On Yawar Abbas’s Greyscale at White Wall Gallery
Hassan Tahir Latif
Beauty is the hope of being recognised by, and included within, the existence of what you’re looking at.
John Berger (Marc Trivier: My Beautiful, 2004)
It is one of life’s greatest pleasures to enter a room and be transported elsewhere. Perhaps one day this will be in the form of a teleportation device that takes us to distant shores almost immediately, but for now, the burden lies with art. A lot is said about what comprises good art, with strong opinions on all sides, from academic halls to drawing room conversations. For me, though, good art is transportive, whether it is in the form of a play, a symphony, a film or a canvas. The ability to pick me up from my immediate now and place me in a different physical and emotional setting is what is ‘good’.
Similarly, beauty remains as elusive a concept as any. Here, I defer to Berger. Beauty is not simply what is looked at, but what invites you to be looked at. The degrees by which we are moved while looking at an object and included within its existence, then, is the metric by which the ‘goodness’ of art and beauty can be measured.
Yawar’s colour palette is informed by his achromatopsia, a rare condition that leads him to only see in greyscale and causes him to be prone to light sensitivity; his understanding of colour, therefore, developed theoretically
This was what struck me instantly when I entered White Wall Gallery in Lahore to see Yawar Abbas’s solo show ‘Greyscale’; I was indeed transported, in a swirl of colour and undulating brushstrokes, to wild terrain.
Yawar Abbas, born in the picturesque village of Sultan, Parachinar, is a recent graduate in painting from the National College of Arts (Lahore). His inspiration, which is apparent from the moment eyes are laid on his work, comes from the Impressionists, Expressionists and Fauvists. ‘The View from Toledo’, one of El Greco’s only surviving landscapes, inspired him immensely, along with the works of Jean-Francois Millet, with his depictions of humble peasants in the field. He combines these influences to depict the sweeping terrain and the lives of his people in Parachinar.
The show at White Wall is intelligently split into two rooms. The first transported me to Parachinar and a pastoral landscape, but also any number of Impressionist and Expressionist galleries in museums around the world. Therein lies Yawar’s genius. The canvases in the first room are done in oils and remind the viewer of one of the most famous Impressionists, Van Gogh. Not for long though, because Yawar’s originality steps in to shift the view almost instantly.
These wild landscapes are painted deftly and convincingly, reminiscent of fleeting vistas glimpsed from a car on the highway or through the window of a train—tiny moments of life arrested against the backdrop of panoramic views. Yawar’s oil canvases are ablaze with a palpable kinetic energy that imbues life into his work—the trees are indeed swaying with the wind. This adds to the transportive element. We are there with Yawar as he paints these views from life, feeling the wind on our own skins (Windy Day), breathing in the redolent roses (Rose Garden) and the sweet country air.
I was most intrigued at his colour palette—local landscapes rendered in a swirl of greens, but also shades of blue and magenta, colours not often associated with these environments—and it is what first stopped me in my tracks. Yawar’s colour palette is informed by his achromatopsia, a rare condition that leads him to only see in greyscale and causes him to be prone to light sensitivity; his understanding of colour, therefore, developed theoretically. This lends another dimension to his landscapes.
The standout for me was Olive trees with rose garden. Despite the scale of the work, it is easy to mistake this as a landscape bereft of human life. Upon closer inspection, figures emerge—a couple in conversation on a rock, a solitary body walking across the field, another sitting in the grass…
Moving on to the second room we are met with smaller works done in ink and pen. While the oils kept pulling me back, these drawings furthered what the canvases accomplished: transportation. My trip through Yawar’s Parachinar continued through smaller gardens, wilder landscapes and fields, such as in Sunlit or The Rhythm of the Land. The pen and ink drawings reminded me of Hockney’s later works, especially his digital drawings, such as the ‘A Year in Normandie’ and the Yorkshire landscape sketches and drawings.
Walking out of the show what stayed with me was Yawar’s originality. He has demonstrated how techniques and styles can be studied and made into the artist’s own singular vision. There is a command over colour and brushstrokes and pen strokes that may be reminiscent of Yawar’s inspirations and a result of his achromatopsia, but is decidedly his own; his landscapes cannot be mistaken for Arles—they are Parachinar. Even without knowing the location, any observer can tell they are Pakistani terrain, or at least South Asian, whether it’s through a tiny figure clad in a chaddar, lounging in the bushes or a lone palm tree sticking out above the canopy (The Orchard).
I mentioned in another piece the crucial role a gallery’s curation plays in the success of a show. White Wall’s division of the artwork, through setting up two rooms, as well as striking wall colours that complemented the canvases facilitates the immersion into these landscapes.
Greyscale is a show that evinces dialogue between the observer and observed. We see not the Parachinar that is embroiled in violence, inflicted by the outsider, but one that shows the quieter, mundane moments of a life that goes on despite forces determined to pull it apart. In fact, the fluidity of the brushstrokes speaks to an anxiety that is being resolved through silent contemplation of the natural world. The breathtaking mountains, trees and fields look directly at us, they compel us to not look away; they draw us in further, prompting us to witness them, but most importantly, be witnessed by them.
The show will be up till 25th March 2025.
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