Our friends over at Berlin Art Link have just produced this great video with the Pakistani artist Waqas Khan.
Waqas Khan‘s work is a meditative pause in the present moment, taking the form of a series of highly precise yet organic patterns composed of dots or lines. Khan has been working on his exhibition at the Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna for the last year, conscientiously considering how to fill the giant exhibition space with his works and how his works will make the space visible. The exhibition, titled Acoustics of Life / Parterre ran from Feb. 03 – 28, 2015 and left a profound impression on the international art scene.
Khan spent a three month residency in the Galerie Krinzinger Project Space while he was working on the pieces for the show. The works are unexpectedly site-specific and so much more than they appear from first glance: they need to be seen from multiple scales and on different registers to reveal various patterns and discontinuities. The result of the work is less the presentation of ink on paper drawings so much as the construction of a moment, a pause, a much needed silence.
Khan’s works escape capture in words and exist in excess of any explanation. It is not sufficient to simply describe what they are or how they look: they require the presence of the viewer to encounter them in their scale and in the gallery space. “I want the viewers to remember what they saw,” explains Khan, “they should remember what they saw, and they should have questions.”
Waqas has a remarkable intensity and is both eccentric and approachable. His character is evident in his unconventional working habits. Khan sleeping during the day and working at night, hunched over the paper, holding with both hands a permanent pen that records each stroke with an unforgivable precision, on special tables that he has to design himself in order to make the works. The works are an index of Khan’s working process and a story that he is telling.
Waqas Khan‘s work is a meditative pause in the present moment, taking the form of a series of highly precise yet organic patterns composed of dots or lines. Khan has been working on his exhibition at the Galerie Krinzinger in Vienna for the last year, conscientiously considering how to fill the giant exhibition space with his works and how his works will make the space visible.
The exhibition, titled Acoustics of Life / Parterre ran from Feb. 03 – 28, 2015 and left a profound impression on the international art scene.
Khan spent a three month residency in the Galerie Krinzinger Project Space while he was working on the pieces for the show. The works are unexpectedly site-specific and so much more than they appear from first glance: they need to be seen from multiple scales and on different registers to reveal various patterns and discontinuities. The result of the work is less the presentation of ink on paper drawings so much as the construction of a moment, a pause, a much needed silence.
Khan’s works escape capture in words and exist in excess of any explanation. It is not sufficient to simply describe what they are or how they look: they require the presence of the viewer to encounter them in their scale and in the gallery space.
“I want the viewers to remember what they saw,” explains Khan, “they should remember what they saw, and they should have questions.”
Waqas has a remarkable intensity and is both eccentric and approachable. His character is evident in his unconventional working habits. Khan sleeping during the day and working at night, hunched over the paper, holding with both hands a permanent pen that records each stroke with an unforgivable precision, on special tables that he has to design himself in order to make the works. The works are an index of Khan’s working process and a story that he is telling.
Filmed & Edited by Peter Cairns
Interview by Monica Salazar
Text by Alena Sokhan
More Reading: Waqas Khan: the Pakistani artist who makes you want to say yes The Guardian
