The Ninth Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art

97 ARTISTS Top: Inflections of Choral Red (detail) 2018 Archival ink on wasli paper / 53 x 68cm / Courtesy: Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Madrid Below: Oracle II 2018 Archival ink on wasli paper / 132 x 244cm / The Thimblestitch and Bramble Collection / Image courtesy: The artist and Sabrina Amrani Gallery, Madrid Born 1982, Akhtarabad, Pakistan Lives and works in Lahore, Pakistan Waqas Khan’s monumental drawings have a commanding presence, yet they conjure a sense of peace. The laborious process of their creation is intimate and personal, requiring intense physical control and concentration over long, solitary hours in the studio. Comprised of countless small marks, Khan’s works culminate in large abstract designs that float delicately in space, their apparent simplicity and accessibility conveying a sense of harmony. Khan’s enchanting drawings have repeatedly drawn associations with the modern genre of South Asian miniature painting. Their transcendental nature and reverential use of geometric and repeated abstract designs have also inspired connections to other forms of Islamic art, calligraphy and architecture. The artist’s rigorous formal processes have similarly prompted comparisons with the art of Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian, as well as the American abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko. Khan’s drawings have been described as cosmic, mystical and meditative, and Khan himself has been portrayed both as a master draughtsman and a perpetual doodler. However, it is freedom from these classifications and conventions that allows Khan to create works that have their own unique energy. The artist has described his drawings as a ‘diary in a different language’. 1 His process could be likened to writing or transcribing a vast text, or the precise work of calligraphy inscribed on old parchment, and while both require a similar kind of discipline, Khan’s process is purely his own. He gradually masses forms through tiny, repeated marks, a process with seemingly infinite possibilities, but which the artist fastidiously controls. He draws with a 0.1mm Rapidograph, a high-precision architectural pen, on large architectural drawing boards capable of steadying oversized sheets of wasli paper. The handmade wasli is custom-made and its thickness bears the weight of the artist controlling lines with two hands. The black, white or occasionally coloured ink compositions on sparse backgrounds leave little room for mistakes, which threaten to undo the many dedicated hours committed to their creation. Painstakingly repeated patterns — curved lines, circles, collections of dots — stitch together to form geometric or organic shapes and structures. The lightness of the works is mesmerising; sometimes the patterns build to a perfect geometric form, other times, shapes are broken before they fully form. The compositions resemble loosely woven cloths that often delicately veil the blank void around them. Intersecting spheres conjure planetary orbits pulsating in space, while other interlaced patterns resemble cellular or molecular structures. The excessive repetition ensures any interruption or anomaly captures the attention. In building forms from minor elemental openings, voids appear like small tears, harnessing their power from an otherwise endless rhythm. Although Waqas Khan’s works evade easy categorisation, his lone, laborious technique necessitates an earnest commitment and an intensity of inward energy. They are works that suggest contrasts — between the macro and the micro, between movement and stillness, between individual gestures and the collective whole. As Khan’s simple, static marks amalgamate to generate radiating forms, they convey timelessness and a sense of the infinite. Tarun Nagesh Endnote 1 Waqas Khan, quoted in Ross Martínez, ‘Dancing in the desert’, in Waqas Khan [exhibition catalogue], Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna, 2015, p.82. WAQAS KHAN