Adeel uz Zafar “Monomania”
Aicon Gallery
This event has ended.
Aicon Gallery announces Monomania, the first U.S. solo exhibition of Karachi-based artist Adeel uz Zafar. Born in Karachi, Pakistan in 1975 and receiving his BFA from Lahore’s National College of Arts in 1998, Zafar began his career as an illustrator of children’s books, which has marked his artistic endeavors ever since. This exhibition presents a survey of Zafar’s recent work, and highlights two of the signature elements of his practice; the use of children’s toys eerily wrapped in bandages as subject matter and his now iconic reductive technique of scraping away at a black latex surface line by line to give rise to meticulously rendered, seemingly three-dimensional forms. The resulting figures, set against a stark black expanse as background, are simultaneously haunting, imposing and imbued with an intense sense of loneliness. They mirror the isolation and confusion that are the increasingly common by-products of our ever more connected yet somehow ever more fragmented societies. As cultures clash, ideologies metastasize, and socio-political conflicts and inequalities intensify, Zafar’s figures, while culled from the collective memories of our childhoods, embody the sense of desperation, helplessness and darkness that can result from our increasingly complex and volatile global situation.
Media
Schedule
from December 10, 2015 to January 23, 2016
Opening Reception on 2015-12-10 from 18:00 to 20:00