Posternama

CURATORIAL NOTE

Muhammad Zeeshan’s multidisciplinary practice explores themes of violence, social unrest, and political depravity on a global scale. Zeeshan received his training in miniature painting from the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan. Even while his background is firmly planted in miniatures, the years he moonlighted as a billboard painter strongly influences his subject matter. The artist marries these influences simultaneously to the technique of laser scouring, something he stumbled upon while in San Francisco. His controlled mastery over laser cutting allows him to use it to complement his line drawing, etching the same figures onto the support.

While his oeuvre now includes video, collage, drawing, and installation, his hallmark is still his delicate attention to detail and an ability to execute fine line work. An over arching theme in Zeeshan’s work is the evocation of symbolic associations through the use of certain images. One of his best-known bodies of work is titled Special ‘Siri’ Series (2011), comprised of laser-cut and gouache paintings on wasli paper, featuring disembodied heads of both animals and people from mythical and religious narratives.

His recent body of work including the Buraq Series showcased in ‘Posternama’ follows the nature of the Special Siri Series, in terms of aesthetic qualities and preoccupations of the subject matter. He picks up on mythical stories of saints, scholars and martyrs. Zeeshan inscribes these stories that have been repeatedly made iconic in miniature paintings in laser scouring with the same investment in detail. The found images narrating mythical stories are reinterpreted and inscribed according to Zeeshan’s austere sensibilities. Here too the motif of the animal sustains – in half humanhalf animal figures as well as the emergence of the figure of Buraq and Zuljana. His works tread the thin line between found imagery and the originality ascribed to the unique hand of the artist, prompting the spectator to reflect upon and call into question the connotations attached to strict distinctions between both. Zeeshan’s works in this way push boundaries of self-referentiality in art works to contemplate the nature of images and visual sensibilities.

“I enjoy employing found images and videos from popular culture (posters, cable TV, and magazines) and iconic ‘high’ art. At times I re-photograph/digitally shoot the images with different lenses to create various effects, drawing out physical and thematic aspects of the images that interest me. Naturally, most of the images that I enjoy working with belong to artists who have been termed as successful artists, ‘masters’ of the art world; the icon whom we study about and learn to look up to because they have set the standard. Laser scoring holds attraction for me because it allows the idea of free hand drawing to be transferred on wasli through the use of the laser. After feeding my free hand drawing image into the laser machine through the coral draw software, I allow the image to be burnt/drawn onto the wasli by the red hot laser, controlling its intensity to the point where it just scores the first layer leaving a mark rather than burn-ing the surface. The control of the laser’s intensity is crucial throughout the process because if the laser is left loose on the surface the crispness of the line shall be absent. The images for the various laser scoring are borrowed from various artists whom I have academically researched or are now a part of my observation as an artist. I hold them as my contemporaries or look up to them as icons.” – Muhammad Zeeshan