Creativity Takes Courage
View: Creativity Takes Courage Page – 1
View: Creativity Takes Courage Page – 2
View: Creativity Takes Courage Page – 3
View: Creativity Takes Courage Page – 4
Source: WOMENS OWN
ONE is based in Karachi, Pakistan. Amin Gulgee’s latest exhibition, Walking On The Moon,recently concluded at Wei-Ling Contemporary, The Gardens Mall. It is a series of breathtaking “love letters” to the World.
The other, Oliviero Rainaldi, is an Italian marvel whose human figures cast in bronze, plaster and glass just make you want to weep in reverence. TWINS: Works by Oliviero Rainaldi is currently being showcased at the Twin Towers. He pens: “I was born a twin, like my mother and grandmother. I dedicate this exhibit to my ancestors and to the Twin Towers of Kuala Lumpur, which attracted me at first glance.”
Some of Amin’s works can be seen at Mandarin Oriental’s pop-up restaurant, Aziamendi 88, until October 30. His cast aluminium Sun Dried Heads 1 — The Wreath in particular, is hypnotic. It is a work you can circle a hundred times and still discover new things each time. And repeating what was immediately observed when faced with his bronze constructions: it’s true what they say, that beauty depends very much on what we agree it to be.
Amin’s works combine a deep artistic skill and astuteness, elegant pieces which carry within them the artist’s wonderfully warped mind, his love poems to the world.
Amin’s larger-than-life predominantly burnished bronze designs are brutally beautiful. The engravings on each one, of calligraphic verses, lend the works supreme elegance. Me in the Matrix, as the artist almost gleefully divulges, “hacked 89 times: nose, chin, eyes, the whole face” makes you curious what kind of incubuses he has. The work is utterly brilliant and completely crazy. His Chapati series are whimsical and serious, tortuously folded copper which appear heavy and paper-like.
Amin reminds us that visual content is a thing without limits, that while they may very well be both personal and mythopoeic, the works are also hugely accessible. When was the last time you heard an artist say of his works, “Please don’t be afraid to touch the sculptures and get a feel of what they’re about”? The artist himself is baroque-like and in five minutes, makes you feel like long-lost best friends. Very much like his sculptures, Amin draws you in with unbridled enthusiasm for the things he has done and is going to do.
His art gallery in Karachi is constantly evolving, curating impelling shows for both local and international artists. For someone so extraordinarily accomplished, he possesses no airs. He, is, after all, the son of Ismail Gulgee, one of Pakistan’s most gifted painters. Walking on the Moon itself is a beatific title, revealing Amin’s own feelings of wonder. His works has this sense of permanence in an adamantine way that’s so acutely beguiling, it becomes that rabbit hole you just couldn’t keep away from.
Oliviero Rainaldi’s opening of TWINS, meanwhile, was opulent, attended by the who’s who of Malaysia’s society elite. Be that as it may, none came even close to rival his works. Beautifully spaced to give each sculpture and painting pivotal breathing space so as not to overwhelm too much, Rainaldi’s creations goad, calling out to you in urgent whispers.
As expressed by curator Badrolhisham Mohamad Tahir: “In all, his drawings, paintings and sculptures, Oliviero Rainaldi concentrates on the human figure, its body language and gestures. He explores fundamental questions of human existence and their connections to religion and philosophy. Rainaldi’s choice of materials reflects the entire range of his expression. Rainaldi loves the miracle of light. Faces are made only readable by the play of light over the absolutely white ground. This is the best example of his minimalist emphasis on its material presence by the use of light”.
2001 Le Dejeuner Sur Le Blune is of a figure prostrating, its head touching the ground. In 2013 Caduti, the magnificent bronze carving sits quietly on a plinth. Adjacent, 2007 polyptych charcoal on wood Conversazioni are of lovers in deep communion. Battesami Umani, the artist’s 2014 bronze sculpture of a figure standing on its head simply stuns. The whole show is a dance, perfectly choreographed, flawless in execution. And this jumped into mind instantaneously: Mavin Khoo’s wondrous ZfinMalta Dance Ensemble’s debut in Kuala Lumpur at the Temple of Fine Arts recently.
