After his near death experience from a rare neural disorder several years ago, and some worrying weeks of treatment abroad, Hashem Khan came back with a renewed vigour and gusto, and began to take a new interest in life around him. Since then, he has been revisiting, from time to time, old themes and preoccupations and reworking his technique to accommodate newer configurations of experience. The spate of activity since his recovery has been truly astounding, and The Sweet and the Sublime, which Hashem Khan would like to describe as a melaa fair rather than a simple exhibitionhappens to be just one example of his substantial output in the last couple of years.

In this latest of his solo exhibitions, Hashem Khan has cast his eyes beyond his immediate surroundings, to take stock of the sorry state that humanity today has been pushed into. Always a crusader for social justice, Hashem Khan has consistently projected his concern for the exploited and marginalized people in his work. His paintings, aesthetically pleasing because of his skillful handling of colour, form and space, have also projected a social content (indeed, even a single recurring motif in his paintings, such as an empty rice bowl, can make a strong statement in favour of a social or political vision). In The Sweet and the Sublime, he shows how the world has lost its stable centreit has indeed come unhinged because of the bloodshed and violence that have become the world’s daily fare in recent years. Hashem Khan laments the loss of human qualities which has resulted in widespread chaos. Another of his recurrent motifs, the bird, however, brings hope, as it sings of sweetness and lost innocence over the chaos. If the bird can sing in the middle of such disorder and despair, Hashem Khan would like to imply, may be there is still hope. The songbird therefore constitutes the ‘sweet’ part of the exhibitiona reiteration of the finer things of life, and hope. The ‘sublime’, on the other hand, is concerned with serious issues such as violence and the denial of freedom. But here too, the possibility of transcendence is not too distant. If life’s colours can be so beautiful, he seems to say, life can certainly renew itself, and should not be written off so easily.

Indeed, Hashem Khan has always used colour to accentuate his ‘message’. In this exhibition, the colours are bright. Besides his old favouritesgreen, red and orange– violet/purple seems to have assumed a special significance. There are strong juxtapositions and blending of colours, sometimes to startling effect. For the exhibition, Hashem Khan has used mostly oil, but his confident treatment of the medium has given his work a buoyant transparencya sweetness, if you willthat seems to negate any downward pull the thematic concerns might generate.

There is variety not only in regard to theme in this exhibition, but also to style. Hashem Khan uses the abstract style with the economy of a musician: only the proper note, and no unnecessary sounds drowning it. Yet, that economy has not stopped him from using suggestive details, figures and adumbration of figures in his abstracted canvas (he, of course, is an accomplished portrayer of figures, and has done a whole range of representational work). Here in this exhibition, a mixture of all these styles is noticeable but one sees that Hashem Khan has also focused on projecting a particular theme in a serial fashion. The exhibition is thus a collection of both individual and series works, allowing him to highlight some of his concerns more prominently than the others. One such concern is, as has been stated before, the disappearance of music from our life, and the need to restore it. The songbird series presents nine such birds of Bangladesh, meticulously painted in realistic details. Their forceful presence is a reminder that although their number is dwindling, they are nevertheless, very much alive with their songs. And as these songs reverberate in our mind, we too, become songbirds. A triumph for sweetness, in other words.

There are abstract works too, and some paintings done in acrylic on paper. The latter constitute another series, which is all about the different shapes that our everyday experience takes. There is another series of work done on small canvas, where faces of people and various bodily gestures are highlighted. Hashem Khan is always fascinated by people’s attempt to make meaningful communication with each other, and how in difficult times these attempts sustain our faith in ourselves. There is yet another series in which a small raised square of board placed in the middle of a rectangular base is painted over, with the paint spilling on to the base. Here the emphasis is on life’s flow. Hashem Khan knows how full life’s sweetness can be, and how quickly it can empty itself. This dialecticseen in creative terms as one between the sweet and the sublime aspects of life– is what ultimately creates a space where both art and life can thrive. In that sense, Hashem Khan’s works, by bringing in a global perspective, focuses on how destruction and violence may be overcome in our own local spaces if we remain committed to the ‘sweetness’ of life.

S. Manzoorul Islam