Imran Mir’s reductive abstractions transcend time and location, demonstrating that authentic art is timeless beyond its creator.
It hardly matters if a work is categorized as art or classified as design, because the most important, in the words of a friend of Margaret Atwood, is – “Does it live or does it die?” Actually, the matter of the existence or demise of a work of creative practice is not tied to the life cycle of its maker. Often, some pieces turn redundant during the life of an artist, writer, or composer (and most find it hard to remember if their creators are alive or not!). On the other hand, some works of visual art, literature, and music outlive the earthly years of their producers. Shakespeare, Cervantes, Dickens, Tagore, and Garcia Marquez are still read, and visitors travel Europe to see artworks of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Rubens, Velázquez, Cezanne, and Picasso. Miniatures made by the court painters of Mughal Emperors are appreciated to this day. Likewise, compositions of Amir Khusrau, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and Chopin are regularly performed.
Attending the 75th anniversary of Imran Mir at the Arts Council of Pakistan Karachi, one realizes that the artist who passed away in 2014, has left a legacy that speaks to audiences not confined to one culture or limited to one time period. By preferring the language of minimalism that contains immense possibilities to communicate ideas, sentiments, sensibilities, Imran Mir chose an uncommon niche in the arena of Pakistani art: A closely knit circle, in which abstract art always remains a strange, uninvited and unwelcome guest. Both artists and viewers generally favour an imagery that is identifiable and readable. Visuals that can be connected with optical experiences, and imaginative compositions which recall stories, fables, myths, dreams, nightmares.
In comparison to these convenient territories, Imran Mir’s paintings and sculptures pose a challenge to the viewers, as they might have for the maker. Creating something from the void is an immense task, but its survival, relevance, and context require a greater effort, vision and intelligence. Mir met this requirement through multiple strategies. In his recurring series of ‘Papers on Modern Art’, he converted his research into a visual format. The perfect order of forms, harmony of shapes, chromatic relationship, and the interconnectedness of stillness and movement are regular features of this body of work produced in different phases of his life.
These images do not demand descriptions, neither explanations, though are based upon complex concepts, because Mir’s ideas and inquiries are not coated on the surface. His thoughts serve as foundations of a construction – hidden, strong, planned, hence necessary for the survival of a structure. Layers of flat colours, introduction of a geometric shape here, inclusion of a line there, his paintings move a viewer; not only in the sense of feelings – but physically too. An aspect important for a spectator, to shift his or her position in surveying the entire canvas; the experience that contributes in changing the individual’s perception about art, and the world around him or her.
Art, no matter if Abstract, cannot be divorced from life, surroundings, and people. It opens other pathways and passages and experiences located outside and inside. It connects to what happens near and far. It is another way to realize reality. One usually hears how realistically a painter has rendered a red rose, and captured the details of its petals, their turns, varying hues, and fragility, along with a few droplets of dew. Not realizing that the scent of a flower is absent in the picture, an element that stays longer than a flower’s life, and spreads wider than its tiny body. Like the essence of an artwork, which survives after the tangible forms melt and familiar faces fade.
Imran Mir’s work conveys what is beyond the sense of sight through images he made; a paradox to some, but a magic that has been performed by artists for centuries. Looking at a large canvas of Mir makes us forget our immediate location, or even the object of our gaze; an encounter not different from millions of viewers’ who enjoy Mona Lisa’s smile and try to locate the direction of her eyes – forgetting that what they are looking at is not a woman – living or smiling – but merely an arrangement of pigments glued on a panel of wood by Leonardo da Vinci in 1503.