Je Tiens la Reine, a contemporary adaptation of Mallarme’s 1876 L’Apres-midi-d’un Faune and Debussy’s 1894 Prelude a L’Apres-midi d’un Faune presented by Pusaka is Rainaldi’s sculptures come to life. From the incredibly sophisticated jumps, swirls and tortured writhing of these nymph-spirits to the scalpel sharp formations, the show was mind-pummeling.
Similarly, Rainaldi’s Twins gives us a glimpse into an alternate universe where everything smoulders, a visual witchery of his characters tearing feverishly at each other the moment the lights go off.
In these immortal lines of Bob Dylan’s Visions Of Johanna, from his 1966 album, Blonde on Blonde:
“In the empty lot where the ladies play blindman’s bluff with the key chain
And the all-night girls they whisper of escapades out on the D-train
We can hear the night watchman click his flashlight
Ask himself if it’s him or them that’s really insane
Louise she’s all right she’s just near
She’s delicate and seems like the mirror
But she just makes it all too concise and too clear
That Johanna’s not here
The ghost of electricity howls in the bones of her face
Where these visions of Johanna have now taken my place.”
Walking on the Moon and TWINS are both the same spiritual love song. It’s unavoidable when you pitch beauty against beauty. It is la douleur exquise, the exquisite pain of longing for someone-something so intense it shatters Worlds.
By Sarah NH Vogeler – October 13, 2015 @ 5:31pm
Source: nst.com.my
Cosmic Chapati 48: Hunger Game by Amin Gulgee. Photo: Shamyl Khuhro & Jamal Ashiqain
It almost feels like a pilgrimage, a spiritual journey of sorts, ambling through Kuala Lumpur-based gallery Wei-Ling Contemporary, introspectively gazing upon the 25 sculptures of copper and bronze by Amin Gulgee.
The commanding works of the renowned Pakistani sculptor, on display at the gallery till Aug 14, emanate a magnetic otherworldliness.
Each sculpture, painstakingly wrought over the past five years by the 50-year-old, seems to possess its own life and voice, as if they were echoes and whispers from the heavens.
More than that, the voices resonating from the metalwork are of the sculptor’s. Just imagine a meditative chant in the background as you view his new Walking On The Moon exhibition.
“It’s very much my new works in juxtaposition with some older pieces to see how far I’ve come in my journey. That’s the perspective,” says the Karachi-based Amin at a recent interview in Kuala Lumpur.
Wei-Ling Contemporary exhibited Amin’s last exhibition here called Cosmic Mambo in 2011.
His works have toured extensively abroad, including stops in the United States, France, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Oman and China.
Some art enthusiasts here will also remember his epic solo show Drawing The Line at Galeri Petronas in late 2008.
Amin’s latest exhibition carries a broad range of copper-based works, including horns, calligraphy, architectural design and even the chapati.
This current collection is truly a testament to the sculptor’s unrelenting zeal and passion towards his art.
The artist himself attests to the importance of skill and says he never draws or sketches, as he wants to be “physically, emotionally and intellectually involved in the (creative) process.”
For him, there is no separation between the art and the artist.
“I never want to be removed from it, which is why I have to be at the workshop,” he says.
He adds, cheekily, “The best thing is to get up in the morning and going straight to the workshop. There is no need for a shower because you are going to be covered in grime anyway.”
Amin’s Horn series is a stunning collection of four monumental copper works of water buffalo horns. They, like the great beast of the field, demand respect and reverence.
The horns, imposing in size, could have very well belonged to an ancient temple or a great king for such is their hold.
“The water buffalo is the essence of South Asia. It gives milk, it ploughs the fields and village life runs around this one animal. It is so important. I wanted to highlight that,” reveals Amin, who studied Economics, Architecture and Art History at America’s renowned Yale University.
Moreover, the delicate perforations which Amin had masterfully imbued on the horn sculptures, resemble ceremonial and sacred markings.
In fact, Amin, who opened his own gallery, the Amin Gulgee Gallery in Karachi in 2001, is well known for drawing inspiration from religion.
And it is his three-dimensional calligraphic sculptures which ultimately reflect his prowess as a craftsman. It is interesting to note that Amin’s father, the late Ismail Gulgee, a famous painter and sculptor, was also well known for his calligraphic sculptures. The apple did not fall far from the tree, then.
