A new exhibition is in town at the Vadehra Art Gallery. The gallery opens its door to the Houston-based Pakistani artist Zaam Arif, who is presenting his first solo exhibition in India titled ‘Waking Dream.’ On view till 1 March 2024, the show features a comprehensive suite of 12 small and large-scale oil paintings, offering a rich evocation of Arif’s conceptual interests in mirroring interiority as profound mental states as well as interstitial physical spaces – often in provocations of reality that are as endearing as they are existential.
Courtesy – Vadehra Art Gallery
Arif’s cinematic compositions feature personable protagonists who are ridden with a kind of existential ennui, often posited among surrealistic scenes of exterior-spliced interior spaces. Painting in traditions of the modern masters then pared out within cinematic mise-en-scenes, Arif discourses between Western influences of culture, literature and philosophy and the South Asian cultural context.
Courtesy – Vadehra Art Gallery
Investigating the human experience is at the heart of Arif’s art practice. He approaches the narrative moment as a layered construct in which the existence of one’s present self is always already connected to its past memories and future possibilities, dissolving machinations of time for the fluency of the consciousness instead. His powerful figurations are amalgamations drawn from familiarity and strangeness, often an autobiographical imbuing of close family members wherein intimacy and disassociation are both greatly exaggerated.
Courtesy – Vadehra Art Gallery
Arif’s expressionistic palette in darker, bluish hues strengthens his revisitation of the sea as a visual symbol of the flow of life, further submitting his scenes to a moody and contemplative atmosphere. Though it appears as if his protagonists are attempting to resolve some immediate circumstances, they tend to be captured in stillness and quietude – a feigned state of rest, for they are secretly immersed within their own selves. For Arif, identity is informed by an intermingling of memory and presence whose connections can only be revealed through deep introspection. A human being’s emotional voyage is responsive and visceral, much like the act of dreaming that possesses the reflective quality of mirrors as much as the predictive quality of self-fulfilling actions.
Courtesy – Vadehra Art Gallery
About Zaam Arif
Born in 1999 in Karachi, Zaam Arif has trained under the tutelage of his parents, both of whom are painters. Arif’s work is an overture of philosophical and literary influences, evolving provocatively into a deep introspection of the human experience, made possible through a synergy between his characters and the environment. Arif’s work was exclusively featured in ‘The New Yorker’ magazine in 2021, making him the youngest Pakistani artist to be published in the prestigious magazine. In 2021, his work was selected to be exhibited in the Malamegi Lab Award and was awarded the Malamegi Lab Research Grant in Italy.
About Vadehra Art Gallery
Vadehra Art Gallery was established in 1987 with a passion for pioneering South Asian art around the world. Their comprehensive programming takes the form of frequent exhibitions at two prominent locations in Delhi, alongside art events, engaging conversations and a growing digital platform. The gallery ventured into publishing in 1996, in addition to contemporaneously producing literature on ongoing exhibitions and artist projects.
Image Courtesy – Vadehra Art Gallery
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