ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON YOULIN MAGAZINE
The solo presentation by the artist Rimsha Iqbal has been curated by Rakshanda Atwar at Haam Gallery, Lahore. The gallery space is a large hall with high ceilings situated on the third floor of the building. The artist is showcasing a total of nineteen works of art deeply exploring colour and form through a visage of abstractions that can be read as landscapes and simultaneously as intimate interior spaces, because of the translucency of colours. The title of the exhibition is “Opposite Play”, which echoes throughout the series as paintings are hung together as diptychs. The compositional elements go beyond the traditional painting parameters of the canvas and explore scale, direction, colour intensity and mark-making. The layers of paint are carefully composed to create multiple formations of windows and frames that are in conversation with the foreground of brushwork that feels immediate on the slate, board and canvas surface.
In “Untitled I”, the left side of the painting has an overcast shadow that shifts into a brighter red. The bright blue splash in the foreground vibrates against the red skies drawing in the viewer. The detailing of the blue slash toward the darkened hills in the distance creates a passageway to the horizon line. The transition between light and dark creates an illusion of a setting sun, where the artist leaves behind silhouettes of landscape elements that trigger the imagination. The recurring motif in these works is the emerging rectangle and dividing lines between spaces that create weight and tension within the colour compositions. In “Untitled 3” and “Untitled 11”, there is a window at the centre revealing a beautiful view outside, while the other holds a shape as small as a slate chalkboard yet retains the quality of a window, here the artist is asking the viewer to see her slate paintings as windows or otherworldly portals into a space originating from her personal experiences, observations and visual language of the artist.
The slate formation makes another appearance in the painting “Untitled 5” as a green ghostly shape hanging above a heavy section of black paint, and the accompanying blazing red tones breaking through to the foreground lift the darkness into a balanced state of harmony. We see Iqbal orchestrate complex colour compositions by using the gravitational pull of optics stimulated by colour and mark marking. One section of the gallery has been curated to exhibit the powerful exchange between the colours red and black, where the opposite section holds together the earthy tones of green and yellow, on the far ends of the space are the luminescent blues paired with rich browns as in the painting “Untitled 4”. The slate paintings are much smaller in scale as compared to the muralistic works and are placed next to the large paintings to alter the perspective of the viewer, as gazing back and forth between a miniature scale resets the harmony of colour but renews the forms appearing and disappearing on the surface. Iqbal knows how to create a unique sense of depth by changing the texture, opacity and direction of the paint. A departure from colour fields is seen in “Untitled 6”, where elements of drawing are introduced in the shape of a recognisable ladder and a lit doorway are focal points surrounded by dark shadows, within which the artist has left hints of objects that invite the viewer to create their own interpretation of the scene.
There is a theatrical sense of arrangement in the coming together of an interior space where each colour tone is recognizable, resting between the multiple layers of oil paint. The painterly sections of “Untitled 2” are divided by highlights of bright lines, which are in contrast to the live edge of the canvas intentionally becoming part of the overall composition. The artist pushes the optical resonance of colour through these spatial experimentations using line and form as directional tools for creating movement within each painting. In the slate painting series, she captures representational views of interior and exterior spaces, viewers can explore the artist's miniature studies into abstraction that take perhaps urban street views or residential spaces, buildings and rooftops as a reference.
The evolution of building these complex colour compositions requires experimenting with merging and blending that are unique to Rimsha Iqbal’s painting process. The exhibition has been curated to create a mirroring effect placing two paintings together to reveal their nuanced differences that become psychological and reflective responses to a similar subject matter. These mature and complex pieces signal the beginning of a deeply immersive journey into understanding the nature of colour manifesting into an emotional introspection of the self.
Artist Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rimsha_malik001/
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