Amin’s calligraphic pieces in Walking On The Moon are a sight to behold. Upon close inspection, you’ll find that the artist deconstructed verses from scriptures and other ancient texts and rearranged the letters, one on top of another, to the point that they are unrecognisable.
“You can no longer read the script. They are freed, in a way, of content, although I am very aware of where the content is coming from.
“The letters fly upwards. I want them to be free of the earth and dance upwards towards the sky and moon just be free and have this spirit, energy, joy and celebration,” explains Amin.
Another eye-catching work is called Cosmic Chapati: Unknown Centre. The almost metre-long copper sculpture was done, according to Amin, one wire at a time.
“There’s so much chaos, turmoil, war, evil and horror in this world. This is like my meditation, done one wire at a time and it is all about seeking control and balance,” he says.
Ultimately, Walking On The Moon, is an exhibition that reflects the spiritual and psychological psyche of Amin.
In the exhibition’s catalogue, Amin writes with vibrancy and aptly describes his artistic journey.
“My objects are my dreams, my histories and my myths. My work and my life cannot be separated. In both, I need freedom to swim and dance in deep blue space.”
Walking On The Moon is on at Wei-Ling Contemporary at RT01 6th Floor, The Gardens Mall in Kuala Lumpur till Aug 14. The gallery is open Tuesday to Sunday from 11am to 7pm. For more information, visit weiling-gallery.com, call 03-2260 1106 or 03-22828323 or email [email protected].
Source: star2.com
Text: SR Lim
Interview: Cai Mei Khoo
Pakistani sculptor and dreamer Amin Gulgee is back with his fifth solo show at Wei-Ling Contemporary at The Gardens Mall, KL, with an exhibition entitled, Walking On the Moon. No stranger to the art of sculpture, Gulgee has been the subject of over 40 solo exhibitions all over the world since the early 90s. His preferred medium is metal (“I love the smell of copper”) and his creations take from Hindu mythology, Buddhist asceticism and Islamic calligraphy, all important cultural and religious elements of his native country, Pakistan.
Algorithm I, copper, 2015″There are three lines from the Quran that I use in my work, one of which being ‘God taught humankind what it did not know’,” says Gulgee. “In the early works you can read that line but in the works that you see in this show, you can no longer read it clearly. It becomes more figurative, less literal. My art is my form of meditation. A lot has gone on in my private life; the world has gone crazy these days – the Chapati series, for example, were my attempt to seek order and stability in this world.”
When asked why he chose the chapati, Gulgee explains that “chapati is bread and bread is the essence of life. Right now we live in this really strange world where it’s become so rich that people have become gluten-intolerant, when in my country, most people don’t even have a piece of bread to eat. The chapatti pieces are done one wire at a time. They’re not cast. It’s all about seeking control, seeking calm,” he says.
Four Quarter Chapatis II, copper, 2015Gulgee, who graduated from Yale, admits that he did not want to become an artist when he was younger, and that his famous artist father, the late Ismail Gulgee, never wanted or pressured him into becoming an artist. “I was doing economics like a good South Asian boy, but in sophomore year, I went to an art history class and I ended up with a major in it. My thesis was on Islamic Art.”
Growing up, Gulgee was very much influenced by his father’s work. “His idea of bonding was getting me to watch him paint, or for me to paint with him but I decided to explore sculpting as I love objects – form really excites me. Each piece takes me on a journey. Sometimes it may not go anywhere but that’s okay too – my storage space is as big as my work space.”
As for what inspired him, Gulgee says he’s inspired by everything that he sees but these days, is intrigued by (Hieronymus) Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. Another constant form of inspiration for this artist is dance. “I love dance, I love movement – it’s so primordial. Some of my works, like the Spider Raga and Ascension pieces, you want them to move, you want them flying up, away from gravity.”
Amin Gulgee’s works on display at Wei-Ling ContemporaryAmin Gulgee’s Walking On The Moon is at Wei-Ling Contemporary from now till 4 August 2015.
Wei-Ling Contemporary, RT01 Sixth Floor, The Gardens Mall, 59200, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Source: buro247.my
THE age of industry and the revolutions that accompanied it provide a very fertile basis for all sorts of creative activity. In art, it has resulted in a couple of centuries of production of a wide variety of artworks that can vie with all the golden ages of art history put together. To create, survive and make one’s presence felt at such times is no easy task. And those who do, like Ismail Gulgee, Amin Gulgee’s father, and Amin himself, do so on the basis of a deep understanding of the development of material culture over time, its linkages with the world of ideas, and the capacity of an artist to create objects that are thought-provoking but are at the same time repositories of profound realities.
