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Ali Kazim: A mid-career survey show |
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Ali Kazim |
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Cartwright Hall Gallery, Bradford, 1st December 2007 to 2nd March 2008 |
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This exhibition presents a mid career, survey show of Ali Kazim’s work, displaying a cross section of his practice. Early paintings of organic matter sit alongside his most recent body of work.
Ali Kazim’s subjects are predominantly men with features that emphasize their Dravidian heritage. Kazim is concerned with the space around his figures. These surroundings, mostly flat and simple backgrounds, stretch into far distances of silence and solitude; revealing his subjects in an infinite state of tranquility.
Kazim subverts the infamous flatness of figures within the miniature oeuvre by embossing objects and giving his subjects an exceptional sculptural presence. His multi-layered paintings are as much tactile objects as they are two-dimensional images. His technique of applying pigments on paper or wasli (a layered, handmade paper), using wash after wash, emphasises the texture of the paper itself, infusing the works with a reverent softness. Kazim’s early experience in woodcarving has also lent his work a sculptor’s sensibility— by utilizing pigment and pressure print on paper, he gives his paintings a sense of low relief allowing, for instance, white woven hats to float gracefully above the paper. This characteristic tactile element continues in his newer body of work, where he uses goatskin and fur to mark fresh explorations of the human body.
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