Review

Imran's poetics in form and colour in abstracts

by Ranga CHANDRARATHNE

Challenging the very concept of abstracts Imran Mir wants viewers to invest meanings in his creations made of form and colour drawn from diverse subjects such as geometry. Yet his is an unending quest for redefining dimensions, three dimensions in two dimensional planes. It's not mere abstracts correlating to nothing but encrypted visual poems to be discovered by the viewers. In Imran's abstracts, objects like pyramids, circles, whirlpools and matrix of crisscrossing lines can be found. Among other things, his arts prove that sophistication can be found in simplicity and in economy of colours. At times, profound philosophies are encrypted in his expression of simplicity which goes beyond the conventional Western notion of abstract paintings.

Exhibition of abstract paintings by Pakistani artist Imran Mir was recently commenced at Paradise Road Gallery. The exhibition will remain open till February 21.

Born in Karachi in 1950, Mir studied at the Central Institute of Arts and Crafts before moving to Canada where he graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 1976. He then lived briefly in New York before returning to Pakistan where he set up his own advertising agency. However he continued to paint and to exhibit his work and was one of the founders of the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture.Mir belongs to a culture which boasts a long tradition of pattern-making and abstract geometry, a culture in which mathematics and astronomy have been of paramount importance. But it is also significant that he studied and lived for many years in North America. It was in New York in the late 1970s, then a hothouse of "abstract expressionism", where he encountered the work of Pollock, Calder, de Kooning, Kline and Rothko, and where he was invited to exhibit.

Imran perceives his works as a continuing series of experiments and refers to his exhibitions and publications as "papers". In fact, each work is a preposition presented for testing. These experiments are to explore the confines of surface, line, colour and representation of three-dimensional space on two dimensional planes.

For instance, the painting with a tunnel made of a grid of funnel and red circle on the part of the frame and circle in lines, though looks simple, is invested with layers of meanings. The black background can be a universe and the red dot may represent the sun. Another painting where the entire frame is covered with black smudges provides test of Imran's complex poetic diction in paintings. His hallmark in recent paintings seems to be the omnipresence of geometric style and the use of almost primary colours. They sometimes are mess mash of forms, colours where meanings are encrypted beyond the sensory plane. He tries to draw multi-dimensional objects in two dimensional planes. Imran names each of his creations as paper.

Considering his swirling whirlpool, Imran enlists viewers to deeply engage in the paintings. Instead of the artist, it is up to the viewer to invest meanings in Imran's creations. Rings upon rings in whirlpool draw viewers deeper and deeper into the unknown realm.

It is certain that his abstracts would baffle the Sri Lankan audience. However, they will be an enduring feast to deserving eyes.

"They are abstract aesthetic exercises which touch on questions of beauty, harmony, discord, complexity and pattern. Although they are the result of a process of careful distillation which seems to lead towards minimalism, the apparent simplicity of what is offered invites a complexity of response." Two things are striking, not to say surprising, about his current series of paintings. First is their size. Here size does matter and one is reminded that bigness is an absolute quality. The sheer scale of the works invites a particular response, adding an enhanced sense of three-dimensionality to even the flattest of canvasses and inviting the viewer to enter inside the work. Second is the fact that, in spite of an initial impression that these images have been generated on a computer or a huge pantograph, they are in fact meticulously hand-crafted objects like huge miniatures.

The current collection includes a series of diptychs in which one canvass is paired with another. But these are not twins, often not even siblings. They hang side by side like strangers caught together in waiting room and engage in a muted but tangential dialogue.

My assumption, or guess, is that Mir does not intend his work to carry any meanings or messages, values or emotions. He is not interested in making political or social statements or influencing the thoughts or actions of his viewers.

He invites you to explore his paintings, to experience them, respond to them for what they are. He invites you to invent meanings, dream up messages, attach values, feel emotions of your own, and then to stand back and enjoy. One hopes that Colombo will accept the invitation and rise to the challenge." remarks Prof. David Robson on Imran Mir's paintings.