Indeed, we have traversed a long history of freeing aesthetic expression from the limitations imposed on it by religious dogma, political pressures and the blandishments of the market to tread along the winding path that links the personal with the universal and the material with the conceptual. A truly good artist not only understands these continuities but is also capable of seeing the place of each of his creations in these, both by innovating with the material of the past and by making a break from it to develop a milestone for the future.
Not everyone is capable of doing this as successfully as Amin Gulgee has done in his latest exhibition of sculpture and video art, “Through the Looking Glass”, which was shown recently at the Galerie Romain Rolland in New Delhi by the Nitanjali Art Gallery. The theme of the exhibition goes back to Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice in Wonderland. If the first book was a tongue-in-cheek confrontation with the wonderlands industrial society likes to blind one with, his second, published around the time of the Paris Commune, makes one playfully aware of the distortions of the truth these visions constitute.
So I was not surprised to be confronted with a large mirror chessboard with metal chapatis on it, which could also be ancient Egyptian sun discs, ranged like chessmen that one could move to “play the game with”. It is called “Cosmic Chapati 48: Hunger Game”. It invited one to enter the arena of the politics of hunger being played out in so many distortions such as the destruction of stocks in overproducing countries while there is famine in others; in grain rotting in the godowns of the Food Corporation of India and being denied to the poor “because there is no constitutional provision for it”; food aid being supplied to countries at inflated rates; or worse, food embargos being used as a political weapon, as was done against India during the Public Law 480 period and as has been done against Cuba since the 1960s and against North Korea. With these ideas shooting through one’s head, one almost does not want to play the game. But then I remembered how India did play it once: it sent a shipload of grain to Cuba to challenge the embargo, and the bread made from it was stamped with India’s name on it. So I picked up a chapati and moved it one square forward.
It is fascinating how the artist’s structuring of the sculpture not only brings to mind the struggle over food and the attempt to use it as an instrument of oppression but also reminds one how the oppressed used the same symbol against the oppressor in 1857, when chapatis were circulated among the rebels to unite them against the British. The universality of bread makes it a particularly powerful symbol of resistance. Even the oppressor cannot ignore its appeal.
This symbol of unleavened bread in the form of a copper disc with concentric circles of wire links its grain to the source of its energy, the sun, with the farmer’s effort as an unseen link between the two that the sculptor’s hand takes over from to give one a symbol he then replicates in many variants such as “Cosmic Chapati Unknown Centre”, “Folded Chapati” and “Three Folded Chapatis” to allow one to evoke not only concerns of hunger and its satiation but also the importance of food production and its link with both environmental and ethical concerns.
That this young sculptor is able to relate to and innovate on such universal iconography without damaging the beauty and simplicity of his work is commendable.
Another symbol he innovates with successfully is the crossroads, which in ancient society were necessary for barter and trade and became centres where peace and harmony had to be imposed for everyone’s benefit. This imposed harmony became an aesthetic symbol in Persian garden design as far back as the 6th century B.C. and was brought to India as the Char Bagh (four garden) pattern, enclosed by a wall.
“The Mughal gardens of South Asia can be divided into three categories: the palace garden, the autonomous garden and the funerary garden, in which the mausoleum was usually placed at the centre of the Char Bagh. In all three, the Char Bagh organised the space,” says Amin Gulgee. The sculptor explains: “The Mughals created their own style of architecture in their gardens by combining the geometric Persian influence with the organic traditions of South Asia. This combination of the geometric with the organic is fascinating for me in the context of the garden.”
This has materialised in his work as four rectangular frames, with mirrors at the top and bottom that give one an illusion of endless space, eternity if one likes, with individually crafted leaves descending like those in the European autumn or the South Asian summer. But here we have another concept at play: the structures are based on formal, universal principles, but the leaves are individual elements strung from thin wires. Here one sees him concretely presenting the relationship of the individual with the universal, the free-floating nature of the individual with the abstract nature of universal concepts of time, without losing the individual character of each concrete moment in life.
