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Amin Gulgee`s show at The Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Roma, Italy – Coverage by Art TV Pakistan

Art TV Pakistan Covered Amin Gulgee`s show at The Galleria d’Arte Moderna di Roma, Italy.
“7” which reflects on the theme of peace and friendship among peoples of
Pakistan and Italy.
These seven elements have become signs as a mysterious way of writing
through which are composed the panels that make up the installation and
the big writing that runs along through the carpet that is in the middle
of the courtyard.
Its is an ideal bridge between Rome and Karachi.

Special thanks
The Consulate of Italy in Karachi.

Source: facebook.com/ARTTVPAKISTAN

7, Rome, Solo Show

From La Biennale di Venezia & OPEN to Rome. International Pe

AMIN GULGEE 7 – 30th May 2018, 6:30-9pm – GAM – Galleria d’Arte Moderna Via Francesco Crispi, 24 Roma

From La Biennale di Venezia & OPEN to Rome. International Perspectives

Curated by Paolo De Grandis e Claudio Crescentini
Co-curated by Carlotta Scarpa

presents

AMIN GULGEE 7

Press Preview: 30th May 2018, 11.30am

Inauguration: 30th May 2018, 6:30-9pm

Public opening: 31st May – 23rd September 2018

GAM – Galleria d’Arte Moderna
Via Francesco Crispi, 24

PRESS RELEASE

Amin Gulgee, one of the most important Pakistani artists
at the Galleria d’Arte Moderna

For the first time in Rome, the installation “7” by Amin Gulgee,
an artist who has made an art form out of secularity and poetry

Galleria d’Arte Moderna
31 May – 23 September 2018

Rome, 24th May 2018 – New exhibition concept of the project “From La Biennale di Venezia & OPEN to Roma. International Perspectives” promoted by Roma Capitale, Department for Cultural Growth – Capitoline Superintendency for Cultural Heritage, conceived and curated by Paolo De Grandis and Claudio Crescentini, co-curated by Carlotta Scarpa. Museum services by Zètema Progetto Cultura.

The general project, launched in 2016, is dedicated to the presentation in the Capitoline exhibition areas of international installations from International Art Exhibition – Venice Biennale and from OPEN International Exhibition of Sculpture and Installations, linked to the Venice International Film Festival, in a site-specific version, recomposed and remodelled for the capital. The aim is to bring together the art “perspectives” of two cities that work to allow the experiences of international art to travel in the national territory. From the city on the lagoon to the capital.

To mark this new appointment, held in collaboration with PDG Arte Communications and the Embassy of the Republic of Pakistan in Italy, an installation entitled “7”, is presented, by the Pakistani artist Amin Gulgee, who has made an art form out of secularity and poetry.

The artist starts off from a sentence in Arabic, transcribed in nakshi script, untranslatable but with a universal significance, since it refers to peace among peoples and human love. Gulgee divides the sentence into seven parts, those of the title, with very light bronze installations, located in the cloister/garden of the GAM in via Crispi. The sentence is then broken up and repeated several times in the installation, as in spiritual meditation, yet without becoming legible and thus becoming a universal sign.

Below this sentence/sign, a mat of letters in charcoal and copper will be created, a mat that cannot be walked on and which repeats the same sentence, still decomposed, thus creating a metaphysical structure that juxtaposes the vertical lines of the works with the horizontal line of the mat, like a metaphor of top and bottom, of heaven and earth. On the day of inauguration of this “artistic space”, there will be the performance conceived by the artist and a reading of works by poets invited by the artist himself to read their poems and texts inspired by the theme of the work.

The poets – Lucianna Argentino, Italo Benedetti, Stella Cacciamani, Antonella Maria Carfora, Patrizia Chianese, Laura Colombo, Rossana Coratella, Francesco Del Ferro, Stefania Di Lino, Andrea Felice, Camelia Mirescu, Daniela Monosi, Angelo Palombini and Maria Grazia Savino – and the members of the audience will be invited to write, still starting from the sentence in nakshi, declarations of peace and love as a potential sign of freedom of spirits brought together by one and the same thought which becomes action. Art for everyone, therefore, and not just a privilege of chosen spirits.

The sentences that emerge will be inserted in special containers and taken to Karachi, where the artist will read them during a grand public performance: an ideal connection between Europe and Asia, Rome and Karachi, cities linked by the conceptual work of Amin and by the words of the participants dedicated to love and peace.

