{"id":8421,"date":"2015-12-24T13:08:52","date_gmt":"2015-12-24T05:08:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www2.weiling-gallery.com\/contemporary\/?post_type=portfolio&p=8421"},"modified":"2015-12-24T13:40:32","modified_gmt":"2015-12-24T05:40:32","slug":"art-review-amin-gulgee","status":"publish","type":"portfolio","link":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/contemporary\/portfolio-item\/art-review-amin-gulgee\/","title":{"rendered":"Art Review – Amin Gulgee"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\"bs-news-b1\"<\/a>\u00a0– Amin Gulgee<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

\"bs-news-b2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Amin\u2019s work speaks for itself \u2013 it can be seen and felt. But Amin the man is seldom accessible. In the following interview, Amin speaks passionately about what concerns every south Asian today – the concern of surviving and going through life as a thinking human being.<\/p>\n

\"bs-news-b3\"<\/a>God for me is everything \u2013 it is me \u2013\u2013 it is you \u2013\u2013 it is the wind outside \u2013 it is the light we see \u2013 it\u2019s everything horrible and everything wonderful \u2013 I don\u2019t see any separations \u2013 I see God in just about everything \u2013 God for me is the process of Life and the way things are \u2013 God for me is also Chance \u2013 the element in our lives that we do not control. The three most important paths of our life are birth, death, and love \u2013 all three are controlled by chance. One of my sculptures is called Chance \u2013 a DNA molecule with the word Allah inscribed on it \u2013 for me that is God. What\u2019s beautiful about Islam is its submission to God and that there is a direct link between God and a person \u2013 nothing comes in between \u2013 you create your own balance between the divine and you \u2013 or between chance and you.<\/p>\n

God has created everything and everybody. All religions teach us to be good, to be happy, and to achieve a balance \u2013 that is humanism. All religions have basic similarities. My father is a great collector of antiquity and as a child, I would touch his Gandharas and Krishnas and talk to them \u2013 my understanding of them was not in a ritualistic way \u2013 I reacted to them as a child. I related intuitively to the Boddhisatvas. When I came back from college I wanted to recapture them and create them in my own image. When I do a sculpture of the Buddha \u2013 I am not a Muslim doing a Buddha \u2013 I want to belong for that moment to whatever I am creating. Today, there is a need for intellectuals to interpret religion. If one is happy, one does good things; if one is unhappy, one does bad things -\u2013simple-minded perhaps, but that is the essence.<\/p>\n

On his life and work<\/strong>
\n\"bs-news-b4\"<\/a>I grew up in a house with paints and brushes but I had no hands-on guidance from my father. Studio art was the last thing I wanted to do. In fact my parents actively discouraged me not to become an artist. They feared that I\u2019d have to struggle.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s funny that I became an artist \u2013 I am non-romantic about an artist\u2019s lifestyle. For all the pleasure and joy of work, one has to survive on one\u2019s work. My life has been a series of accidents. I was in college, doing three majors in Art History, Architecture and Economics at Yale. Architecture was great \u2013 I got to paint and draw and create models \u2013 and at Yale you could just about do anything. In my final year at Yale I had to choose one major for my thesis. I hated Economics and thought Art History would be more interesting and challenging. My dissertation was on Mughal Gardens with special focus on Shalamar Gardens in Lahore. After my graduation I thought I\u2019d try my hand as an artist and if I did not succeed, I\u2019d go back and do an MBA.<\/p>\n

I had my first show in Karachi \u2013 and then I went to New York to live there as an artist. That was a difficult time. I had to go door-to-door with my jewellery pieces \u2013 art jewellery and gallery-wearable art. I had some successes. Initially my jewellery was very large \u2013 it was very unwearable \u2013 in New York it became scaled down. Basically, it is a sculpture with a hole. Whenever I get stuck on a larger piece, I switch scale and I move to a smaller piece. I enjoy making jewellery. Then I came home to Karachi \u2013 wanted to do larger work.
\nI began experimenting and working with metal. Copper and bronze are the only glorious metals that exist \u2013 they stay forever \u2013 I like that permanence \u2013 not that I seek any immortality in my work \u2013 just the fact that they will remain.<\/p>\n

