Faces can deceive and reveal at will. And that’s what attracts artists to faces: the broad space between revelation and concealment. They find it exciting to explore this space by investigating what’s behind the faces. That is exactly what a very talented painter, Zahid Mahmood Mayo, has done with his artworks which are on display at the Indus Valley School Gallery.
There are over a dozen exhibits on view and all of them are about people, alone or in a crowd. The noteworthy feature of these artworks is that there is a thread running through them. loneliness. Even when they are with other men and women, the loneliness is unmistakable.
It is evident from the very first self-axiomatic exhibit called ‘Aloof’ (oil on canvas). Still, ‘Aloof’ may be textually too obvious for the observation, which is why ‘Night Crowd West’ (oil on canvas) makes the artist’s vision less bleary. The public is not what he wants the viewer to look at but the faces that constitute groups — readily identifiable countenances.
