Text & Visuals | Zohreen Murtaza

For Pakistani artist Waqas Khan who has been consistently exhibiting internationally, the success of his expansive drawings and the immersive experience he offers thrives in the ambit of experience and the viewer’s presence. The effectiveness and promise of this experience is contingent upon both his use/curation of space and careful lighting as it is on his manual dexterity. Many of the international galleries where he has displayed his works in are pristine spaces; voids that he ensures are devoid of all signification and are equivalent to a kind of tabula rasa that he feels is necessary for the conception and curation of Khan’s works. As an artist he is very conscious of working towards maintaining the perfection and embodiment of this white cube, the display is often “designed” i.e the use of either black and white for the walls is sometimes considered in correlation with the formal and aesthetic qualities of the abstract works themselves. The ensemble effect where the perfection of the space is constructed and overlaid with the perfection and labour of the mark making, visibility/invisibility of his drawings contributes to what he calls “drama” and a heightened engagement of the viewer with the space.