Poster art: Unequivocal communication
Billboards, placards, hoardings, handbills, flyers, wall chalking, graffiti and signboards are some of the physical modes through which effective advertising…

Foreign palette: Highlighting disparities
Salman Toor’s solo show, The Happy Servant, showing currently at Aicon, New York, advances his rapidly evolving signature a step further. Essentially a figurative artist he critiques the status quo through provocative characterisations of his protagonists. Peppered with sardonic humour his aesthetic vocabulary is a lively mix of elements from his affluent Pakistani background and its surrounding populist culture, and his Western art education

Homage: Memoir of commitment
Recently an important art book was launched at the Alhamra Cultural Centre, Lahore and a number of interesting celebrants spoke on the occasion. In the definitive biography of Mian Ijaz ul Hasan, the author Professor Dr Musarrat Hasan, describes the life and times of the distinguished man of the arts as an educationist, artist and political activist

Poignant works: Somebody did eat the butterflies
It isn’t easy to describe the paintings by Muhammad Ali which are currently adorning the walls of Canvas Gallery, Karachi.

Art fiend: No clash of civilisations here
In today’s increasingly polarised world accentuated with discrimination, racism and sectarianism, stories of harmonious cultural integration spotlight the diminishing sentiments of tolerance and human goodness.

Art beat: Daring articulations
Buzkashi, also known as Kokpar, is a bloodcurdling sport that is popular with the Hazaras, Pashtuns, Kazakhs and Uzbeks, among others.

Exhibition: An exquisite tradition
It has been said that the beauty of calligraphic script is so evident that even those who cannot read the text enjoy the visual experience of the flowing lines.

Individual identities
Ashow presently on at the Indus Valley School Art Gallery, Karachi, brings the work of six artists, each of which is a very individualistic and distinct narrative. Saba Khan, Amra Khan, Sara Khan Pathan, Sara Khan, Maria Khan and Atif Khan are in the show, ‘My Name Is …’

Juxtaposing art
uxtapose simply explained means ‘place side by side’. At a recent showcasing at Islamabad’s Gallery 6, businessman-turned-painter Ibraheem Haneef Ramay gave the term juxtaposition a new definition. In his paintings bringing out specific

Capturing dreams
Dreams can often be incredulously intimidating, but in most cases they come with the appalling characteristic of surprise, which is why these ephemeral visions have the potential to cause deep impacts on the way an individual thinks and acts.

The ripple effect
Art publications, once a rarity in our art milieu, gained momentum in 2002 when the Foundation for Museum of Modern Arts (Fomma) publishing wing launched production of its series of monographs on Pakistani artists. This was rapidly

Art fiend: A fresh harvest and hoary old chestnuts
Last Monday, after a boiling sky discharged a wilderness of electricity, and the tension of traffic drooped into one long aimless scene of hooting horns on the street, I trampled through the early monsoon slush and

Art work: An artist’s interpretation
Nahid Raza is an artist of distinction, one who received her first national recognition and award in 1983. Since that time, she has been a prolific painter showing her work throughout the country and further afield, always

Miniature: Alternate expressions
Contemporary artists’ passionate embrace of new media arts challenges conventional viewer perceptions calling into play alternate modes of seeing and thinking. Addressing prevalent issues through use of

Flog it: When art instils courage
Irish painter Christy Brown, as quite a few before him, showed to the world that artists know how to see life eyeball-to-eyeball in adverse circumstances. Indeed, they are a special lot. They don’t get bogged down by

Rustic art: Eulogising landscapes
A publication by the College of Art and Design, the University of the Punjab, Lahore, titled, Landscapes, Cityscapes and Related Conceptual Paintings, has recorded for posterity, a one of its kind exhibition of the same name that was held at the Lahore Museum, in the recent past.

Rustic art: Arts sans marketing
It is always the personal in art that leads to the social or the political. But who and what determines the boundaries between the self and what is outside it.

Art work: Blatant contrasts
Rohtas Gallery, Lahore recently showcased four emerging artists, Sana Kazi, Romessa Khan, Mariam Hanif and Ghulam Hussain, in a preview titled, ‘In Transit’.

Art beat: Sifting through the undercurrents
Personally speaking, to be consciously aware of art that can be looked at repeatedly with enjoyment and admiration is not a common feat.

Art Dubai 2013: Advantageous projection
Artists gain advantageous projection when they exhibit at popular international art festivals. Other than the opportunity for commentary and dialogue in a pluralistic environment, the global nature of today's art trade