Amin Gulgee (1969) internationally acclaimed artist and performer. After graduating in “History of Art and Economics” at Yale University (U.S.A.), he began his artistic career, creating and exhibiting his works in Pakistan, the United States, Europe and the Middle East. In Italy, he has never exhibited in Rome, but in 1998 and 2017 he took part in “OPEN – 20th International Exhibition of Sculptures and Installations”, linked to the “Venice International Film Festival” and he will represent Pakistan at the next “International Art Exhibition – Venice Biennale”. He has held legendary performances in many world cities (Karachi, Lahore, Dubai, Nagoya, New York, Philadelphia, Dresden, London, etc.). In these performances, based mainly on works, signs and phonetics, he often involves other artists as well as the audience, between East and West. The leading art critic of the “Washington Times”, Joanna Shaw-Eagle, wrote in her review of his personal exhibition at the FMI in 1999: “Amin Gulgee is an artist to watch both for the originality of his ideas and the sensuous, handsome quality of his work.” In 1987, Amin Gulgee won the “Conger B. Goodyear Fine Arts Award”. In 2005 he received the prestigious “President’s Pride of Performance”, which is awarded only to exponents who have achieved iconic stature in their field of excellence, by the President of Pakistan. The Pakistani government commissioned him to create numerous pubic sculptures, including the following: Messaggio, for the Presidency of Islamabad; Minar for the Quaid-e-Azam International Airport in Karachi; Forgotten Text, standing 40 mt tall, for an important rotonda in Karachi. He has taken part in numerous international collective exhibitions, among them: “Pakistan: Another Vision,” Brunei Gallery, London, 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) and “New Pathways: Contemporary Art from Pakistan,” UN Headquarters, New York, NY, USA (2016). He has also held more than thirty personal exhibitions in Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore, UAE, India, UK, Portugal and USA. In 2017, following in the wake of the great international artists and curators, he conceived, planned and organised the “1st Karachi Biennale 17”.

Zètema Progetto Cultura Press Office
Gabriella Gnetti +39 06 82077305; +39 348 2696259; [email protected]

INFO

Exhibition:“AMIN GULGEE / 7”

Where: Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Rome, Via Francesco Crispi, 24

When: 31 May – 23 September 2018

Press preview: 30 May 2018, at 11.30 a.m.

Inauguration: 30 May 2018, 6.30.9.00 p.m.

Opening hours: From Tuesday to Sunday, 10.00 a.m. – 6.30 p.m.
Visitors will be allowed to enter until half an hour before closing time.

Tickets: Admission ticket to the Galleria d’Arte Moderna: € 7.50 full price and € 6.50 concession, for non-residents; € 6.50 full price and € 5.50 concession, for residents; free for the categories provided for by the current rates.

060608 (every day, 9.00 a.m. – 7.00 p.m.)
www.museiincomune.it;www.galleriaartemodernaroma.it

Promoted by: Rome Department for Cultural Growth – Capitoline Superintendency for Cultural Heritage

In collaboration with: PDG Arte Communications and Embassy of the Republic of Pakistan in Italy

Conceived and curated by: Paolo De Grandis and Claudio Crescentini, co-curated by Carlotta Scarpa

Museum services: Zètema Progetto Cultura

SPONSOR SYSTEM OF CIVIC MUSEUMS

With the technical contribution of Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane

PDG Arte Communications
[email protected]
www.artecommunications.com
T. +39 041 5264546

Source: murmurofart.com

7.7, Rome, Solo Show

APPUNTAMENTI E INIZIATIVE

Tre artisti alle prese con la luce, l’arte contemporanea della Costa d’Avorio e i 10 anni del preimio fotografico IILA nelle mostre estive ospitate dal museo

Il museo di Testaccio si avvia all’estate con la sua rinnovata identità: non più come “costola” del MACRO di via Nizza, ma come sede espositiva a sé stante, denominata Mattatoio.

La luce diversa | Catania, Palmieri, Sanna (dal 7 giugno al 16 settembre 2018): un progetto espositivo che nasce dalla riflessione, condivisa dai tre artisti romani, sull’elemento “luce” e sul rapporto che quest’ultimo intrattiene con la materia. La luce, in modo più o meno esplicito, gioca un ruolo vitale nel lavoro di questi artisti. Se nell’opera di Lucilla Catania la luce agisce dall’esterno sulle superfici levigate o increspate dei marmi, creando un’articolazione di riflessi, nel lavoro di Claudio Palmieri e Sandro Sanna è, invece, una proprietà intrinseca della materia: resine, pigmenti, stoffe, metalli, micro film. Nelle loro opere l’elemento materico domina sulla forma, configurandosi come un viaggio introspettivo e intramaterico, con continui rimandi ai ritmi cosmici dell’universo naturale.