The individual, however free-floating, is only a word in a language, or, to put it in visual terms, a letter or an ideogram in a script. So it is no surprise to one that Amin is keenly involved in scripts, even inventing in a work called “Me in the Matrix”, in which individual features of the artist with their individual idiosyncrasies become a recognisable face, a form. Moreover, once the facial elements are reassembled in the social matrix, they become an identity over and above the biological being. From here, one moves to his narrative sculptures based on Quranic inscriptions.
Quite expectedly, the verse of the Quran that he chooses is the Iqra: “Allah taught man that which he did not know [Allamal insana Ma’ lam ya’ lam’].” Once more one sees consciousness imposing itself on the chaos of nature. But interestingly, the chaos and the individual solutions the artist choose to impose, on the one hand, go beyond his consciousness into the realm of the original, on the other. The cursive script relieves itself of meaning and becomes a form that the hand flows with, dredging out realities as yet unfathomed from our South Asian tradition and the artist’s subconscious appropriation of this, as in his works where the Arabic script becomes images of Ganesha and Krishna, or buffalo horns become a variant of the symbol “Om”.
“I was not conscious of these iconic images,” he says, “But I was brought up in a house full of antique sculptures and made many images of Ganesha and Krishna. So probably the hand flowed in the same direction when I made these works.”
This is an experience many artists have had, when the chisel, the brush or the pen takes its own course on the basis of the material, guiding the hand of the creator along its own lines. Often the same spirit guides the scale of a work. One may sculpt a small work first and then it demands a greater space, as his buffalo horns do or his “Dragon Spider”, which could well be a dancing Krishna, does.
It is obvious that his flights beyond the frame succeed as they do because of his training in art history, economics and architecture at Yale and because he worked with his father, who was an engineer trained at Columbia and Harvard.
It is his deep understanding of aesthetics, too, that allows him to experiment with video and performance art, as his “Love Marriage”, which not only has his training in dance behind it but also gave birth to two sculptures, “Marriage Bustier” and “Marriage Helmet”, reminding one that a good artist must show expertise and professional execution apart from having good ideas. This is Amin Gulgee’s strong point and will carry him forward to new heights because in trying times one needs works of confidence and hope that break out of the moulds of the past to create new icons for the future.
Finally, exhibiting an artist from Pakistan has a special meaning for Indians as we share a common iconic tradition going back to Mohenjodaro, Harappa and Lothal, just as India and Bangladesh both have national anthems written by Rabindranath Tagore.
Source: frontline.in
Amin Gulgee and I spoke at length about his work as a sculptor a little over a year ago. At the time, in writing about him, I had spoken of his practice being reflected in the title of his (then) recent show, ‘Through The Looking Glass’ at the Nitanjali Art Gallery in New Delhi (September 2013). We talked for some time about Alice and her adventures in Wonderland, and what an amazing and complex metaphor Lewis Carroll had woven into this story through the bizarre and seemingly nonsensical events that take place once Alice has moved through the surface of the looking glass – or down the rabbit hole. I told him about Deleuze’s essay on Lewis Carroll and how he speaks of Alice’s conquering of surfaces: how, as she moves through the looking glass, she comes to create and pass in between other surfaces, sites that do not occupy a real world but are worlds that are real nonetheless. In the mirror, an event occurs, one that is not an act of mere imitation, but of reflection and alteration. It represents, but it draws the thing that it represents into its own space, a space in which nothing is as it seems. Things are turned upside down, inside out; characters stand on their heads and she is never quite ‘right’ – too big, too small, not ‘like herself’, Alice who is not quite Alice.
