato all’uomo quello che non sapeva” (Corano, 96: 5). Il versetto ricorre da principio leggibile e poi progressivamente destrutturato ed infine frammentato e frazionato.

Questo testo calligrafico appare e ritorna ormai da tempo come preoccupazione persistente, quasi ossessiva, nelle opere dell’artista, manifestandosi in varie composizioni scultoree talvolta sotto forma di costruzioni geometriche, segni che si nutrono idealmente della geometria dei frattali. Il frammento è immagine del tutto. Con la sua intuizione artistica Amin Gulgee dimostra quale profondo legame esista tra matematica, arte, spirito e natura ed il filo conduttore, ancora una volta, è la bellezza.

La mostra è promossa da Roma Capitale – Assessorato alla Crescita Culturale e Azienda Speciale Palaexpo, organizzata in collaborazione con PDG Arte Communications e l’Ambasciata della Repubblica del Pakistan in Italia.

Ultima modifica il Lunedì, 23 Luglio 2018 16:05

Scritto da  Redazione

Source: artemagazine.it


1234Next ›Last »
Recent Posts
  • Amin Gulgee’s ‘The Spider Speaketh in Tongues’ – A Curator’s Note
  • Discovering Life Through Art – Amin Gulgee & Lim Wei-Ling – Wei-Ling Gallery Podcast
  • A Collective Dream: One Night Stand/Coup d’un soir by John McCarry
  • IPAF Interview on Chai Toast Aur Host – DAWN
  • Press Review 7 / 7.7 – Rome
Categories
  • 1988 to 2000
    • 1988
    • 1989
    • 1990
    • 1991
    • 1992
    • 1993
    • 1994
    • 1995
    • 1996
    • 1997
    • 1998
    • 1999
    • 2000
  • Amin Gulgee
  • Amin Gulgee Gallery
    • 18 @ 8
    • Dish Dhamaka
    • Dreamscape
    • Fresh!
    • Imagining Cities
    • Riwhyti: One Night Stand
    • The 70s Show
  • Curatorial
    • A Collective Dream: One Night Stand/Coup d’un soir
    • International Public Art Festival 2019
    • KB17 – Karachi Biennale
  • General
  • Group Show
    • Art Fest 2014
    • Band Baja Baraat
    • Karachi Art Summit
    • Noon Wao Qalam
    • Open20
    • Pakistan Art Today
    • Studio Seven
    • Taqseem
  • IMF Show
  • Interviews
  • Jewellery
  • Locations
    • Ankara
    • Dubai
    • Huston Texas
    • Islamabad
    • Jeddah
    • Karachi
    • Kuala Lumpur
    • Lahore
    • New Delhi
    • New York
    • Paris
    • Peterborough
    • Riyadh
    • Rome
    • Saudi Arabia
    • Venice
    • Washington
  • Performance
    • A Collective Dream: One Night Stand/Coup d’un soir
    • Alchemy
    • Crucifixion
    • Love Marriage
    • Play Me
    • River Dreams of Alexander
    • Sola Singhar
    • Where Is The Apple Joshinder
  • Podcast
  • Print Media
  • Public Works
    • Forgotten Text
    • Roof Installation – Amin Gulgee Gallery
  • Solo Show
    • 7
    • 7.7
    • Al-Nahda Royal Society
    • Arabian Gallery
    • Art Gallery
    • Art Space
    • Body and Soul
    • Char Bagh
    • Continuity – Kinetic Essence
    • Cosmic Mambo
    • IMF Show – The Search for light
    • Indus Gallery
    • Intercontinental Hotel
    • Lahore Art Gallery
    • Lawrence Gallery
    • Looking for the Magic Center
    • Open Studio
    • Open Studio II
    • Other Works
    • PACC
    • Rida Gallery
    • The Hilton Ankara
    • The Search for Light
    • Through the Looking Glass
    • Walking On The Moon
    • Washed upon the shore
    • Zenith Gallery
  • The Spider Speaketh in Tongues
  • Urdu Press
  • Wei-Ling Gallery
Archives
Contact
Copyright Amin Gulgee 2022. All Rights Reserved | Designed and Developed by Hive Web Solution
KB Curatorial