Meditative and Engrossing: The ever-evolving work of Hashem Khan
A discarded corrugated paper box torn inside out and pasted on a flat field of blue; a colour tube drawn in bold black brush stroke shimmer, shining under shafts of light morning hues -- it is against this backdrop that a swirl of blue lines originates from the tube, intensifying the pictorial balance of a distinctively new work by Hashem Khan.
In another work of this new series, the image of a colour tube sits on yellow splotches of paint. With the thick red splattered on the tube on the top, the brown corrugated papers underneath lend the painting a bottom note as if they are emanating from a perfume.
In still another work of the same series, on a colour field of light and deep blue, torn pieces of corrugated boards nestle in a cozy composition, as if playfully forming arrangements on their own.
In painting, colour is generally used to serve either as decorative embellishment of the form or as something evoking strong emotion. But Hashem Khan takes neither option on this occasion. He employs colours in a manner analogous to playing a stringed instrument by striking the right chord to produce music. The effect is a composition almost like a lullaby.
A flurry of primary colours dominates his acrylic collage series on wood. The entire surface is harmonized into a vibrant field of pure colour that combines into a structural composition. He uses colour as a means of expression, rather than for description. His endeavor is to uplift and carry the forms in fluid motion on the surface of the canvas.
His predilection for colour as a means to achieve harmony and convey calm beauty is a carryover from his work of the past twenty years. In his 1999 painting “Landscape”, he had performed a delicate balance of thick paint of light green applied with broad brush strokes on the deep field of green, reveling in the interplay and control of powerful hues of exquisite colours.
His canvas has over the years have seamlessly moved back and forth from abstract to representational imagery and orchestrated continuous interplay between them.
In his artistic career, the new collage series with colour tube is especially significant since it marks the culmination of his lifelong quest for understanding colour musically. The series is a symbolic expression of the intimate relation he has been enjoying with colour. For him the freedom of colour is a moment of epiphany.
Among the current exhibits of the collage series are works that are reminiscent of his old styles where representative elements interplay with abstraction. This is indicative of his enduring affinity for semi-abstraction. It will linger on for a while but he is now apparently wholeheartedly moving forward because of his new-found liberation through colour.
What is most striking in the current show—now being held at Nalini Kanta Bhattasali Gallery of National Museum -- is that at 76 the grand old man of art has taken a fancy to wood sculpture, a medium he had hardly any experience of working with previously. With a chisel and a hammer as his chief implements, he seems to have approached wood like a scissors-happy child would have taken to origami.
His newfound medium may be termed as wood cut-outs: each one with their simplicity in execution and arrangement a tableau of joyous celebration of the inner power of the form. His bird sculpture is an arrangement of four blocks of wood. About to fly, the majestic gait and gaiety of the bird has been brought to life with minimum of expression. The delineation of his wood sculpture and efforts to liberate form from all its decorative elements is reminiscent of what Spanish poet Juan Ramón Jiménez tried to achieve in naked poetry, devoid of all external adornment.
Henri Matisse once told his friend that he wanted 'anyone tried, worn down, driven to the limits of endurance, to find calm and repose' in his art. If one is looking for such calm and serenity in art, one would surely find the late style of Hashem Khan meditative and engrossing.
Ziaul Karim is an art critic.