Love Marriage_Karachi_2012
At the time, I did not realize that this would become almost as a premonition, a metaphor for the work that we would do together as curators later. At the time, discussing Alice and the spaces that she comes to occupy, Amin likened this to the experience of going into his own workshop; a space of madness and order, where things are never quite as they seem to be and one never knows how one will eventually come to navigate through its space: “an endless journey where questions have no answers but only lead to more questions.” Amin’s practice is nothing if not spiritual, inward looking, deconstructive, unendingly breaking open the familiar in order to reveal the new – rethinking, reimagining, reassembling – and at its’ nucleus are his studio and workshop. “This is the place where acts of creation occur and reality is challenged, configured and reconfigured again and again in a consistently evolving practice that submerges itself, through a continuous exploration of persisting concerns, in an act of difference and repetition through which new events are allowed to transpire and alternate spaces come to exist. In this process the artist himself is formed and re-formed time and time again, his face made whole, broken, reassembled, turned on its axis, flipped on its head.” (ZS, 2013)
Faces, hands, leaves, calligraphic texts, geometric forms that fuse with the organic in an unrelenting exploration of form and space – these are all recurring motifs in Amin’s work. A philosophy of repetition that resonates with the spirituality inherent in the act of repetition in Islamic Art. Where complex geometric patterns come together to create a seemingly unending repetition that alludes to the infinite nature of God, they also indicate the importance of the small, singular element, through the repetition of which one is able to aspire towards an infinite whole. In addition, Amin’s materials of choice (bronze, copper) are elemental, alchemical, evocative of nature and the earth – the magical and the spiritual, and of course, the human.
These are and have long remained the concepts at the core of Amin’s practice: themes of life, birth, death, humanity, spirituality, creation, destruction, mortality, love –themes that fall neatly under the umbrella of the ‘metanarrative’ or the ‘grand narrative’, the incredulity towards which was one of the defining features of the postmodernist era. In this manner, Amin’s practice also comes to squarely defy the skeptical nihilism of postmodernism, which declares the death not only of representation, painting, the author and art itself but also of god, reason and all truth. Of his more recent works, Char Bagh II: Falling Leaves seems to stand at the forefront of the charge against postmodernism. Historically, the Persian style of garden, the ChaharBagh (Charbagh), is a four-garden layout centrally intersected by axial pathways and stands as a powerful metaphor for man’s need to organize and impose order/control onto nature. In the Mughal tradition, this layout is also seen as symbolic of the Garden of Eden, the exploration of which one saw clearly in a later collaborative, dance-based performance work titled Where’s The Apple Joshindar, telling the stories of five individuals, including Amin himself.
Char Bagh II – Falling Leaves
This movement between the private and the public, the contained isolation of the studio and the outward reaching nature of collaboration and performance, is characteristic of Amin’s approach towards his practice, perhaps from the very beginning. This proclivity for reaching outward, for an inclusiveness and generosity of spirit, whether in dealings with people or in the approach to his own practice, has also led to Amin being one of few artists who have successfully navigated between the art and fashion worlds, acting almost as a bridge between the two.
In September 2000, arising out of the ‘Egg Series’, a 30 minute fashion and performance show titled ‘Alchemy’ was hosted at the Sheraton Hotel, exploring ideas of conception, birth and creation, viewing pregnancy almost as a magical, alchemical practice. The year after, ‘Sola Singhar’ followed much the same pattern of operating as a site where performance and fashion converge. Amin speaks of this as a time in Pakistan’s art and fashion history that was much more fluid, a time when the boundaries between disciplines were less defined and the taking of risks much easier, perhaps subject to a lesser critique and scrutiny, allowing for freer collaborations across the board and the possibility of new and exciting modes of practice. During these years, Amin’s jewelry pieces, crafted of pure copper and pated with 24 carat gold, often including the use of precious or semi precious stones, each one of a kind, became internationally known and appreciated, his clients including the iconic designer Carolina Herrera as well as Mrs. Boutros BoutrosGhali, to name a few.
To Amin, these were simply an extension of his practice, a new mode of exploration within a larger framework, acting almost as preliminary works to larger sculptural pieces: “I do not sketch out my sculptures before making them. I work out my ideas through jewelry.” In so doing, and in the fact of his success in this, Amin (perhaps unknowingly) subverts the grounding principles of both fashion and art, and evokes Baudrillard in his commentary on fashion: “Potlatch, religion, indeed the ritual enchantment of expression, like that of costume and animal dances: everything is good for exalting fashion against the economic, like a transgression into a play-act sociality: […] We would like to see a functional squandering everywhere so as to bring about symbolic destruction” (Baudrillard, 1976)
Where the connectionwith fashion is often overlooked in the context of Amin Gulgee’s involvement in performance art in recent years, an organic line of growth can be traced back to these shows in the early 2000s, its links visible in later performance works such as Love Marriage, part of the exhibition ‘Band Baja Baraat’ hosted by IVS Gallery in 2012, which saw Amin and fellow sculptor Saba Iqbal, their faces an identical Kabuki white, wearing a copper helmet and a body armor/bustier studded with nails respectively, silently breaking eggs into each other’s hands, while audience members posed and took photographs with them as would be regular practice at a wedding. Where Amin’s own performative work has often addressed issues of gender and identity, his engagement with the practice of performance has been at a much larger level. Earlier in 2013, Amin curated and hosted ‘Riwhyti: One Night Stand’ at the Amin Gulgee Gallery, where 30 Karachi based artists simultaneously performed individual works over the two-hour period of the show.