Costa d’Avorio: Identità e vitalità dell’arte contemporanea (dal 7 giugno al 16 settembre 2018): in mostra un centinaio di opere di 13 artisti, tutti già noti sulla scena internazionale, che risaltano un inedito punto di vista legato alla rappresentazione e all’identità di una realtà vitale e dinamica. Con questa mostra si sono voluti evidenziare alcuni percorsi in una selezione che ci dice non solo certe tendenze, ambientazioni tematiche pittoriche o meno, ma anche alcune ricerche ai margini dal punto di vista concettuale. Esse forniscono allo spettatore una base per un suo viaggio personale ideale attraverso le molteplici lingue della contemporaneità creativa di un paese che da sempre è stato tra gli artefici della cultura del continente africano. Artisti coinvolti: Frédéric Bruly Bouabré, Joana Choumali, Ananias Leki Dago, Ernest Dükü, Jacobleu, Mohammed Keita, Jems Koko Bi, Mathilde Moreau, Kra N’Guessan, Virginia Ryan, Jacques Samir Stenka, Joachim K. Silue, Ouattara Watts.

PHOTO IILA (dal 3 al 26 ottobre 2018): mostra dei progetti selezionati nelle passate edizioni e i lavori su Roma realizzati dai vincitori durante la loro residenza a Roma. Il Premio IILA-FOTOGRAFIA è un premio internazionale annuale, ideato nel 2008 dall’IILA nell’ambito di FOTOGRAFIA–Festival Internazionale di Roma, per promuovere la fotografia emergente latinoamericana. Il Premio è rivolto a fotografi latinoamericani dei Paesi membri dell’IILA, under 35, e consiste in una residenza a Roma durante la quale il vincitore realizza un lavoro fotografico sulla città, presentato nell’edizione successiva del Premio. Nel corso delle 10 edizioni, l’IILA ha raccolto testimonianze dei 2.500 fotografi latinoamericani partecipanti, il cui sguardo ha restituito una panoramica puntuale e inedita dell’America Latina contemporanea, della città di Roma, di altri luoghi o di spazi interiori. Il racconto fotografico che ne risulta viene proposto con una periodizzazione che guida il visitatore attraverso le varie edizioni del Premio. I fotografi vincitori del Premio dal 2008 al 2017 che espongono al Mattatoio sono: Geovanny Verdezoto (Ecuador); José Manuel Castrellón (Panama); Pablo López Luz (Messico); Alejandro Cartagena (Rep. Dominicana); José Arispe (Bolivia); Rodrigo Illescas (Argentina); Luis Carlos Tovar(Colombia); Federico Estol (Uruguay); Leticia Bernaus (Argentina). Assieme a loro, esporranno i selezionati dell’edizione 2017 del Premio, dedicata al tema “Diari”: Dana Balajovsky (Argentina) – Menzione d’Onore; Sol Kutner (Argentina/Uruguay); Fernando Julián (Argentina); Manuel Seoane (Bolivia). Completa la mostra uno showreel dei lavori dei selezionati espositori delle 10 edizioni.

Informazioni

Mattatoio

Indirizzo: Piazza Orazio Giustiniani, 4 – 00153 ROMA (RM)

Sito web:
https://www.museomacro.it
https://www.mattatoioroma.it/

Giorni di apertura

dal martedì alla domenica dalle 14.00 alle 20.00

Tariffe

intero 6 euro, ridotto 5 euro

Parole chiave

arte contemporanea LPM-Live Performers Meeting costa d’avorio mattatoio artisti africani Amin Gulgee

Ultimo aggiornamento 27/08/2018

Source: informagiovaniroma.it

7, Karachi, Print Media, Solo Show

Love Letters 7 – Herald

View: Herald 7 Page 1

View: Herald 7 Page 2

Source: Dawn – Herald

7, Karachi, Solo Show

EXHIBITION: THE CALM AND THE TUMULTUOUS

Two artworks from the show, welded and cast in copper and bronze

Amin Gulgee’s new sculptural formations, standing tall in his gallery like totem poles or guardians, seem to carry many secrets of time and history. Pieces of copper/cast copper and bronze, in the shape of letters in the traditional Arabic script balance gracefully, one on top of the other, in what seems like an effortless dance. The work titled ‘7’, shown recently in a preview in Karachi, travels to Galleria d’Arte Moderna, Rome, in a solo show this year. It’s curated by Paolo De Grandis and Claudio Crescentini and co-curated by Carlotta Scarpa.

