Mohammad Ali Talpur

About

Having attended the National College of Arts in Lahore, Talpur reacted against what he saw as a pressure from academia on students to “produce charged works.” Instead he aims to paint without loaded references, content or emotion, using only the line.

“When you put a single line on a blank surface, it may not have an expression but when you repeat it, it imbues a new kind of energy to the surface. Take the traditional arts of ceramics and textiles. Or better still, classical music. Be it Kishori Amonkar or Ustad Amir Khan, the repetition in their music with slight variation or improvisation adds a new character to their art. Mystical poetry is another parallel that presents itself as an open-ended statement, appealing to the layman and the intellectual alike. To translate and transform those nuances into a visual language was a challenge. To reinterpret colours into black and white was also painstaking.” Mohammad Ali Talpur

Recent solo exhibitions include: 2016, Till the Last Look, Canvas Gallery (Karachi); 2015, Lahore Art Gallery (Lahore); 2014, Latitude 28, (New Delhi); 2012, Alif, Green Cardamom (London); 2008 Leeka, Art & Public (Geneva); 2008, X.V.A. Gallery (Dubai). Some of the group shows in which Talpur has been exhibited include: 2013, Extra I Ordinary, Group show curated by Rashid Rana, Canvas Gallery (Karachi); 2011, Drawn from Life, Abbot Hall Art Gallery (Kendal); 2011, The Rising Tide: New Directions in Art from Pakistan 1990–2010, Mohatta Palace Museum, (Karachi); 2008, Orients Sans Frontieres, Espace Louis Vuitton (Paris).