Most recently, I was able to view and establish this link for myself as I worked with Amin as a co-curator for the large-scale installation and performance exhibition ‘DREAMSCAPE’ (December 2014). Arising partly out of our mutual interest in the conceptual framework of Lewis Carroll’s story and taking inspiration from a quote by Yoko Ono (“A dream you dream alone is only a dream.A dream you dream together is reality.”), DREAMSCAPE indiscriminatingly brought together almost 50 visual, performance and theater artists, fashion designers and musicians in a museum sized exhibition of installation and performance art. Fostered through regular individual and group meetings with the core group of about 35 Karachi-based artists over a seven-month period, with the curatorial agenda finding its basis in enacting a kind of ‘collective dream’, artists were encouraged to form visible connections and collaborations alongside the production of individual works created specifically for this show. More than a dozen artists from out of station were also invited to send a ‘dreamscape object’ that represented their individual interpretation of our collective reverie.
Where Amin and I were often viewed as unlikely collaborators, we found our (sometimes contradictory) energies to work in perfect sync, finding our grounding in our unequivocally inclusive stance as practitioners within the field of art – an expansionist view that did not discriminate between the creative potential of individuals. With a natural propensity towards finding and forming connections – in a manner familiar to archivists and writers – I found myself tying together aspects of Amin Gulgee the individual and Amin Gulgee the artist whose practice had engaged me intellectually for many years. I found both to be the same, inextricably bound, organic and somehow perfectly logical – in the way that Alice’s ‘unreal’ world is logical and undeniably real within its realm. I was also reminded of a line by Alexander McQueen, a distinctive fashion equivalent that does not seem inappropriate, who similarly broke through boundaries and set fire to restrictive margins within his practice, and who said: “That’s what I’m here for, to demolish the rules but keep the tradition.” (AMQ, 2012)
Source: artnowpakistan.com
My objects demand to be made,and until they are,they haunt me, says Pakistani artist Amin Gulgee. Son of eminent Pakistani artist Ismail Gulgee,the sculptor is returning to Delhi with a solo exhibition after six years. The solo,which will take place at the Nitanjali Art Gallery,is titled Through the Looking Glass and will comprise the Karachi-based artists latest set of works. It features some of my most ambitious works, notes the 48- year-old,about the collection where he works with materials most familiar to him – bronze and copper.
Among his recurring themes,which also appear in this set of work,is his fascination for the face,his own and his parents. So Me in the Matrix has 89 expressions of the artist cast in bronze and reassembled. Ive chopped,diced,rearranged my self-portrait. Its therapeutic, he says. If Perforated Wall II,Rosetta Stone bronze panel on a black mount is influenced by the ancient Egyptian Rosetta stone,the series Cosmic Chapatti depicts his love for geometry and patterns. He replicates the Mughal four garden design or Char Bagh in copper,steel,mirror and sand in the installation Char-Bagh II: Falling Leaves. The Mughals created their own style of architecture in their gardens by combining the geometric Persian influence with the organic traditions of South Asia. This combination of the geometric with the organic is fascinating for me in the context of the garden. Its also something both India and Pakistan have, says the artist,whose parents were found dead in their home in 2007.
Putting behind the current tensions between the two nations,Gulgee hopes for an encouraging response from the Indian audience. It was a tremendous experience last time. Im hoping for it to be as good or even better, he notes.
The exhibition will be on display at Galerie Romain Rolland,Alliance Francaise de Delhi,72,Lodhi Estate,from September 17 to 20. It moves to Nitanjali Gallery,C-66,Anand Niketan,from September 21 to 30
Written by Vandana Kalra | Published: September 9, 2013 5:59:47 am
Source: indianexpress.com