I am trying to bring Islamic calligraphy into my work. Islamic calligraphy interests me in two ways \u2013 on an intellectual level and also on an emotional level. Intellectually \u2013 because of the concept of God as an abstraction \u2013 like a geometric pattern which goes on and on and emotionally because I was born a Muslim.<\/p>\n

On his interests<\/strong>
\n\"bs-news-b5\"<\/a>I love Camus, I love the existentialists \u2013 I am not a great reader of poetry \u2013 I read anything that comes near me. When I was young, I was an extreme loner \u2013 in fact some considered me retarded \u2013 my idea of weekend in Karachi was checking out 5 books. Reading has always been my escape. I\u2019ll read Stephen King to Manto.<\/p>\n

I used to be in a dance troupe in college \u2013 I just love dancing. I learnt a bit of kathak and Bharat Natyam in Karachi \u2013 just for six months \u2013 nothing serious. My sister is a good Bharat Natyam dancer. In fact the most famous Kathak dancer in Pakistan today is a man \u2013 Fasi \u2013 he is brilliant.<\/p>\n

I like travelling but I like people more than I like places. I am not a great sightseer. I am a voyeur. I love looking at people. I can sit in a caf\u00e9 and look at people for hours.<\/p>\n

What I really want to do is go to Sri Lanka \u2013 I have never been there \u2013 I would like to go to Sri Lanka and sit there on a beach for a week watching the stars, the sea, the colours, and feeling the wind\u2013 that would be my millennium gift to myself. I\u2019d also like to go to Bangladesh one day.<\/p>\n

The two artists I admire most are my father and Amrita Shergill. I find Amrita Shergill\u2019s paintings really close to me \u2013 I feel a great connection with her work.<\/p>\n

On the essence of life<\/strong>
\nLove is the most important part of being human \u2013 love is what defines humanity. I look at my life and feel so grateful that I love. Nothing else matters. We are here for such a short time \u2013 the only thing we should be taking away from this earth is love from people.<\/p>\n

On bringing South Asia closer<\/strong>
\n\"bs-news-b6\"<\/a>There should be more communication within the subcontinent. I am more familiar with things happening in New York and Washington, than I am with what\u2019s happening in Bombay or New Delhi. We should start looking within ourselves, we should celebrate ourselves. I think colonisation has made a profound impact on the subcontinent and it is time we discovered our own heroes \u2013 up till now everything that has been considered valid, at least in art, has been coming from the west \u2013 we study western art, we revere their heroes \u2013 it is about time that we start celebrating ourselves \u2013 as far as contemporary art is concerned, there needs to be an interaction among ourselves \u2013 it should be done without embarrassment \u2013 done with a sense of confidence.<\/p>\n

In the last fifty years many walls have crumbled and come down \u2013 I hope that happens in my region too. I hope our priorities go toward education and welfare of our people. I think it will happen \u2013 there is no other way it can be. Maybe not in my generation \u2013 perhaps in the next \u2013 but it will happen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0- Amin Gulgee Amin\u2019s work speaks for itself \u2013 it can be seen and felt. But Amin the man is seldom accessible. In the following interview, Amin speaks passionately about what concerns every south Asian today - the concern of surviving and going through life as a thinking human being. God for me is everything [...]","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"tags":[],"portfolio_entries":[17],"class_list":["post-8421","portfolio","type-portfolio","status-publish","hentry","portfolio_entries-news-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/contemporary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/8421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/contemporary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/contemporary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/portfolio"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/contemporary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/contemporary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio\/8421\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/contemporary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/contemporary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8421"},{"taxonomy":"portfolio_entries","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/weiling-gallery.com\/contemporary\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/portfolio_entries?post=8421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}