Amin’s work is situated within the paradox of his times. While he has referenced the Chahar Bagh, or the four-part Mughal garden, in his work since the ’90s, here there is an unavoidable disruption of the traditional Islamic garden. His aesthetics also embraces the subtlety of the Persian, Urdu and Arabic scripts and there is a harmonious continuity of lines, which becomes the form. In this exhibition, the circular Nastaliq script emerges as a delicate nuance, a veil and a formation of lines like the rhythm of a musical note barely audible.

We are left to complete the work, to wonder at the word and the object that intervene in a rhythm of repetition. These repeated letters, such as the ‘Alif’, ‘Noon’ etc, present new possibilities of interpreting Amin’s sensibility. The incoherence of the words, disjointed from the original phrase, keep the viewer at a distance. It is as if the artist intended to extract the essence of the word, as he departs on a solo flight. He may also be negotiating the ‘sacred’ within, with an insistence on creating personal spaces that defy containment.

In his latest work, artist Amin Gulgee deals with the paradox of light and dark, disruption and embellishment, in moments of rapture and solitude

Repeated within a grid, the negative spaces invoke the movement of light and vision, to look beyond the frame, in seeing what is not apparently visible. What we really seem to have before us is Amin’s garden. A manifestation of the Islamic Chahar Bagh, there is a chadar of coal spread on the floor. Is this a negative space or a shadow of the grids? It is in gestures such as these that Amin exposes himself, without ego or self-censorship. He deals with the paradox of light and dark, disruption and embellishment, in moments of rapture and solitude.

In the Mughal garden, the Cheeni Khana is a water channel which runs over a wall of diyaas (lamps) lit in the niches appearing like a sheet of light. This chadar is reflected as a source of purity and an attempt at recreating the gardens of Paradise. In the essay ‘Rethinking the Islamic Garden’ Attilio Petruccioli describes the carpet of Khosrow 1 as “depicting a garden with streams and paths, with stones as bright as crystal depicting the illusion of water, the ground worked in gold, to look like earth.”

“The Persian garden,” Petruccioli says, “looked for an order, in a means of drawing earth and cosmos together.”

In Amin’s garden, reflection is transformed in meanings closer to the artist’s lived experience. Embellishment is not opulent but in a raw form. This garden is bare and minimal. The coal is dark, and penetrates many layers of terrain — the psychological and the social — with possibilities of renewed transformation.

In a prior performance, the Chahar Bagh was left to burn in a public space and in other performative happenings; Amin’s curatorial voice came through the jarring discord of up to 50 artists that he gathered in the enclosed gallery. Amin’s narrative exists between the calm and the tumultuous and the open and free.

“7” was held at the Amin Gulgee Gallery in Karachi from March 30 to April 7, 2018

Published in Dawn, EOS, April 29th, 2018

Amra Ali – April 29, 2018

Source: dawn.com

7, Karachi, Print Media, Solo Show

The Calm and The Tumultuous

View: The Calm and The Tumultuous

Source: Dawn

7, Karachi, Solo Show

The power of 7

This week, You! talks to renowned artist, Amin Gulgee, regarding his latest art installation in Karachi…

exhibition

This week, You! talks to renowned artist, Amin Gulgee, regarding his latest art installation in Karachi…

A few artists have their names associated with ingenuity and originality in Pakistan and the world over. Only some of them have understood that art can’t be imitated and it is something which completely relies on an artist’s pure imaginations and ideology. One such name in the world of art is of Amin Gulgee. Armed with a Bachelor of Art in Economics and Art History from the prestigious Yale University, USA, Amin Gulgee began his career as an artist in 1990 from his native city of Karachi. Using this ancient land and its rich, diverse history as his muse, his creations synergise Hindu mythology, Buddhist asceticism and Islamic calligraphy to explore the underlying spirituality of man.

Amin Gulgee’s latest installation in Karachi, titled ‘7’, was recently on display at Amin Gulgee Gallery, Clifton, Karachi, and will shortly depart the city heading to the Eternal City, Rome, for the Galleria d’Arte Moderna [GAM], where the work will be curated by Paolo de Grandis and Claudio Crescentini.

