I encountered both the shortest story in the world and the longest story in the world. The first, comprising only a single line: “When he woke up
I encountered both the shortest story in the world and the longest story in the world. The first, comprising only a single line: “When he woke up, the dinosaur was still there”, is by the Honduran-born Guatemalan author, Augusto Monterroso, which I read in his book, Complete Works and Other Short Stories. The longest one I heard as a four-year-old boy from my grandmother, which started – like all stories told by grannies – ‘Once upon a time there was a huge collection of wheat. A sparrow came, took a grain of wheat and flew, then the second bird arrived and picked another grain, the third sparrow also flew with another wheat grain, the next bird arrived again and left with a grain, and so on. The story never ended, since I couldn’t wait and always went to sleep.
However, Waqas Khan possesses the patience that I lacked. The journey of his artwork seems to be an unending story, but in actuality, it finishes at some point. In each of these works, composed of tiny marks, lines, dots appear one after another, changing their shades, colours, course, directions – even dimensions. All are produced on paper by holding a pen in his hand.
Habib Bank Limited Pakistan (HBL), recognizing the extraordinary art of Waqas Khan, has recently published a monograph on his work. A Man with A Pen: The Sentient Art of Waqas Khan is a homage to a creative individual who has shown around the world and has works in collections across the globe. The book includes texts by Salima Hashmi, Jonathan Jones, Zohreen Murtaza, Sara Khan, and a ‘Transcendental Introspection’ on Waqas Khan’s art from the collection of HBL Tower. The monograph also provides pictures of his studio, of his materials, tools, inks, him speaking about his art, and reproductions of his art, along with a ‘Chronology of Practice and Achievements’.
The essays and the images of his paintings – particularly with their details- encourage and enrich a reader in becoming a viewer, or the other way around. In both ways, one learns to listen to the scribbling sound of a pen traveling rhythmically across the sheet. One also deciphers how these tiny units multiply into waves, swimming in diverse patterns, flooding a static surface. The miracle lies in making a stiff element, a small line, or a dot participate in the play of forms overlapping, interjecting, crossing over, and dancing. To communicate what is seen through our eyes and what can be perceived behind the twin lenses in our head.
In the past Waqas Khan had investigated geometry, shapes, repetition, hence the works appeared a bit restraint, though not without their captivating pictorial power (their physical presence was experienced in a visit to his 2017 exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery, where an elliptic canvas, composed of tiny dots put in particular order, glowed out of a dark space). He has other, rather structured compositions he showed in different galleries and art fairs, but the monograph on the artist mainly focuses on his recent creations and brings forth how his lines and forms enjoy a great, unprecedented, and unimaginable freedom.
In that sense, this kind of aesthetics can be compared to poetry. Both prose and poetry are composed of words and communicate certain meanings. However, the two differ when it comes to how the meaning is constructed and conveyed. In a work of prose, one reads or listens to a text put logically, normally following the rule of syntax. A reader may enjoy the work of prose but focus more on what lies underneath, the content. On the other hand, a piece of poetry is composed in the way that it emanates music like precision, in fact, the sensation of music. Thus, reading a poem in printed form is completely different from listening to it if read by the poet or sung by a performer. I recall watching the 1994 movie Il Postino: The Postman, based upon the Chilean writer Antonio Skarmeta’s novel Burning Patience. The film and book recreate the life of Pablo Neruda, the exiled Chilean poet in Italy. Not knowing a single word of Spanish, but whenever the actor playing the poet recited Neruda’s verses, the electric feeling generated has not waned after all those years. Poetry is not the black shapes printed on paper but stimuli to ignite and excite a routine existence and familiar environment.
Waqas Khan’s works operate like poetry because, as Zohreen Murtaza in her text in the book quotes: “Khan proclaimed: ‘We are not static beings! The image should activate its surroundings !’
Quddus Mirza
