Non(object)

An exhibition of works by Affan Baghpati opened at the Koel Gallery, Karachi, on the 14th. February 2023 which is scheduled to run by the 1st. March 2023

As is known, ready-mades and found-objects entered the lexicon of Art via a set of rebellious artists, including Marcel Duchamp, and their work circa the second decade of the Twentieth century. As most histories of the Surrealist movements attest, collecting such objects was taken to a high point of trophy-gathering, as it were, and findings were considered virtually sacred as objects either formed or discovered as a matter of pure chance. These objects ranged from beautifully or intriguingly shaped pebbles collected by the sea, to outrightly bizarre objects or sights seen in a store-window, such as a large stuffed salamander playing a small guitar.

In this current exhibition, Affan Baghpati continues mainly with his penchant for the ready-made/found objects appropriated for the vernacular inherent to them, but as is evident, not restricted to those values. On this occasion special attention has been paid to the placing of the works and according to the artist, placed in three zones – the outer or introductory, the middle and a final, quieter, zone. The introductory area houses quintessential works in which both scale and materials have been deranged, in a manner of speaking: one work incorporates an old, battered saxophone with its top end loped off and replaced with a gigantic wooden surmadani top, the artist having made the decision to actually fabricate some of the components of the works extant.

Baghpati has reserved the middle space as a ‘darker ’ space by his own admission. Subsequently the art here is shown off with pooled lighting. The intention could be the visual isolation of the objects, all the more so to bring to the fore their commonality: they have moved past the simple one-plus-one-makes-three-of-some-sort typology, and are now a complex, finely composed series of wry sculptural illustrations of kahawat and muhawira.

There are, for this writer, two theoretical considerations worth noting about Baghpati’s ouvre. The first comes to us by way of early film theory and is called the Suture. Simplistic only in hindsight, it was thought that the juxtaposition of images was of primary importance – the meaning of a passage of moving images acquires sense or logic solely from what precedes or follows sequentially. This may seem old hat to us now, but at that time the was probably, gleefully, picked up by the Surrealists, most infamously in the collaborative silent film titled Un Chien Andalou (An Andalusion Dog; 1929) by Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel, a filmmaker. We are shown a sequence of a seated actress approached from behind by a man, one hand bearing a razor, the other reaching around to expose her left eye, a close-up and then a shot of the clouds moving over the face of the moon. The film, in fact, remained banned for quite some while. Yet, this apparently violent sequence very amply demonstrates the idea of Suture, and in Baghpati’s case, approximates his methodology of investigating (instigating?) Strangeness.

The second consideration lies within a seminal book titled A Thousand Plateaus (1980)by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, and focuses on nomadic jewelry. Placing the genesis and development of metal jewelry within a framework of equipage, the authors propose that flashing, polished metal was valued for its’ grandeur sighted from afar, and was imbued with the intention of creating both beauty as well as awe in the beholder’s eye. Similarly, we in Pakistan are privileged with access to manufacturing means and methods in a large range of crafts – in the small assemblage titled Bakri wala as well as lady Not yearning For her Lover Baghpati uses this advantage effectively, notwithstanding precious stones being replaced by glass beads in the former. In Under My Umbrella a crocodile’s foreleg is conspicuously replaced with a large glittering faux diamond.

Reverting to the afore-mentioned middle space and it’s foreboding tone, the artist has produced a small series of observations on persuasion with ill intent, a difficulty that could be delved into further, with the artist. There are some samples of new directions that Baghpati has begun to explore recently, as in printing. Though the ubiquitous surmadani design manifests itself in a pair of ear pendants, a pair of small, finely crafted golden scissors made up to be jewelry, is a move toward a challenging stance in fashion, perhaps. Overall, as exemplified in, again, Lady Not yearning For her Lover the exhibition declares both intricacy and layered deployment, in the artist’s thought processes regarding subjects, on the one hand, and a more diverse and ingenious use of resources, on the other.