Scrolls of large metal structures; this larger than life installation consists of the fifth verse of al-Alaq in the Quran divided into seven pieces. Gulgee often scripts this verse from the 96th chapter of the Holy Quran on his artwork. Surah al-Alaq (‘The Clot’, also referred to as ‘al-Iqra’) is believed to be the first revelation sent to the Prophet Muhammad in the cave Hira, in the city of Mecca. The fifth verse is where we are told that God “Taught man that which he did not know.”

Having constructed and deconstructed it so many times in the past decade, it has now become internalised and Gulgee embodies it through ‘7’, where the sentence is itself divided into seven portions and these seven sections are repeated several times, and hence the name of the exhibit.

While talking to this scribe, Gulgee talked about his recent activities from curating last year’s ‘Karachi Biennele’ and now to be showcasing his work in Rome, representing Pakistan at this prestigious global art solo show.

“It’s wonderful to be in my workshop, back in my day job. Also, I am absolutely thrilled to be going to Rome. It is a city that has always a special place in my heart. I studied art history and my fascination was with the Roman Renaissance,” shared Amin Gulgee.

“The whole point of this show is that the text is not readable, although the content comes from a special source for me, I am going beyond content,” described Gulgee, for whom, all pieces of art in the show are one installation.

The artist has internalised the words, and he allows the pieces to do the same, free-flowing, delving into the heart of the verse itself; as according to an official essay by Zarmeene Shah that accompanies the immersive experience of the exhibition, “The power and possibility within that which is not known.”

“For ‘7’, I have divided the verse into seven sections and the words are repeated throughout the exhibition,” told Gulgee. “You cannot read the text, so the pieces are like my private messages and private love letters.”

This romantic sentiment is carried through to the entrance, where glass bottles are displayed with notepaper and an invitation to write a private message and place it in a bottle, which you bring inside and becomes a part of the exhibition. At the end of the exhibition, Gulgee would burn the bottles and destroy the messages so they will remain private.

“This is a performance element to the exhibition,” explains the artist. “These bottles full of private love messages were my way of engaging everyone in the installation as their words and thoughts literally become part of the organic ‘7’.”

This deliberate inclusion is one of the many charms to this well-thought out show.

“There is also an algorithm that’s projected onto a screen in the installation where these seven parts to the phrase appear randomly till the screen goes white, then they become black, then white, and each time a letter appears, one tone of the rubab is heard,” explained Gulgee.

When asked why the verse was divided into seven pieces, the artist replied, “It was an intuitive choice. I love numbers. I love all numbers, because this is so private to me, I don’t even like the source to be discussed. I have claimed the sentence to be mine and it is very private to me. So, the show in a way is about privacy to me, in a world where everything is exposed.”

According to Shah’s essay, the number seven has several religious connotations, such as the biblical reference to God completing the creation of the Earth in seven days and in Islam, the Quran refers several times to the presence of seven heavens, the (Quran 71:15), and to the seven gates of hell (Quran 15:44), and during Hajj, the pilgrims walk around the Holy Kaaba seven times, as well as walk between the Mounts Safa and Marwa seven times, and even seven pebbles are thrown at each of the three pillars that represent the Devil during the ritual at Mina.

Gulgee also felt it was important that seven was a primary number. “A primary number, as such, is in a circle that connects us back to the idea of singularity, it remains indivisible, except only by itself (one),” elaborated Gulgee.

While one’s eye is drawn to the depth of the metal, the curves of the sculpture, the hidden love message and the messages in a bottle, the magic really happens beneath it all, from the depth of the vision and the soul of the artist.

By T.U. Dawood – April 17, 2018

Source: thenews.com.pk

7, Karachi, Solo Show

Seven Signs of Love

There is an apocryphal legend regarding the origins of drawing. It speaks of a young woman in Corinth whose lover was going away. To remember him, she traced the outline of his shadow on a wall and thus created a drawing. Going beyond the romance of this legend, we may consider the line or mark-making as a representation of what is absent or unseen. From the dynamics of absence and presence, we can extrapolate another dynamic – that of the visible and the invisible; that which cannot be seen relies on signs to express its truth. And this brings us to Amin Gulgee’s sculpture series with the pithy title “7.”

The preview of “7” was presented by Amin Gulgee and Sameera Raja at Gulgee’s eponymous gallery. The exhibition is scheduled to travel to Rome in summer, where it will be shown at Galleria d’Arte Moderna.

