There was wonder, excitement and expectancy among the people who crowded into the Amin Gulgee Gallery recently in Karachi. They were there to see the artist’s latest exhibition, a collection of bronze sculptures titled ‘Through the Looking Glass’. Distributing warm greetings and hugs all around, the artist, nothing if not a showman, was in his element while holding what appeared to be 50 conversations all at once.

Son of the late Ismail and Zarina Gulgee, the former a world-renowned artist, Amin has presented more than 30 solo exhibitions in Pakistan as well as various corners of the globe. He’s taken part in group shows in Venice, London, Beijing, Mumbai, New York, New Delhi and Kuala Lumpur. He is also known as a curator of exhibitions and for his stage shows, which include ‘Mohenjodaro’ in London, ‘Love Marriage’ in Karachi’s Indus Valley School, and most recently ‘Riwhyti One Night Stand’ at the Amin Gulgee Gallery.

He takes his inspiration from Pakistan’s spiritual history, from Hindu mythology, Buddhist civilization and Islamic calligraphy. Of his work in general he says, “I do not make my work; it makes itself. It demands to be brought into the world to occupy space. In my process, some threads are old and insist on reinventing themselves. Others appear new and fresh and these combine to create a tapestry that is woven and tells my story. It is a very old yet contemporary narrative, which borrows, celebrates and questions tradition and history.”

An old thread that’s visible in ‘Through the Looking Glass’ is the artist’s fascination with portrayals of the face, his own and his parents’ in particular. These works began as a series of what he calls, paradoxically, “inner masks” that reveal the state of the soul. In the very early images, the faces are wrapped and bound; the ones made later seem to have been eaten away by inner turmoil. The skillfully balanced ‘Me in the Matrix’ continues this theme – the matrix being the place in which a thing is developed, or the mold in which something is cast or shaped. Says Amin: “This is composed of 89 of my faces, cast in bronze, chopped and re-assembled. It is how I feel now.” And indeed, looking at it closely one can see isolated facial features within the mass – lips of various shapes, the suggestion of a brow, different noses… So does this piece embody a renewal of the search for identity, for the ideal self, for a more exalted soul within?

‘Ripping Apart the Bird’s Nest’ is a similarly thought-provoking work, and on his own admission represents Amin’s inner turmoil, or suffering, if you prefer. “It’s me,” he says. “I’ve been through a lot.” Here we see hands, hungry, tearing hands, grasping hands in Buddhist terminology, the tangled, mangled nest, eminently tangible textures and subtle hues. The piece is self-framed, and like most others in this collection it’s much larger than Amin’s usual sculptures. It even bears a resemblance to his tangled ‘Egg 1’ piece from 2001. (Incidentally, he explains that eggs, which he sees as symbols of female power, and nests are of more interest to him than birds themselves.)

“Hands were very much a part of my early work,” says Amin. “For me at that time they symbolized man’s capacity both to build and to destroy. Also, I am fascinated by the German word “bigrafen,” which means learning through touch. I work with my hands, as I love making objects, and because my material is copper and bronze, I love my work to be touched.”

Amin Gulgee is one of the first artists to bring Islamic calligraphy into the three-dimensional world of sculpture. Such pieces include ‘Rosetta Stone’ and ‘Love Letter’, the former taking its inspiration from the original Rosetta Stone, that ancient Egyptian grandiorite stele inscribed with a decree issued at Memphis in 196 BC on behalf of Ptolemy V. Eventually it was moved to the town of Rashid (Rosetta) in the Nile Delta, where it was rediscovered in 1799, and from thence it traveled to the British Museum. It was inscribed in three languages, which helped decode the hitherto untranslatable Egyptian script.

Amin’s ‘Rosetta Stone’ is wonderfully textured, large and magnificent on its simple black mount. (Viewers in the gallery kept gazing at it thoughtfully.) It presents a calligraphic inscription sliced through the richly colored bronze panel like a huge and elegant stencil, with light creating eye-catching effects as it filters through the perforations and cuts. This one is not actually inscribed with different scripts like the Egyptian original. One wonders what extra message the artist seeks to give through it, apart from the meaning of the calligraphy it bears.

[box9]Amin was reticent about the inspiration for the title of ‘Through the Looking Glass’, though he did admit to having read Lewis Carroll’s book of the same name.

On a different note entirely was the large installation entitled ‘Char-Bagh II: Falling Leaves’. Asked if he felt himself to be close to nature, the artist was vague, but the answer to this came in his thoughts on gardens, including the char bagh of the Mughals, who “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. The English word “garden” comes from the old English word “geard”, meaning enclosure. Thus, gardens were about the cultivation of the earth by humankind, who imposed their order upon nature. It was man’s attempt to enclose and organise organic forces. The char bagh for me becomes a symbol of this need to divide geometrically and impose one’s own order upon the seemingly random forces of nature. It is the balance between man and nature. It becomes a field to nurture and feed the body and the soul.”

There is a spiritual principle of reflection. It states that natural and visual phenomena are reflections of each other, and that all existence functions as a mirror for Being, where Spirit explores and understands itself from the reflections it makes in the pool of matter. We can say that Amin Gulgee’s latest works appear to be metaphysical reflections of himself, and of his attempt to understand not only what is around him, but also what is inside.