The artist has given visibility to the ineffable quality of love in the form of a secret code that consists of seven letters. These letters reconstitute themselves multiple times as whole or fragments in the form of Gulgee’s sculptures. They are visible representations of what is concealed. Love or perhaps a broken heart is the source of inspiration. But like the earth-embedded roots of a tree, the source remains hidden.

The selection of seven letters has been made by Gulgee from a particular sentence which he chooses not to disclose. The meaning of the sentence is poignant and deeply personal. From his distillation of seven select letters, emotions are translated into three-dimensional form and embodied in the frozen choreography of calligraphy. Amin Gulgee’s “7” has taken impalpable emotion and embodied it in sculpture. The recall of emotion transforms from the subjective space of memory into the objective reality of architectural space.

Working in copper, Gulgee has created several different forms of sculptural installations which use the seven letters as building blocks. There are hanging screens, slender, free-standing upright sculptures and individual letter fragments used in wall and floor installations. The monumental quality of the work creates a huge architectural impact.

The rectangular screens — which Gulgee refers to as scrolls — are suspended from the ceiling like veils. Some are perforated with letters cut out of the solid background, while others have solid letters that stand out against a perforated background. The scrolls slice through three-dimensional space with the laciness of a skeleton leaf. The shadows they cast on the floor create a dialogue with the scroll and the viewer, as they alter according to the angle of the light and the viewpoint.

The upright sculptures are created by stacking the seven letters into miraculously balanced pillars. They remain upright through internal balance rather than reliance on base mounts. They are part of Gulgee’s appropriately-named Ascension series of sculpture.

There is a large floor installation (approximately 10’x26’) in which coal lumps form a carpet. Strewn throughout the “carpet” are fragments of the seven letters. They glow like burning embers from the charcoal background into which they are set, reminiscent perhaps of the embers of past love.

Amin Gulgee has made an intuitive choice to express himself through the number seven. He speaks of the seductive quality that is inherent in all numbers having a profound appeal to him. The number seven has the property of being a prime number and has other mystical associations in mythology and culture.

An interesting accompaniment to the sculpture is a video that replays the infinite patterns the seven letters make as they move on the screen. They coalesce into near blackness and then retreat into filigrees of black and white. Amin Gulgee has worked with a programmer to devise a special algorithm to create the video. The constant movement of letters is hypnotic. It evokes the flow of memory and the recall of emotion that erupts from the subconscious, intuitive mind.

Another play on the idea of the hidden message was the interactive performance at the opening of the show. As viewers entered the premises, they found note paper and amber-tinted bottles placed on a table. They were asked to write a “declaration of love to a person, place or thing (past, present or future)” on the paper and insert it into the bottle which they could then place against the walls of the Gallery. The messages would be destroyed at the end of the show without being read. Thus, the viewers were coaxed into become participants in an act of secrecy such as the secret that is enshrined in the flowing sculptural forms in “7.”

By Nusrat Khawaja – April 2018

Source: newslinemagazine.com

7, Karachi, Solo Show

Amin Gulgee all set to reveal magic of 7

An exhibition of his works titled 7, which can be viewed at the Amin Gulgee Gallery, is a testimony to the observation.

The focus, mind you, is on the letters, the calligraphic movement of alphabets. The movement is tautological, which means, the viewer can see it over and over, repeating itself. This symbolises the power of the written word: once you get the hang of it, you will find it difficult to remove it from your consciousness. The artist, however, has employed them as, what he calls, ‘scrolls’ that come across as barriers.

Two of the exhibits on display at the event.—White Star

Amin elucidates: “The show is called 7. It’s a sentence that I have divided into seven sections. It’s repeated throughout the exhibition. Now you can no longer read any of the text. So it becomes, sort of, my private messages and private love letters. There is also a performance element to the display in which I’ve asked people to write a message to anybody they love and put in a bottle placed by the gallery wall. It’s all private and will be destroyed after the show.

“Then there is the video, an algorithm, where the letters appear randomly on the screen. Each time a letter falls, it is associated with one musical note [sa re ga ma pa dha ni].”

This is an intriguing way of keeping the private as the private and at the same time by putting the message in the amber bottle, people find an opportunity to express themselves publicly without entertaining the thought that their love will be revealed.

The exhibition will conclude on April 7 and later travel to GAM Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Rome, curated by Paolo de Grandis and Claudio Crescentini.

By Peerzada Salman

Published in Dawn, April 3rd, 2018

Source: dawn.com